Professor S.P. Banks

Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering

Emeritus Professor

s.banks@sheffield.ac.uk
Amy Johnson Building

Full contact details

Professor S.P. Banks
Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering
Amy Johnson Building
Portobello Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
Profile

Professor S P Banks has been Professor of Mathematical Control Theory since 1992 and has contributed to many areas of mathematical systems theory, including the solution of Lyapunov's problem in stability theory, the introduction of global nonlinear optimal control theories, knots, links and chaos in nonlinear systems and nonlinear partial differential equations.

He is an Editor of an Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications International Journal, is an Associate Editor of several other journals and regularly contributes to international activities through conference organisation, plenary lectures and invited talks.

He has been an external examiner for MSc in Control Systems, Imperial College (1990-1993) and for numerous PhDs throughout the world and has served on Habilitation juries in France and Poland.

Research interests

Nonlinear control theory, optimisation, global theory of dynamical systems, knots, chaos and cellular automata.

His main contributions are:

  • Determination of general Lyapunov functions for nonlinear systems (Lyapunov's problem)
  • The introduction of a global technique for solving nonlinear problems by reducing them to sequences of linear, time-varying ones.
  • The proof of the existence of higher order chaotic systems by the use of Lie theory.
  • The theory of global nonlinear dynamical systems on hyperbolic manifolds by the use of automorphic forms.

He has published over 200 refereed papers and 5 books including:

  • 'State-Space and Frequency Domain Methods in the Control of Distributed Parameter Systems', (Peter Peregrinus,1983)
  • 'Control Systems Engineering: Modelling and Simulation, Control Theory and Microprocessor Implementation', (Prentice-Hall ,1986)
  • 'Mathematical Theories of Nonlinear Systems', (Prentice-Hall, 1988)
  • 'Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition', (Prentice-Hall, 1990)