Niklas Schmid

Ph.D. Student 

Automatic Control Laboratory (IfA), ETH Zürich 

Supervisors: Prof. John Lygeros, Prof. Tobias Sutter


Contact: nikschmid@ethz.ch

 Physikstrasse 3, ETL K12, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland

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Summary

I am a Ph.D. student at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich under the supervision of Professor John Lygeros and Professor Tobias Sutter. My research focuses on the control of stochastic systems under safety constraints, which includes the analysis of reachability, invariance, and chance-constrained optimal control problems. Therefore, I utilize tools from dynamic programming and convex optimization

News

Biography

2025

Research visit at REALM, MIT (Cambridge, USA); Visiting Professor Chuchu Fan's group to work on stochastic control hierarchies

Since Nov 2021

Ph.D. at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich (Zürich, Switzerland); Supervisors: Prof. John Lygeros, Prof. Tobias Sutter

2020 - 2021

Internship at Olympus Surgical Technologies Europe (Berlin, Germany); Control of electrosurgical generators and modelling of tissue impedance

2019 - 2021

M.Sc. in Medical Engineering Science at University of Lübeck, (Lübeck, Germany); Thesis: Gaussian Process based MPC of Tethered Quadcopters

2016 - 2019

B.Sc. in Medical Engineering Science at University of Lübeck, (Lübeck, Germany); Thesis: Cooperative Localization of Quadcopters using Factor Graphs


Publications


All of my publications are available as open-access on Arxiv!

Preprint


Journal


Conference

Teaching

Teaching has a high priority for me. I believe that it is our responsibility to share our fascination and knowledge to inspire future generations of students in the same way that it has been shared with us. 

Courses


Student Projects

I usually have several open student projects available. Feel free to contact me at any time if you are looking for a Bachelor-, Semester-, or Master-project based around control theory and hands-on applications.

Completed Thesis Projects:

Name Title Type Year Co-Supervisors

Salma Elfeki High-Performance MPC Controllers Under Environmental Changes MT 2025 Riccardo Zuliani

Rye Gleason Optimal Crop Fertilization Control Strategies and Verification MT 2025 Kevin Wallington

Tristan Zeller Joint Chance Constrained Reinforcement Learning SP 2025 Marta Fochesato

Daniel Böhler Iterative Learning Control for Plants in Controlled Environments SP 2025 Kevin Wallington

Jair Reyes Optimal Control of Plants in Controlled Environments SP 2025 Kevin Wallington

Nicola Scagnetti Design and Control of a Hydroponics System MT 2025

Jonathan Hilberg Model Free Joint Chance Constrained Optimal Control MT 2024 Marta Fochesato

Andrey Kharitenko Robust Covariance Steering MT 2024 Marta Fochesato, Anastasios Tsiamis

Simon Dreher Redesign of an Hydroponics System SP 2024

Ariel Bergmann Control of an Inverted Pendulum BT 2024

Alexander Kaspar Meta-Learning Model Predictive Control for the Ball-On-A-Plate System SP 2024 Jiaqi Yan, Riccardo Zuliani

Mirco Vandeventer Meta-Learning Reinforcement Learning for the Ball-On-A-Plate System SP 2024 Jiaqi Yan

Simon Frölich Hardware Reconfiguration and Control of the Ball-On-A-Plate System BT 2024

Gian-Andrin Coolen Hydroponics - Mechanics BT 2024

Oscar Kläsi Hydroponics - Electronics BT 2024

Leo Noth Hydroponics - Sensing and Control BT 2024

Daniel Böhler* Hydroponics - Software Design and Control BT 2024

Alexander Kaspar MPC of the Mounted-Helicopter Experiment BT 2023

Elias Bai Improved Reinforcement Learning Control of the Ball-On-A-Plate System BT 2023

Joram Ebinger LQR and Reinforcement Learning Control of a Ball-On-A-Plate System BT 2023

Gentrit Gashi Water-Level Sensing for the Quad-Tank Experiment BT 2023

BT: Bachelor Thesis, SP: Semester Project, MT: Master Thesis.

*Awarded Best Bachelor Thesis 2024 by the Swiss Control Association (Schweizer Gesellschaft für Automatik).

Grants & Funding