Mohamed-Ali Belabbas

Postdoctoral Fellow in Applied Mathematics
Harvard University

Office:      
338 Maxwell Dworkin   Phone: (617) 495-7871
33 Oxford Street   Fax: (617) 496-6404
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA   Email:
Jump to: About me | Education | Teaching | Publications | Misc

About me

I am a Research Associate in applied mathematics at Harvard University and my current research interests are in control theory and nonlinear dynamics, computational methods in statistics and control, and theoretical neuroscience and computer vision. My academic employment history is as follows:

Lecturer -- Harvard University , Cambridge,  MA
 Spring 2011
Visiting Lecturer -- Yale University, New Haven,  CT
 Spring 2010
Research Associate -- Harvard University, Cambridge,  MA
 Nov. 2008 to Present
Visiting Fellow -- Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, UK
Spring 2008
Postdoctoral Fellow -- Harvard University, Cambridge,  MA
 Nov. 2006 to Nov. 2008
Research Assistant -- Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Sep. 2001 to Nov 2006

Education

I majored applied mathematics and engineering, and had a strong interest in computer science, statistics and theoretical neuroscience.

PhD in applied mathematics, Harvard University
 June 2003 - Nov. 2006
MSc in applied mathematics, Harvard University
 Sep. 2001 - June 2003
Ingénieur Centralien, École Centrale Paris
 June 2001
Ingénieur Civil Électricien, Université Catholique de Louvain
 June 2001

 

Teaching

I have taught following courses:

Publications

Please let me know if you have trouble getting any of them, and I will send you a copy via email.

  1. M.-A. Belabbas. Known unknowns, unknown unknowns and information flow: new concepts and challenges in decentralized control , Accepted for publication to ICCA 2011 (2011)
  2. M.-A. Belabbas. Mathematical aspects of decentralized control of formations in the plane , Accepted for publication to ICCA 2011 (2011)
  3. M.-A. Belabbas. On global feedback stabilization of formation control , Accepted for publication to CDC 2011 (2011)

  4. M.-A. Belabbas. Decentralized Formation Control Part II: Algebraic aspects of information flow and singularities, Preprint (2010)

  5. M.-A. Belabbas. Decentralized Formation Control Part I: Geometric Aspects, Preprint (2010)

  6. M.-A. Belabbas Geometric properties of formation control, Submitted for publication (2010)

  7. M.-A. Belabbas, J.-J. Slotine Factorizations and partial contraction of nonlinear systems, Accepted for publication (2010)

  8. M.-A. Belabbas. Spectral clustering for multiclass Erdos-Renyi graphs, Accepted for publication (2010)

  9. M.-A. Belabbas. Networks of hamiltonian systems and feedback, Systems & Control Letters 58 (2009), pp. 217-224

  10. M.-A. Belabbas and P. J. Wolfe. Spectral methods in machine learning: New strategies for very large datasets, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 2009 106:369-374

  11. M.-A. Belabbas. Gradient flows on Kac-Moody algebras and the periodic Toda lattice, in Communications in Information and Systems, 8 (2008),pp. 107--126. Special Issue on the Legacy of R. Brockett.

  12. M.-A. Belabbas and P. J. Wolfe.On landmark selection and sampling in high-dimensional data analysis, in Philosophical Transactions, Series A, of the Royal Society 367 (2009), 4295-4312

  13. M.-A. Belabbas and P. J. Wolfe. On the approximation of matrix products and positive definite matrices, to be submitted to Linear Algebra and its Applications, 2008. Preprint available.

  14. M.-A. Belabbas and P. J Wolfe. On sparse representations of linear operators and the approximation of matrix products, In Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, pages 258-263, 2008.

  15. M.-A. Belabbas and P. J. Wolfe. Fast low-rank approximation for covariance matrices, In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing, pages 293-296, 2007.

  16. M.-A. Belabbas and R.W. Brockett. Input-output hamiltonian systems and neural signal processing, In Proceedings of the 45th IEEE Conference onthe Decision and Control, pages 3351-3356, 2006.

  17. M.-A. Belabbas. Hamiltonian Systems for Computation, 2006, PhD Thesis, Harvard University

  18. M.-A. Belabbas. Joint Channel Estimation and Equalization for Convolutional Turbo- Codes, 2001, UCLouvain/Auto Technical report (in French)
An incomplete list of soon to be submitted papers:
  1. M.-A. Belabbas. Non-commutative leaky integrate and fire models, 2009. To be submitted.

  2. M.-A. Belabbas. Inputs, outputs and integrable systems, 2009. Working paper.

  3. M.-A. Belabbas. On optimal linear observers, 2009. Working paper.

  4. M.-A. Belabbas. A new algebraic model for subitization, 2009. Working paper.
An expository paper I wrote a while ago about the Lefschetz fixed point theorem and its applications, it may be of interest to some:

Miscellanea