IEEE Control Systems Award

IEEE President-Elect Howard Michel, 

CSS President Jay Farrell and CSS Officers, 

Dear Colleagues, 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good evening!

It’s a great honor for me to receive this major recognition from the IEEE in the control systems field. I thank the IEEE, I thank those who were involved in the nomination process and in the selection process, and I thank the broader Control Systems community where I have always found a warm home and a friendly, conducive environment.

It is particularly meaningful to me to receive this award at this particular CDC. The veryfirst CDC I attended was 44 years ago, in 1971, in Miami Beach, exactly to the date (15-17 December), where I presented a paper as a student in a session titled “Min-Max, Game Theory and Applications”. Certain things don’t change (as this year, at this conference, one could easily have a session titled likewise, possibly more refined; and in fact there are several). But on other fronts things have changed dramatically in 40 plus years. The 1971 CDC was a much smaller scale meeting (only 4 or 5 tracks, 2 sessions in each track per day, as opposed to 20-22 tracks here, with 3 sessions in each per day, translating into 8-9-fold increase in the number of papers in the program). It pleases me immensely to see this growth in the control community, in numbers as well as in terms of enrichment of topical areas, and I have enjoyed witnessing this growth and excitement over the years, wearing different hats, as author, as advisor, as conference organizer, as society president, and as journal editor.

In these speeches, it has been traditional for the awardee to talk a bit about the journey he or she has taken over the years in this scientific wonderland, and I dare not abandon that tradition. My journey started in a German hospital in Istanbul on a cold January morning, to the delight (I was told later) of a mother who was a chemical engineer and a father who was an accountant. Fast-forwarding 10 or so years, my parents enrolled me in a British school in Istanbul, where I had my middle school as well as high school education, and where most of my teachers were from Scotland. Following high school, it was a natural path for me to take to enter an American College, again in Istanbul (Robert College, now called Boğaziçi University), where I pursued electrical engineering, and switched from Scottish to American accent, or a blend of the two! Robert College had a rigorous, high quality education system (and still does as Boğaziçi University), which prepared me well for post-graduate education (MS and Ph.D.), which I pursued at Yale, in Engineering and Applied Science (at that time it was a single department with that name, providing a multidisciplinary curriculum; later it split into 4, one of which is electrical engineering). There, I was fortunate to have a wonderful mentor and advisor, Max Mintz (who is now on the faculty of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania), who introduced me to the fascinating worlds of statistical decision theory, minimax estimation and control, and zero-sum stochastic games. I was also fortunate to meet (among many others) Leonard Savage, one of the founders of statistical decision theory, who served as a member of my thesis committee (until his untimely death just a couple of months before my final defense).

Now, this brings me back to December 1971 in the timeline, when I was in the final stages of my Ph.D. research, and made that trip to Miami Beach, to present some results from my thesis. Another purpose of the trip was to meet with Larry Ho (an earlier recipient of this award), who was working at the time (among other topics) on information structures and team decision theory, which interested me a lot (and still does!), but more relevant was the fact that he had an opening for a Research Fellow position at Harvard. I had an engaging breakfast conversation with Larry, the day after he had presented his award-winning 2-part paper (with K.C. Chu) on dynamic stochastic teams. I received an offer the following week, and moved to Harvard at the end of February 1972.

My stay at Harvard added another dimension to my research interests, expanding fromzero-sum to nonzero-sum dynamic games—an area that was still in its infancy at the time. I left Harvard after 18 months with more questions than answers—questions that seemed to be esoteric at the time, mostly curiosity-driven (at least for me, and a few other people)—now fast-forwarding 30 years, the same questions and the answers obtained in the intervening years became fundamental building blocks of networking research, with real applications in internet communications, distributed control, multi-agent systems, cyber-physical systems, social networks, and the smart grid, to list just a few.

After leaving Harvard, I went back to Turkey, and by sheer luck landed at a newly established (by the National Research Council of Turkey) research institute--Marmara Research Institute (MRI)--on the outskirts of Istanbul on the Asian side, overlooking the Izmit bay, right across from what used to be an American base (which no longer exists). The Institute provided an excellent research environment with a rich library (no electronic copies at the time!) where I was able to concentrate on research, and work on those curiosity-driven questions.  It was one of my most productive periods, with no interruption, in a serene environment. We hear about those novelists who have to camp out in seclusion, in order to be creative and focus on their projects – I liken my initial years at MRI to that.  Now while at the Institute, something more wonderful happened—I met my future wife Tangül, also an Electrical Engineer, who was pursuing there a Ph.D.  in communications. I am grateful to her for being my partner in life, and for sharing my ideals, and for her sacrifices. We have grown a family over the years, with two daughters, Gözen and Elif, both engineers and married, and three grandchildren, Altan, Koray and Eren.

