Prof. Ali Zolghadri

Below some newly published papers (2020-2021). See at here for a complete list of my publications.

• Wang X., A. Zolghadri (2023). Cover Attack Detection and Secure Control for Cyber Physical Systems.The 22nd IFAC World Congress, 9-14 July, Yokohama, Japan.
• Zolghadri A. (2022). An advisory assistance system for crew-aided flight status management in Single Pilot Operations. International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, New York , USA, 24-28, July, 2022.
• Zolghadri A. (2022). Self-protection and anomaly detection&mitigation for aircraft systems. 26th International Conference on Circuits, Systems, Communications and Computers – IEEE CSCC, Greece, 19-22 July, 2022.

• Aubouin–Pairault B., A. Perodou, C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2022). Resilient tube-based MPC for Cyber-Physical Systems Under DoS Attacks. 11th IFAC Symposium on Fault Detection, Supervision and Safety for Technical Processes, Pafos, Cyprus, 7-10 June 2022.

• Goupil P., A. Zolghadri (2022). The challenge of advanced FDI algorithms for aircraft systems. 11th IFAC Symposium on Fault Detection, Supervision and Safety for Technical Processes, Pafos, Cyprus, 7-10 June 2022.
• Ifqir S., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri, G. Alcalay, P. Goupil, S. Merlet (2022). Fault tolerant multi-sensor data fusion for autonomous navigation in future civil aviation operations. Control Engineering Practice. To appear (June 2022). pdf file.
• Apaza-Perez W. A., C. Combastel, I. Walukiewicz, A. Muscholl, A. Zolghadri (2021). Abstraction-based control synthesis for interconnected systems using partial information. The European Journal of Control. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejcon.2021.11.001. pdf file.
• Apaza-Perez W. A., A. Girard, C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2021). Symbolic observer-based controller for uncertain nonlinear systems. IEEE Control Systems Letters. October 2021. Vol. 5, Issue 4. pdf file.
• Perodou A., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2021). Critical-Time Analysis of Cyber-Physical Systems subject to Actuator Attacks and Faults. IEEE 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC). December 13-15, 2021, Austin, Texas, USA. Presentation, video of the presentation, pdf file .
• Perodou A., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2021). Towards Anomaly-Tolerant Systems by Dissipation Block Synthesis. 5th International Conference on Control and Fault-Tolerant Systems (IEEE SysTol). Saint-Raphaël, France during Sept 29 – Oct 1, 2021. pdf file .
• Ifqir S., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2021). Set-based Multi-Sensor Data Fusion For Integrated Navigation Systems. 5th International Conference on Control and Fault-Tolerant Systems (IEEE SysTol). Saint-Raphaël, France, Sept 29 – Oct 1, 2021. pdf (paper) – pdf (presentation).
• Ifqir S., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri, G. Alcalay, P. Goupil, S. Merlet (2021). Multi-Sensor Data Fusion For Civil Aircraft IRS/GPS/ILS Integrated Navigation System. European Control Conference (ECC). Rotterdam, The Netherlands, June 29 – July 2, 2021. pdf .
• Apaza-Perez W. A., A. Girard, C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2021). Symbolic observer-based controller for uncertain nonlinear systems. American Control Conference (ACC). New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, May 26-28, 2021.
• Apaza-Perez W.  A., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2020). On distributed symbolic control of interconnected systems. The International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. Vol. 30, No. 4, December 2020. pdf file.
• Combastel C., A. Zolghadri (2020). Distributed Kalman Filter with Unique Symbols Provider and Symbolic Zonotopes for the Robust State Estimation in CPS. International Journal of Control, Taylor and Francis. 93:11, 2596-2612, 2020. pdf file.
• Apaza-Perez W. A., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2020). A symbolic approach to distributed control of interconnected systems. 59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC). December 14-18, 2020, Jeju Island, Republic of Korea. See pdf presentation.

I will give a plenary talk at the 26th International Conference on Circuits, Systems, Communications and Computers (CSCC 2022) conference on fault detection & mitigation and self-protection in aircraft systems.

COCOTIER (COncept de COckpit et Technologies Intégrées En Rupure, 2019-2023) is a collaborative project on new technologies for future intelligent cockpit in Single Pilot Operations (SPO, 2030+). The project is supported by the French Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) and coordinated by Airbus.

Budget : DGAC support : 17.3 MEuros – Total budget : 34.6 MEuros.

Partners : 14 industrial and academic partners:

• Industrial partners : Airbus (coordinator) – Dassault aviation – SAFRAN – Thales – ATR – Factem – OKTAL Synthetic Environment – Ratier Figeac – Vodea – Zodiac Aero Electric.
• Academic partners : IMS Lab (U-Bordeaux) – LAAS-CNRS  (Toulouse) – LEAD Lab (Toulouse) – ONERA (French Aerospace Lab) – ENAC (French Civil Aviation University).

IMS project managers : Prof. Ali Zolghadri and Dr. Christophe Combastel. Postdoc fellow: Sara Ifqir (2019-2021); Master students: Martin Faure (2019), Nicolas Bandet (2021).

