Dr. Leila Bridgeman

Biography

Leila Bridgeman joined Duke University as an assistant professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science on January 1, 2018. She obtained her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Applied Mathematics from McGill University, Montreal, in 2008 and 2010, respectively. In 2016, she completed her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, with research focused on advancing foundational work by George Zames, particularly in designing controllers that ensure closed-loop input-output stability where conventional methods fail. During her graduate studies, she conducted research at the University of Michigan, University of Bern, and University of Victoria, and completed an internship at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Boston. Her research aims to bridge the gap between theoretical results in robust optimal control and practical applications, employing numerical analysis techniques to address challenges in control, especially for delayed systems and nonminimum-phase systems. Bridgeman's work has applications in robotics and process control, particularly in model predictive control (MPC) within networked systems and vehicle control. She actively collaborates with colleagues at MERL to explore novel applications of MPC in various domains.

Research Interests