ROBIN DELABAYS robin.delabays@hevs.ch
HES-SO Valais-Wallis, Sion, Switzerland

WebOfScience ResearchGate ORCID Google Scholar

My research - Publications - CRM 2023 - JPhys Complexity - CCS 2021 - GeoCoW 2020 - MathPhys Seminar


About me

RDelabays

Since 2022: Assistant Professor at HES-SO, in Sion, Switzerland.

2020 - 2022: Postdoc at UCSB with Prof. F. Bullo.

2018 - 2020: Postdoc between HES-SO and ETHZ with Profs. P. Jacquod and F. Dörfler.

2019: Visiting postdoc at LANL with A. Lokhov and M. Vuffray.

2014 - 2018: PhD at HES-SO with Prof. P. Jacquod.

2014 - 2018:
After obtaining my Master's degree in Mathematics at the University of Geneva, I started a Ph.D. at the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO) in Sion (CH), under supervision of
Prof. Philippe Jacquod. Our interest in the stability of power grids led us to investigate the phenomenon of synchronization of newtorked agents, and in particular the conditions for the existence of multiple synchronous states in such a system.

2018 - 2020:
After graduating in May 2018, I stayed in Sion as a postdoc, with frequent interactions with Prof. Florian Dörfler at ETH Zurich. Most of my work since then aims at a better understanding of the interplay between network structures and dynamics in systems of coupled dynamics agents.

In 2019, I had the opportunity to visit the Center for Nonlinear Studies (CNLS) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). There, my work with Andrey Lokhov and Marc Vuffray was directed towards the localization of disturbances in high-voltage power grids.

2020 - 2022:
In 2020, I have been granted a Postdoc.Mobility grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. This funding allowed me to work for two years in the group of Prof. Francesco Bullo at the University of California in Santa Barbara. We managed to extend our understanding of multistability in networks of coupled oscillators to dissipative systems.

Since 2022:
Since August 2022, I am an Assistant Professor at the School of Engineering of the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO), in Sion (CH). I teach mathematics young engineers and pursue my research on the interplay between network structures and dynamical systems, with special focus on power grids. In 2024, I joined the editorial board of IOP's Journal of Physics: Complexity.

In 2023, I have been invited to join the association La Matrice, whose purpose is to promote sciences and mathematics, through the prism of feminism and sustainability.

A more formal CV, including a list of publications, can be found here.

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My research

Working on the stability of electrical networks with a mathematical background naturally led me to investigate the relation between dynamical systems and complex networks.

On one hand, it is clear that the network structure underlying a dynamical system influences its dynamics. Determining the impact of some network structures on the dynamics of a system is still an ongoing field of research.

On the other hand, if the underlying network is unkown, observations of the system can give enough information to recover some characteristics of the network. Such an approach aims at learning the underlying system from measurements data.

Currently, my research interests cover the two faces of this coin. In particular, with P. Jacquod, T. Coletta, and M. Tyloo, we showed how the number and size of cycles in a network of dynamical agents influence the number of equilibria of the whole system. More recently, with F. Bullo and S. Jafarpour, we extended the analysis of networked coupled oscillators to systems with dissipative or lossy couplings. Looking at the other side of the problem, with P. Jacquod, L. Pagnier, and M. Tyloo, we proposed some methods to leverage the information included in measurements in order to recover the underlying network structure or the source of a disturbance in a dynamical system.

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Publications

A pdf version of my list of publication is available in my CV. All manuscripts are available on the arXiv.

Preprints

Peer-reviewed

Softwares

Published peer reviews

Talks and posters

All conference material is under CC-BY license.

Ph.D. Thesis

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CRM

Colloque CRM 2023

In September 2023, I was invited to give a presentation at the annual Colloquium of the CRM (Commission Romande de Mathématiques) about the relation between mathematical models of power grids and graph theory. The slides (in French) and associated codes are available on GitHub.

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Journal of Physics: Complexity - Focus Issue

From April 2022 to April 2023, I was a Guest Editor for Journal of Physics: Complexity. I was collaborating with Laurent Pagnier (University of Arizona), Benjamin Schäfer (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Melvyn Tyloo (Los Alamos National Laboratory), and Dirk Witthaut (Forschungszentrum Jülich) on the Focus Issue

Monitoring and control of complex supply systems.

The topics covered were:

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CCS21

CCS 2021 - Satellite Symposium

In October 2021, I co-organized the Satellite Symposium Data-based Diagnosis of Networked Dynamical Systems at the Conference on Complex Systems in Lyon, with L. Pagnier and M. Tyloo.

We had a great panel of speakers, both on-site and online. It was really nice to attend live talks again.


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GeoCoW

GeoCoW 2020

From February 2nd to 5th, 2020, I co-organized the workshop Geometry of Complex Webs (GeoCoW) with Matthieu Jacquemet (HES-SO and UniFR) and Christian Mazza (UniFR). It took place in the nice alpine village of Les Diablerets, Switzerland.

We gathered speakers and attendees from broad backgrounds, ranging from pure mathematicians to engineers, including physicists, life scientists, and computer scientists. The aim of this workshop was to encourage people from different field to interact around the interdisciplinary topic of complex networks and see opportunities for new and rich collaborations.

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