Held in Eindhoven, Netherlands, IFAC AAC 2025, opens an external URL in a new window brought together leading scientists, engineers, and industry representatives from around the world. Renowned for its scientific rigor and practical relevance, the symposium serves as a major platform for shaping the future of automotive control and mobility technologies.
Johanna Bartlechners winning paper, “Health-conscious MPC for PEM fuel cells considering main degradation mechanisms of cathode catalyst”, stood out for its innovative contribution to fuel cell system control – a field that plays a central role in the future of sustainable mobility. The research was carried out in close collaboration with the industry partner AVL List GmbH, ensuring strong relevance to real-world applications. Her research focuses on novel control strategies and the development of soft sensors designed to extend the lifetime of fuel cell systems during highly dynamic operation.

Fuel cell control and the challenge of degradation

PEM fuel cells convert hydrogen into electricity while only emitting water. They are a key technology for clean and efficient electric vehicles – especially for long-range and heavy-duty application. However, they face a critical challenge: maintaining durability under the dynamic and often harsh conditions of real-world driving. Power fluctuations and rapid load changes accelerate wear on key components like the cathode catalyst, limiting system lifetime.

Traditional control strategies often focus on efficiency or performance and fall short when it comes to protecting the health of the system over time. Johanna Bartlechner’s research breaks new ground by developing a health-conscious model predictive control (MPC) framework that actively integrates degradation effects into the control logic. Via multi-objective optimization, the developed strategy finds the optimal tradeoff between efficiency, safety and longevity of the fuel cell system.

The award-winning work builds on an earlier research result: a novel observer that enables a virtual glance inside the fuel cell system. As fuel cells are complex and sealed systems, direct measurement of conditions inside the cell – like the health of components – is not possible during dynamic operation. Johanna Bartlechner developed a software-based solution that uses physical-based models and sensor data to estimate the condition of multiple critical components in real time – a challenge that has long drawn interest from both academia and industry.

Johanna Bartlechner conducts her research within a team at the Institute of Mechanics and Mechatronics that specializes in advanced control strategies for emission-free propulsion systems. The group led by Professor Stefan Jakubek and Professor Christoph Hametner develops innovative control approaches across all system levels with a strong focus on real-world applicability and innovation.

“This award is a well-deserved recognition of Johanna’s outstanding work,” said Professor Stefan Jakubek. “Her research is not only academically excellent but also addresses key practical challenges on the path to cleaner, more efficient transport systems.”

More Information

• Control and Monitoring of Fuel Cells at E325
• Bartlechner, Johanna, Martin Vrlić, Christoph Hametner, and Stefan Jakubek. "State-of-Health observer for PEM fuel cells—A novel approach for real-time online analysis." International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2024).
• Bartlechner, Johanna, Christoph Hametner, and Stefan Jakubek. “Health-conscious MPC for PEM fuel cells considering main degradation mechanisms of cathode catalyst.” Proceedings of the 11th IFAC Symposium on Advances in Automotive Control, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2025).