Selected papers
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Y. Watanabe, F.-Y. Liao, and Y. Zheng, “Policy Optimization in Robust Control: Weak Convexity and Subgradient Methods”, American Control Conference 2026. [arXiv] [Slides] (Best Student Paper Award Finalist)
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Y. Watanabe and Y. Zheng, “Revisiting strong duality, hidden convexity, and gradient dominance in the linear quadratic regulator”, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 2026 (to appear). [arXiv] [Slides] [Follow-up]
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Y. Watanabe, S. Fushimi, and K. Sakurama, “Convex Reformulation of LMI-Based Distributed Controller Design with a Class of Non-Block-Diagonal Lyapunov Functions,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2026. [URL] [arXiv]
Preprints
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Y. Watanabe and Y. Zheng, “On the Strong Duality in Continuous-time and Discrete-time Linear Quadratic Regulators.” submitted to IEEE Control Systems Letters (CDC).
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Y. Watanabe and Y. Zheng, “Gradient Dominance in the Linear Quadratic Regulator: A Unified Analysis for Continuous-Time and Discrete-Time Systems.” [arXiv] [Slides]
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C.-F. Pai, Y. Watanabe, Y. Tang, and Y. Zheng, “Policy Optimization for Mixed H2/H-infinity Control: Benign Nonconvexity and Global Optimality”, submitted to Automatica. [arXiv]
Peer-reviewed journal papers
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Y. Watanabe and Y. Zheng, “Revisiting strong duality, hidden convexity, and gradient dominance in the linear quadratic regulator”, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 2026 (accepted). [arXiv]
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Y. Watanabe, S. Fushimi, and K. Sakurama, “Convex Reformulation of LMI-Based Distributed Controller Design with a Class of Non-Block-Diagonal Lyapunov Functions,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2026 (accepted). [arXiv]
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Y. Watanabe and K. Sakurama, “Distributed Optimization of Clique-Wise Coupled Problems via Three-Operator Splitting.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2026 (accepted). [arXiv]
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S. Fushimi, Y. Watanabe, and K. Sakurama, “Distributed Controller Design for Discrete-Time Systems Via the Integration of Extended LMI and Clique-Wise Decomposition”, IEEE Control Systems Letters (ACC), 2024 (accepted). [arxiv]
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Y. Watanabe, K. Sakurama, H.-S. Ahn, “Gradient-Based Distributed Controller Design Over Directed Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, 2024. [url] [arXiv]
Peer-reviewed conference papers
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Y. Watanabe, F.-Y. Liao, and Y. Zheng, “Policy Optimization in Robust Control: Weak Convexity and Subgradient Methods”, American Control Conference 2026 (accepted). [arXiv] [Slides]
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Y. Watanabe, C.-F. Pai, and Y. Zheng, “Semidefinite programming duality in infinite-horizon linear quadratic games,” the 64th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2025. [arXiv] [slides]
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Y. Watanabe and K. Sakurama, “Distributed optimization of clique-wise coupled problems,” the 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Singapore, 2023. [arXiv]
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Y. Watanabe and K. Sakurama, “Accelerated distributed projected gradient descent for convex optimization with clique-wise coupled constraints,” the 22nd IFAC World Congress, Yokohama, Japan, 2023. [arXiv] [slide]
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Y. Watanabe and K. Sakurama, “Distributed dynamic matching of two groups of agents with different sensing ranges,” the 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Cancun, Mexico, 2022, pp. 5916–5921. [url] [slide]