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Former PhD student Yiming Meng, now an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), and Professor Jun Liu have received the 2026 Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems Paper Prize.

The prize recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of hybrid systems published in the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) journal Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems. At each IFAC World Congress, the prize is awarded to the authors of two selected papers published in the journal during the preceding three years.

Meng and Liu received the award for their paper, “Lyapunov-barrier characterization of robust reach–avoid–stay specifications for hybrid systems”, published in Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems in 2023. The award will be presented during the Closing Ceremony of the 23rd IFAC World Congress, to be held August 23–28, 2026, in Busan, Republic of Korea.

This is Professor Liu's second Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems Paper Prize. He and University of Michigan Professor Necmiye Ozay received the same award in 2017 for their paper “Finite abstractions with robustness margins for temporal logic-based control synthesis.” 

Ruikun Zhou, who recently completed the PhD program in Applied Math, received a Faculty of Mathematics Graduate Research Excellence Award for the paper, Resolvent-Type Data-Driven Learning of Generators for Unknown Continuous-Time Dynamical Systems, published with supervisor Prof. Jun Liu in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. This research develops a new data-driven framework for learning the fundamental operators that govern nonlinear dynamical systems directly from trajectory data, enabling model-based prediction, analysis, and control even for uncertain system.

Congratulations to all Applied Mathematics graduates who walked the stage at Spring 2026 convocation!