We don't need no education We don't need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave the kids alone Hey teachers leave the kids alone All in all it's just another brick in the wall (c)
Within education I am involved in object oriented techniques.
Theory has been developed about cooperation of such systems. Especially, questions about controlling DESs can be answered. Controllers can be computed to get a controlled system that act as prescribed and/or to avoid ending in deadlock.
DESs play an important role in many applications, like flexible manufacturing systems, computer networks, communication and protocol design, VLSI design and traffic systems.
For general information about Discrete Event Systems: a general DES document is available, containing a complete DES-bibliography, a list of DES-researchers, and a list of DES-workshops and DES-conferences. Also, the IEEE Working Group on Discrete Event Systems has a WWW-document available.
This research has resulted in a PH.D.thesis [Sme04] and a couple of publications (most important ones: [SpSm] [SSR] [Sme19] [Sme17] [Sme16] [Sme15] [Sme10] [Sme09] [Sme06]).
A first workshop on the field has been organized together with Petr Kozák (Institute of Information Theory and Automation, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague) in August 1992 in Prague [WODES92] and a second workshop has been organisated in 1996 in Edinburgh, Scotland, see [WODES96]. A third is organized in Cagliari, see [WODES98] and a next one in Gent, Belgium, see WODES2000. During WODES2000 and the conference in Spain in 2002, I was a member of the WODES-steering group.
I have cooperated with Michael Spathopoulos (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK). In the period 1994-1999, joint research is done in the fields of decentralized and distributed controllers for discrete event systems, using hierarchical and distributed structures and study on how this theory can be applied in control problems for flexible manufacturing and traffic systems.
Within the framework of Research Networks, Training and Mobility of Researchers, a programme of the European Commission, Directorate General XII, the ALAPEDES project has started in october 1996 and was finished in 2001.
Another field of research is simulation, especially simulation tools [Sme03]. More on simulation can be found in, e.g., the Simulation Digest Archives.