| Arjan van der Schaft | |
| Caption: | Arjan van der Schaft |
| Nationality: | Dutch |
| Fields: | Systems and Control Theory |
| Workplaces: | University of Groningen |
| Alma Mater: | RuG |
| Thesis Title: | System theoretic descriptions of physical systems |
| Thesis Year: | 1983 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Jan Camiel Willems |
| Doctoral Students: | Jacquelien Scherpen |
| Known For: | contributions to Port-Hamiltonian systems, passivity-based control, and hybrid systems |
| Awards: | Fellow of IEEE |
Abraham Jan (Arjan) van der Schaft (born 1955) is emeritus professor of systems and control theory at the Bernoulli Institute of Mathematics Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen. He is notable for his contributions to network modelling and control of complex physical systems, specifically in the areas of Port-Hamiltonian systems, passivity-based control,[1] nonlinear H∞ control, hybrid systems, and port-thermodynamical systems. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Arjan van der Schaft received the undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, in 1979 and 1983, respectively. In 1982 he joined the Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Twente, Enschede, where he was appointed as a full professor in Mathematical Systems and Control Theory in 2000. In September 2005 he returned to Groningen as a full professor in Mathematics. As of June 2021, he became emeritus professor at the same university.
In 2006 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid.[2]
Van der Schaft has served as Associate Editor for Systems & Control Letters, Journal of Nonlinear Science, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, and the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. Currently he is Associate Editor for the Journal of Geometric Mechanics, and Editor-at-Large for the European Journal of Control.