Abstract: A controller for controlling an internal combustion engine of a vehicle is disclosed. The controller includes at least one real-time dynamic computational model of at least a part of the internal combustion engine, at least one offline optimized set-point as a first input to the computational model, at least one physical engine sensor input as a second input to the computational model, and a real-time optimizer configured to adjust at least one engine control signal on the basis of at least one output of the computational model in such a way that a deviation from a set-point is at least decreased.