Project description: The intent of this reading course is to introduce the basic concepts and results of the boundary controllability theory for partial differential equations (PDEs), which have been extensively studied and developed during the past few decades. In particular, the course will focus on the exact boundary controllability for the wave equation or more general second-order hyperbolic type equations. Various methods based on analysis and PDE techniques, e.g., Fourier theory and energy estimates, will be introduced and discussed in detail.

Expected background: Students are expected to have taken courses in Real Analysis, preferably also Partial Differential Equations (but not required).

Project faculty:
Prof. Shitao Liu
Email: liul at clemson.edu (change "at" to "@")
Office hours: TBA
Bio: Shitao has been at Clemson University since 2013. He earned his BS degree from Nankai University in Tianjin, China, in 2006 and his PhD degree from the University of Virginia in 2011. Before joining Clemson, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Inverse Problems Research Group at the University of Helsinki in Finland from 2011 to 2013. His research is in control theory and inverse problems for partial differential equations.