Trond Andresen
Trond Andresen 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 in later years 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. He is especially interested in the dynamics of finance, money and debt. 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 two 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 with Dr. James Juniper there, and also with Steve Keen at the UWS. Dr. Keen and Dr. Juniper have visited Trond at his department at NTNU for several shorter stays over the last years.
Trond was in 1999 - 2001 an elected academic representative on the board of the NTNU.
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
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. Trond is well versed in microphones, acoustics, recording and editing (technology), and 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. He also runs some net forums.
Trond is married for the second time. He has two adult daughters from the first marriage, and two small boys from the second (born in 2002 and 2005).
He is enjoys bicycling, but on recumbent bicycles. He has two of those (of the German make HP Velotechnik).