News:

• The CC7 meeting of the project will take place on December 13, 2022 at Airbus Toulouse, France.
• The CC6 meeting of the project took place on June 06, 2022 at Airbus Toulouse, France.
• The CC5 plenary meeting (all partners) of the project took place on November 29, 2021 at Airbus, Toulouse-France. The IMS presentation during this meeting can be downloaded at here (authorized members only).
• IMS delivrables:
  
  • IMS deliverable S5.8.1.3 can be downloaded at here (authorized members only).
  • IMS deliverable S5.8.1.2 can be downloaded at here (authorized members only).
  • IMS deliverable S5.8.1.1 can be downloaded at here (authorized members only).
• Related publications:
  • Ifqir S., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri (2021). Set-based Multi-Sensor Data Fusion For Integrated Navigation Systems. 5th International Conference on Control and Fault-Tolerant Systems (IEEE SysTol). Saint-Raphaël, France, Sept 29 – Oct 1, 2021. pdf (paper) – pdf (presentation).
  • Ifqir S., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri, G. Alcalay, P. Goupil, S. Merlet (2021). Multi-Sensor Data Fusion For Civil Aircraft IRS/GPS/ILS Integrated Navigation System. European Control Conference (ECC). Rotterdam, The Netherlands, June 29 – July 2, 2021. pdf .
  • Ifqir S., C. Combastel, A. Zolghadri, G. Alcalay, P. Goupil, S. Merlet (2022). Fault tolerant multi-sensor data fusion for autonomous navigation in future civil aviation operations. To appear (June 2022) in Control Engineering Practice. pdf.

I have been named in the world’s top 2% scientists, considering all fields and subfields of research. This list has been recently released by the US-based Stanford University.

November 2021: Stanford University has recently released a list that represents the most-cited scientists in various disciplines by analyzing the quality of research cited by other researchers in year 2021 – the World’s Top 2% Scientists. This ranking, considered as the most prestigious worldwide, is based on the bibliometric information contained in the Scopus database, and includes more than 180,000 researchers from the more than 8 million scientists considered to be active worldwide, with 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields taken into account. The Stanford ranking is based on a composite citation index that excludes self-citations and considers the position of researchers in the authorship of papers, with emphasis on single, first and last authorship. The same index including self-citations is provided for comparison.

I have been “General Chair” of the 2^nd International Conference on Aerospace & Aeronautical Engineering, 27-29 September 2021, Lyon, France. During this conference, I gave also a keynote lecture. 

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I gave a plenary talk at the 5th International Conference on Control and Fault-Tolerant Systems (IEEE SysTol) 2021. See at here.

I welcome applications for doctoral study and postdoctoral visitors in areas relevant to my research interests for working on challenging scientific projects.

Interested applicants : Possible research topics are: Reachability analysis and safety verification of neural networks — Safety and Security of Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems: new methods and algorithms — Model-based, set-based and data-driven methods for multi-sensor data fusion in navigation systems, with application to future civil aviation operations — Fault diagnosis, fault management, autonomy and resilience issues in future aircraft systems — Symbolic methods for control of complex and non-linear systems …

I am happy also to consider students’ own proposals. If you are interested in a PhD / postdoc position, please email me.

Postdoc 2022 openings

Dr. Carlos Trapiello (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – UPC, Barcelona, Spain) received a research grant from UPC to do a one-year research stay in Bordeaux. See his CV at here.

He will work with Dr. Christophe Combastel and myself on safety and security issues in cyber-physical systems using set membership techniques.

Period : 15 January 2022 — 15 January 2023.

Postdoc 2020-2021 (closed):

Due to coronavirus outbreak, postdoc recruitment in 2020 has been delayed to fall 2020.

• The first call can be downloaded at here. This call is now closed. Dr. Arthour Perodou has been hired since Sptember 2020. See his CV at here.

• Second postdoc position is related to the COCOTIER project. This call is also closed. Dr. Sara Ifqir will be continuing one year more.

postdoc 2019 (closed):

• Sara IFQIR started on December 2, 2019 to work on the COCOTIER Project. See her CV at here.
• After a two-year postdoc position in Bordeaux supported by SysNum, Willy Alejandro Apaza Perez left IMS-lab in May 2020 for L2S-lab (Paris) to continue his research under the supervision of Dr. Antoine Girard. Good continuation Alejandro !

Today, Airbus A350 XWB is undoubtedly the most modern and efficient commercial jetliner in the world. Since January 2015, this aircraft is flying worldwide with a high performance robust model-based monitoring system on-boarded. This exceptional achievement has been resulted from an inspiring collaboration between my research team and Airbus on FDIR issues in aircraft systems, starting with mid-2000s. With current airworthiness certification standards in civil aviation, extremely rigorous specifications must be satisfied, not only in nominal flight regimes, but also in extreme, unusual, non-standard/off-nominal and unexpected flight conditions. The certification testifies that new systems meet all requirements set by the aviation regulatory authorities — FDA (USA) and EASA (Europe) — and that they themselves do not introduce new risks. Achieving flight-proven and certified model-based monitoring systems has been a tall order and required several years of research and innovation, ground V&V activities and in-flight tests and maturation.

Five years after the first A350 commercial flight, this note posted on the IFAC Blog and IFAC social media looks back at some lessons learnt from this amazing success story. The note has been prepared by Dr. Philippe Goupil (eXpert FDIR – A/C Control Architecture & Functions, Airbus, Toulouse – France) and myself. See also IFAC Newsletter, December 2020.

A. Zolghadri – IMS Bordeaux, France

P. Goupil – Airbus, Toulouse, France

What about the aircraft of the 2030s and beyond? In civil aviation operations, the vector is pointed toward more autonomy and intelligence in the cockpit. Future avionics will have to ensure more autonomy and must provide safety functionalities at least equivalent to those of today blended-crew task environments, while coupled to a new cockpit concept. The next leap forward will be to take one pilot out of the cockpit (Single Pilot Operations, SPO). Improved flight management in SPO requires cross-domain methods for trustworthy, robust and scalable detection and mitigation of anomalous events. An exhaustive discussion can be found in (pdf file):