Trond
Andresen
Trond Andresen (born
1947) has a Master's degree (1973) in control
engineering from The Norwegian Institute of
Technology in Trondheim, Norway (in 1996 renamed
The Norwegian University of Science and
Technology [NTNU]), and is a lecturer there
since 1982 (tenure since 1984) teaching control
systems -- in earlier years mostly discrete
control, signals and systems theory, stochastic
processes.
In the period 1973-1980, he held several
occupations, among them research assistant at
the university, and electrician in a
shipbuilding plant.
He led a hybrid vehicle demonstration project
1990 - 1991 (funded by SINTEF, see below), where
a Renault Espace was equipped with a parallel
hybrid drive system: compressed natural-gas as
fuel for the combustion engine and battery power
for the electric motor. He has written
and lectured on the topic of electric vehicles
on many occasions. He has earlier guided student
projects involving the Norwegian-produced
electric vehicle "Think" (sadly, the firm went
bankrupt and production was discontinued in
2011).
Trond is the Norwegian
contact and promoter for the SkyTran
personal rapid transit project:
automatically guided magnetically levitated
modules for urban and intercity transport of
people (and goods).
He has also lectured and written on diverse
topics like application of systems theory to
society, national industrial policy, commercial
vs public service media, modern means of
traffic reduction in cities, long-term
future scenarios, alternative trade and
industrial policy. An important research
interest for him is modeling of social,
political and economic processes with tools from
control and systems theory. In later years
he has been especially interested in the dynamics
of finance, money and debt (this page contains selected
papers in inverse chronological order).
In the autumn semester of 2008 he started a new
course in (the discipline that for control
engineers is somewhat confusingly called) System
Dynamics. This comes in addition to his
spring semester course in Control
Systems, which he has given since 1995.
Trond has had three
one-year sabbaticals, both in Australia. He
stayed in Sydney in 1997-1998, working with Dr.
Steve Keen at the University of Western Sydney
on monetary macroeconomic modeling. The next
sabbatical was in 2003-2004 at the School of
Policy, Faculty of Business and Law, at the
University of Newcastle, cooperating also with
Dr. Steve Keen at the UWS, lately Kingston
university, London. His
last sabbatical 2010 - 2011, was also in Newcastle. Dr.
Keen has visited Trond at his department at NTNU
for several shorter stays over the years.
In the
autumn of 2012 Trond
went to Quito, Ecuador, for a two-week stay
advising and discussing about electronic
parallel money with SENPLADES, the
government department for planning and
development. Electronic parallel
monetary systems is his current (2013 -
2017) main research interest. Trond has visited and
lectured in Quito on other occasions,
most recently in October 2016.
In 2006 he
was awarded the 'SINTEF' prize for excellence
in teaching. (The prize is awarded
annually to one of the approximately 1400
teachers at the NTNU. SINTEF,
with 2000 employeees, is Scandinavia's largest
technological research establishment, and is
co-located and cooperates with the NTNU.) Before
that he received the "Teacher of the year" 2005
prize at the university's Faculty of Information
Technology, Mathematics and Electrical
Engineering. In April 2013 he
received a student prize for his teaching in
control systems.
Trond was in 1999 - 2001 an elected
academic representative on the board
of the NTNU.
Beside his academic occupation he has also
worked as a journalist. He was the founder, and
also free-time editor/reporter from 1982 to
1996, of a non-commercial FM radio station in
the city of Trondheim (approx. 150 000
inhabitants). He has also free-lanced in-between
as a radio reporter for the NRK (the public
service Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) in
the areas news/current affairs, science,
technology, economy, politics, culture. Trond is
well versed in microphones, acoustics, recording
and editing. He gave courses on these topics
during his radio period.
He has used most of his life (besides university
work) for political activism and journalism,
writing in and for (mostly Norwegian) journals
and newspapers, doing radio programs or being
interviewed, debating in different societies,
and since 1992 also writing and debating on the
Internet.
Trond is married for the second time. He has two
adult daughters from the first marriage, and two
boys from the second (born in 2002 and 2005).
He is enjoys bicycling, on recumbent bicycles.
Click on any thumbnail
to see a larger version. |
I am a lecturer in Control
Engineering at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology. |
Pedaling my recumbent along the river
Nid in Trondheim, Norway. |