Rate My Professor Bart Besselink

Bart Besselink is an Associate Professor in the Systems, Control and Applied Analysis group within the Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Groningen. He earned his M.Sc. degree cum laude in Mechanical Engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology in 2008 and his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the same university in 2012. After his doctorate, he served as a short-term visiting researcher at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2012 and as a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Automatic Control and ACCESS Linnaeus Centre, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, from 2012 to 2016. He joined the University of Groningen thereafter, advancing from Assistant Professor to his current position as Associate Professor.

Besselink's research specializes in mathematical systems theory for large-scale interconnected systems, with emphasis on contract-based verification and control, model reduction, and applications in high-tech manufacturing systems, autonomous vehicles, smart power grids, intelligent transportation systems, and neuromorphic computing. His contributions are reflected in over 100 research outputs, including more than 4,000 citations and an h-index of 28 on Google Scholar. Notable publications include 'Modular model reduction of interconnected systems: A robust performance analysis perspective' (Automatica, 2024), 'Design and Control for Implementation of Simulation-Based Assume-Guarantee Contracts' (IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2026), 'Hierarchical controller synthesis using (γ,δ)-Similarity' (Mathematics of Control, Signals, and Systems, 2026), and 'Abstracted Model Reduction: A General Framework for Efficient Interconnected System Reduction' (IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2025). He has received the 2020 Automatica Paper Prize (shared with Xiaodong Cheng and Jacquelien Scherpen), DSSC XS funding in 2023, an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2024 for the 'Contracts for Control System Design' (COCOS) project worth two million euros, and served as a partner in the 2024 NXTGEN Hightech Growth Fund consortium grant of two million euros for modular machine design in the semiconductor industry. Additionally, he was a finalist for the Faculty of Science and Engineering Supervisor of the Year Award in 2023. His work addresses the growing complexity of engineered systems, enhancing control design methodologies across engineering disciplines.