astronomy

Vincent Blondel

Vincent Blondel is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Vincent Blondel rather than just read about it. In short: Vincent Daniel Blondel (born 28 April 1965) is a Belgian professor of applied mathematics and former rector of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) and a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Blondel's research lies in the area of mathematical control theory and theoretical computer science.

Key takeaways

Vincent Blondel belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Vincent Blondel to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Vincent Blondel from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Vincent Daniel Blondel (born 28 April 1965) is a Belgian professor of applied mathematics and former rector of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) and a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Blondel's research lies in the area of mathematical control theory and theoretical computer science. He is mostly known for his contributions in computational complexity in control, multi-agent coordination and complex networks.

Education Blondel studied philosophy, mathematics, engineering and computer science in Louvain-la-Neuve, Grenoble, London and Oxford. He completed a master thesis in engineering at the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, he holds a MSc in mathematics from Imperial College of Science and Technology and a degree in philosophy, a master's degree in engineering (summa cum laude) and a PhD in applied mathematics from Université catholique de Louvain.

Career In 1993-1994 he was a Göran Gustafsson Fellow at the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm) and in 1994-1995 he was a Research Fellow at the National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) in Paris. From 1995 to 1999 he was an assistant professor at the Institute of Mathematics of the Université de Liège before joining the Louvain School of Engineering of UCLouvain where he has been since then. He was a research visitor with the Australian National University, the University of California at Berkeley, the Santa Fe Institute, the Mittag-Leffler Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Harvard University. He was a visiting professor of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure in Lyon in 1998 and at the Université Paris VII - Diderot in 1999, 2000 and 2002. In 2005-2006 he was a visiting professor and a Fulbright scholar with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2010-2011 he was a visiting professor with the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Blondel is a former associate editor of the European Journal of Control (Springer) and of Systems and Control Letters (Elsevier). He is an editor of the journal Mathematics of Control, Signals, and Systems He has published about 100 journal articles and 6 books. At UCLouvain, Blondel has founded the Group on Large Graphs and Networks. He has supervised 20 doctoral and postdoctoral researchers and 15 visiting professors. He was department head in 2003-2010 and a university president candidate in 2009. In 2013, Blondel has become the dean of the Louvain School of Engineering. He was elected the Rector of the University of Louvain for the term 2014-2019, and reelected again in 2019 until 2024.

Honors and awards Awarded the IEEE Control Systems Society Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize in 2006 "For fundamental contributions to control theory, especially stabilization, computational complexity issues, and decidability". Named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2013 for his contributions to computational analysis of systems and networks.

Teaching In 2012, he is in charge of the following courses at UCLouvain :

LINMA 1691 : Discrete mathematics I : Graphs algorithmics and theory LINMA 1702 : Optimisation Models and Methods LINMA 2111 : Discrete mathematics II: Algorithms and complexity LINMA 2120 : System theory seminar LINMA 2472 : Special questions about discrete mathematics. The last course is following the online course of M. Chiang from Princeton University : "20Q about networks : Friends, Money and Bytes"

References

External links Home Page UCLouvain Page Mathematics Genealogy Project profile Large Graphs and Networks research group (at UCLouvain) Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (at MIT)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Vincent Blondel

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Vincent Blondel claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Vincent Blondel before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Vincent Blondel ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Vincent Blondel

In research: Vincent Blondel appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Vincent Blondel in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Vincent Blondel is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1965 births, 21st-century Belgian engineers, Academic staff of the Université catholique de Louvain, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Vincent Blondel outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Vincent Blondel” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Vincent Blondel in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Vincent Blondel means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Vincent Blondel out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Vincent Blondel in simple terms?

Why does Vincent Blondel matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Vincent Blondel?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Vincent Blondel.