TITLE:  Control policies for dynamical queues and flow networksSPEAKER:  Ketan Savla, Faculty CandidateABSTRACT:Queueing systems, along with flow network approximations, provide a fruitful frameworkfor several applications such as transportation, production and data networks. In this talk,we present a novel generalization of this framework that explicitly incorporates dynamicalaspects inspired by well-known empirical findings. In particular, two scenarios will bediscussed. First, we present a novel dynamical queue model in which the service timesdepend on the utilization history of the server. For such a queue, we show that a simplethreshold policy, that releases a task to the server only if its state is below a certain fixedvalue, is throughput-optimal. Second, we consider a dynamical flow network where the flowdynamics is driven by the difference between the inflow and outflow on the links. For such aflow network, we show that the node-wise routing policies that respond cooperatively tovariations in flow densities on local links in fact provide maximum global robustnessguarantees under local information constraint. These results rely on technical tools at theintersection of dynamical systems, queues and network flows, and provide key insights intothe fundamental performance limits in presence of dynamical effects.(joint work with E. Frazzoli, G. Como, D. Acemoglu and M. A. Dahleh)Bio----Ketan Savla is a research scientist at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and M.A. in Applied Mathematics, both in 2007, from UCSB, as well as M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UIUC in 2004. His current research interest is in control and optimization techniques with applications in mobile robotic networks, humans-in-loop systems, intelligent transportation systems and computational neuroscience. His awards include CDC-ECC'05 best student paper finalist and best CCDC thesis award from UCSB.