Alumni Interview #September
Welcome to first alumni interview of the new academic year. We will aim to post these each month so check out our news page atleast once a month.
Name: Nam Vo
Employer: Alten
Title: Mechatronics Consultant
Year of graduation: 2017
What are your main responsibilities?
I am a consultant in Mechatronics, which is very broad, the responsibilities depent on the job. At the moment I am a model designer at ASML.
What is a typical day (or week) like for you?
It’s a job at the office. With our team we have daily meetings and alignments to work on modelling the physics of a lithography machine. Typical work is programming (in Matlab) and writing documents.
What do you like most about your work?
Could you tell us about an interesting or recent project you did?
My first and current project is at ASML. My first job was to model the physics of a moving object in the newest EUV lithography machine. I started by understanding the setup and physics of the wafer stage. This stage carries and positions the wafer, and moves at velocities of 1 m/s. The extreme ultra violet laser beam etches the wafer at nanometer accuracy, all while everything is moving at high speed. Interferometers generate sensor data, which is used as an algorithm input, to calculate the position and orientation of the stage at 40 kHz. From start to end, everything is documented, coded and simulated in order to verify the model. After a long period, seeing that everything works out as planned is really satisfying!
Is the study material still relevant to your daily occupations?
Not that much actually. We use a lot of linear algebra and mathematics. However, an understanding of feedback control helps in communicating with other parties within the company. My current job is not per se ‘Systems and Control’, but the way of thinking, and the ‘how to’ on approaching complex matter, has helped me in my work.
How did you become interested in this field?
I have always had an interest in the field where electronics meets mechanics. Being a Mechatronics consultant has helped me to get the job that I like to do.
If you could do it all over again, would you choose the same path for yourself? If not, what would you change?
During the masters I had a taste of robotics related courses. Maybe if I had the chance to do it all over again, I would have chosen for a deeper dive into that field.
What advice would you give someone a student who is considering this type of job?
When you’re looking for that dream job, do not under-estimate the skills you have, do not over-estimate your lack of experience. If you enjoy your masters, if your interest is in the right place and you have a healthy dose of thinking ability, you’re up for that job.
What was the title of your master thesis project and who was your supervisor?
I did my thesis work under the guidance of Tamas Keviczky. The title was “Non-linear Geometric Control of a Quadrotor with a cable suspended load”
Do you have a greatest memory about the master S&C?
Graduation project, it’s fun to get really specialized on one topic. And of course, moment of graduation
If you have any further questions you want to ask Nam, you can contact via Linkedin:
Nam Vo
Name: Wouter Jongeneel
Employer: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Title: PhD candidate
Year of graduation: 2019
What was the title of your master thesis project and who was your supervisor?
I did my thesis work under the guidance of Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani at the Delft Center for Systems & Control (DCSC). The title was “Controlling the Unknown: A Game Theoretic Perspective”, where we tried to further exploit dynamic game theory in the context of robust control.
Did you have a favourite S&C course?
There were many great courses, but let me highlight two of them which I enjoyed for a similar reason. First, “Filtering and Identification” by Michel Verhaegen and later on “Control of Discrete-Time Stochastic Systems” by Jan H. van Schuppen. These two courses have in common that they are taught by someone who co-developed the field, which resulted in so many anecdotes and insights..
What does a regular workday look like for you?
It is both a blessing and a curse, but there is no such thing as a regular work day when you become a Phd student. Most days are a combination of reading, many interesting discussions and hopefully getting one step closer to solving some problems. If you are lucky, like I was with Peyman, this is similar to doing your master thesis project, but with more responsibilities and the possibility to afford a dishwasher.
Have you worked on an interesting project lately?
Yes I think so, we are currently working on the more probabilistic aspects of identification and control. What is the best you can do with finite data and how does this depend on your system characteristics? So far, leveraging classical results from probability theory, we can describe any function of some unknown linear system with a certain confidence. The tools we use can be compared to Lyapunov theory, they are remarkably general, which is very interesting to me.What was the most difficult S&C course in your experience?
What was the most difficult S&C course in your experience?
The Philosophy course, there was nothing to prove.
Is the study material still relevant to your daily occupations?
Absolutely, in Delft they put lots of emphasis on the beauty and power of Linear Algebra, like in the courses by Tamás Keviczky, Michel Verhaegen and Kees Vuik. In a current project we could characterize a non-convex optimization problem by a solution to a generalized eigenvalue problem. This is not something you can easily imagine, unless you have seen it before
If you have any further questions you want to ask Wouter you can contact him via his website:
Wouter Jongeneel