Gert Witvoet
Department / Institute
RESEARCH PROFILE
Gert Witvoet is a part-time Assistant Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His research interests focus around motion control for scientific applications, motivated by his activities in space, astronomy and big science projects at TNO. Gert is also the responsible teacher for the course Control Engineering, covering classical control theory, from frequency response measurements, to feedback control design and feedforward control. He is also involved in the industrial Motion Control Tuning course from the Mechatronics Academy.
Advanced control technology, including motion control, could very well prove to be an enabler for future scientific discoveries.” “Whatever happens inside the unit disc stays inside the unit disc…”
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND
Gert received his MSc degree (with honors) in Mechanical Engineering from TU/e in 2007 and was awarded the ‘Unilever Research Prijs 2007’. In 2011, he received his PhD from TU/e for his work entitled “Feedback control and injection locking of the sawtooth oscillation in fusion plasmas”, on the synergy between nuclear fusion and control technology in general, and the possibilities of control for sawtooth instability (observed in fusion reactors worldwide). This project was carried out together with FOM Rijnhuizen (now: DIFFER), with support from TNO Science and Industry, Delft, and FOM Rijnhuizen. He was awarded the Best Junior Presentation (BJP) Award at the 27th Benelux Meeting on Systems and Control (2008).
In addition to his work at TU/e, Gert has worked at TNO Technical Sciences as a control specialist in the Optomechatronics department since 2012. He is and has been working on projects related to space (TROPOMI, LISA), astronomy (ELT M1SS and PACT, Adaptive Optics), lithography and Big Science (ITER, QuTech). He is currently involved in several projects about free-space optical communication, working on the control of accurate pointing mechanisms to enable high-speed communination over large distances (e.g. ground-satellite, or satellite-satellite).
Key Publications
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G. Witvoet,R. Den Breeje,J. Nijenhuis,R. Hazelebach,N. Doelman
Dynamic analysis and control of mirror segment actuators for the European Extremely Large Telescope
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (2015) -
G. Witvoet,M. Lauret,M.R. Baar, de,M. Steinbuch
Numerical demonstration of injection locking of the sawtooth period by means of modulated EC current drive
Nuclear Fusion (2011) -
G. Witvoet,W.P.M.H. Heemels,M.J.G. Molengraft, van de,M. Steinbuch
Performance analysis of reset control systems
International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control (2010)
Current Educational Activities
Ancillary Activities
No ancillary activities