Martin Berg - Associate Professor

Quick Links: Selected Publications

Stanford University (PhD 1986)
Systems, Dynamics and Design

Contact Information

Office: MEB 311
Phone: 206-543-5288
Fax: 206-685-8047
Email: berg@u.washington.edu

Biography

My principal technical area of interest is control system design. To be effective as a control system designer, one needs a solid background in dynamic system modeling and analysis and parameter identification, so I have strong interests in these areas as well.

My teaching responsibilities principally involve, at the undergraduate level, our introductory systems modeling and analysis sequence (ME 373 and 374) and our introductory control system design course (ME 471). At the graduate level, I regularly teach our digital control system design sequence (ME/AA/EE 581 and 582), our nonlinear control systems course (ME/EE 583), and I have taught our linear systems theory course (ME 575/EE 584) frequently in the past. I am also one of the principal coordinators for our robotics, controls and mechatronics colloquium series (ME/AA/ChemE/EE 591).

Research-wise, I am principally interested in control system design applied to real problems. I have no particular bent toward any particular application area. That the principles of control system design are applicable to so many different engineering and non-engineering areas is one of the things that makes it so interesting to me.

It is important to me that my research activities be directed toward the solution of real problems. There are several reasons for this:

To the extent that my research activities contribute to the solution of real problems, I can expect those who benefit from it to help support it.
In application areas such as manufacturing, I believe that I can contribute to the solution of real problems in ways that make it cost-effective for those who benefit from it to fully support it.
The graduate students whom I support under the umbrella of my research activities gain experiences at solving real problems that give them a tremendous leg up when the time comes for them to go after real jobs.
I am convinced that there are many real-world problems out there, the solution of which involves subject matter that is the right stuff for university MS- and PhD-level research, and which can be most cost-effectively solved by teams that include members from industry and members (faculty and graduate students) from academia.
I strongly believe that the experiences I have gained tackling real problems in my research work have made me much more effective as a teacher in the undergraduate and graduate courses that I teach during the Autumn, Winter and Spring Quarters of every academic year.

My current research activities involve principally two projects (1) end-effector position control for industrial robots and machine tools using real-time measurements of end-effector position and (2) the design and development of a robotically automated system to assist with the collection of protein crystallography data.