Professor awarded Capes/Humboldt grant to conduct research project in Germany

FGV’s School of Applied Mathematics (FGV EMAp) professor Maria Soledad Aronna has been awarded the Capes/Humboldt Program grant, under the Experienced Researcher category, to collaborate scientifically with professors Fredi Tröltzsch and Volker Mehrmann at Technische Universität in Berlin, Germany.

The AvH Foundation distributes individual grants to highly qualified researchers.  Since its establishment in 1953 by the German government, it has promoted more than 28,000 scientists from 140 countries, including 55 Nobel Prize winners. Once the research is completed, the researcher joins the Humboldt Alumni network and can continue to receive funding to conduct research studies in collaboration with German scientists or even to finance scientific events in their country of origin. In 2012, the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes) transformed the program into Capes/Humboldt in Brazil, encouraging researchers with permanent positions in Brazilian institutions to apply to this grant program and strengthening our scientific relations with Germany.

The research to be conducted by professor Aronna and her colleagues in Berlin covers several Optimal Control topics. The Optimal Control Theory is a field of research that deals with optimization problems subject to differential equations, which has proven to be very useful in applications across several different fields in recent decades, including economy, aeronautics, space and mechanical engineering, biology, medicine and epidemiology. More precisely, the project to be carried out in Germany aims to obtain new second order optimality conditions for two different classes of Control problems subject to Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations. The goal is to demonstrate conditions that analytically prove the optimality of solutions in both theoretical and practical cases related to applications.