Outline 00:00 - Intro 02:30 - Did anyone know they were writing a classic? 11:07 - When course notes become a textbook 15:36 - Who is the reader? Monographs written for future researchers 20:23 - Students or professors? "Spread spectrum" writing 24:55 - The fourth audience: large language models 36:03 - The discipline of cutting 42:10 - Intellectual economy: the aesthetic and the utilitarian test 50:52 - Formalism versus clarity of thought 58:10 - What makes a book last? 61:39 - Free books and open access 64:13 - Audience questions 71:18 - Should young authors use AI? 73:09 - The classic of 2050: will it be a book at all? 77:00 - Outro
Links M. Vidyasagar's website: https://iith.ac.in/inst/m.vidyasagar/ Hassan Khalil's website: https://www.egr.msu.edu/~khalil/ Stephen Boyd's website: https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/ Desoer & Vidyasagar, Feedback Systems: Input-Output Properties: https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9780898719055 Vidyasagar, Nonlinear Systems Analysis: https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9780898719185 Vidyasagar, Learning and Generalization: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3748-1 Calafiore & Campi, "The scenario approach to robust control design": https://doi.org/10.1109/TAC.2006.875041 Khalil, Nonlinear Systems: https://www.egr.msu.edu/~khalil/NonlinearSystems/ Khalil, Nonlinear Control: https://www.egr.msu.edu/~khalil/NonlinearControl/ Khalil, Control Systems: An Introduction (free): https://control.eecs.umich.edu Kokotović, Khalil & O'Reilly, Singular Perturbation Methods in Control: https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9781611971118 Boyd, El Ghaoui, Feron & Balakrishnan, Linear Matrix Inequalities in System and Control Theory (free): https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/lmibook/ Boyd & Vandenberghe, Convex Optimization (free): https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/ Boyd & Vandenberghe, Introduction to Applied Linear Algebra (free): https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/vmls/ Boyd, Parikh, Chu, Peleato & Eckstein, "Distributed optimization and statistical learning via ADMM": https://doi.org/10.1561/2200000016 CVXPY: https://www.cvxpy.org/
This episode was recorded live on 24 August 2026 at the 23rd IFAC World Congress in Busan, Korea. Special thanks to the congress organizers for hosting the session, and to everyone in the room who participated by sending questions.
Acknowledgments and sponsors This episode was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research on «Dependable, ubiquitous automation» and the IFAC Activity fund. The podcast benefits from the help of an incredibly talented and passionate team. Special thanks to L. Seward, E. Cahard, F. Banis, F. Dörfler, J. Lygeros, ETH studio and mirrorlake . Music was composed by A New Element.
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