 Now, going back to the timeline, in 1980 came along a wonderful opportunity to move from Istanbul to Illinois; for various reasons (some being political) it was the right time to make the move. Behind the creation of this opportunity was the trio that was responsible for putting Illinois at the top of the academic world in control: Petar Kokotović (who himself is a previous winner of this award), Joe Cruz and Bill Perkins (both of whom have served as presidents of CSS).  Coming from a 3-dimensional world to a 2-dimensional one required some adjustment, but a quick one because what we discovered was that the Urbana-Champaign campus was an oasis in the middle of cornfields. We found sincere friendship in the community, wonderful colleagues, an intellectual and culturally rich atmosphere on campus, a stimulating teaching environment at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and an exemplary infectious research environment at the Coordinated Science Laboratory with its top quality graduate students and very supportive staff. I find myself fortunate to have spent the prime years of my academic life in such an environment. It is difficult to believe that we have been at one place for the last 35 years (except for two wonderful year-long sabbaticals in France).

Even though there has been no change of venue for us during those 35 years, a lot has happened (for me) during that time—writing several books, entering new fields and topical areas, starting new collaborations, etc. Over these years, many students, post-docs, and colleagues I had the privilege of collaborating with, have been instrumental in propelling and shaping my research. I thank them all (too many to name here, given the limited time). I thank them for the memorable journeys in exploring the frontiers in control science and technology, and in placing control as a core discipline within a broader and richer landscape of scientific enquiry.

In addition to talking about the personal journey, it has also been traditional in these speeches to share with the younger generation some words of “wisdom”. Following that tradition, here comes my message to relatively new entrants to the field (and I see that there are many of you here in the audience): In spite of the pressure and incentives to think and deliver short-term in response to funding opportunities and promotion concerns, always maintain a balance between short-term and long-term projects, where the latter may not lead to an immediate payoff, but if picked and planned judiciously the payoff down the road could be worth all the effort and the short-term anxiety. Have a balanced portfolio in research, and think of it as an investment for the future, with benefits to be reaped many years down the road.

Before concluding, I want to say again how honored I feel for being recognized with thisprestigious award, and I thank you all for sharing with me this joyous occasion. And with less than two fortnights to go, I wish you all the best for 2015.

16 December 2014, 19:00 hrs

Los Angeles, CA

Ladies and gentlemen, I am deeply honored to be the recipient of the 2012 IEEE Control Systems Award. It is not easy to express in a few words emotion and gratitude for having been considered for such prestigious Award. Thus, following the tradition, I shall share with you a few personal recollections and experiences. 

I graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1965. At that time, the higher-education system in Italy was still very much “old fashioned”. The positive side of this was that we received a deep training in basic sciences, notably mathematics (and this eventually gave me a substantial advantage in my career), while the negative side of this was that there was no such a thing as a PhD program. As a student, I was fascinated by systems and control ideas that were taught by the person who guided my research activity at the very beginning, Antonio Ruberti. These were the times that many people have subsequently dubbed “the times of the big bang”: concepts such as controllability, observability, optimal control, state estimation were driving the evolution of the field and Ruberti’s teaching, in this respect, was timely and captivating. 

Intimately related to the concepts of controllability and observability is the concept of minimality and this, in the mid 1960’s, was a rather popular topic. Methods for finding minimal realizations of a transfer function matrix were mushrooming. Extending the concepts of minimal realization to broader classes of systems soon became a challenge for various researchers. Algebra seemed to be the natural tool to address these problems and, with limited use of linear-algebraic tools, I was luck enough to address the problem of finding minimal bilinear realizations in discrete-time. This attracted the attention of Rudy Kalman, who invited me to Gainesville in 1974. It was there that I met Eduardo Sontag and Yutaka Yamamoto, who since then became for me sources of intellectual input. 

At the turn of the decade, the geometric approach to analysis and design of multivariable systems, developed by Murray Wonham and Steve Morse, provided a full set of conceptual tools answering the fundamental question “what can be achieved by means of feedback ?”

The 1970’s were the times at which another “bang” occurred: the introduction of differential-geometric methods in the analysis of nonlinear control systems. I like – plagiarizing Cronin – to refer to this decade as to the “green years” of nonlinear control. While the previous decade witnessed enormous progresses in linear system design, the “green years” of nonlinear control witnessed a collective effort of trying to establish an equivalent corpus of theories and results for nonlinear systems. Between 1970 and 1975, a rapid succession of papers broke the ground: Claude Lobry, Henry Hermes, Bob Hermann, Hector Sussmann, Velimir Jurdjevic, Roger Brockett, Art Krener were the leading actors. A new area of research was emerging. These leading actors and a small handful of followers used to meet here and there around the world to compare ideas, almost once per year, at “small Conferences”: in 1972 in Sorrento, in 1973 at the Imperial College (the unforgettable NATO School), in 1974 in Portland, in 1975 in Udine, in 1977 in Taormina, in 1977 on a boat in the Caribbean, in 1978 in Bordeaux, in 1979 at Harvard, in 1980 in Aussois, in 1981 in Bielefeld-Rome.

I must admit that, at the beginning, I barely understood what was going on, because my knowledge of differential geometry was almost nothing. But at the conference in Taormina something happened: Art Krener was presenting the results of his recent work with Bob Hermann, a paper that became – in my opinion – a milestone, a watershed. For me, it was like the “revelation of the truth”, and pushed me to do two things: to learn differential geometry and to invite Krener to Rome for a three-month visit. These were truly lucky times for me: the luck of being in the right place at the right time, the luck of being advised (by Dave Elliott) to learn differential geometry on the book of Bill Boothby and the luck of having the opportunity of sitting next to Art Krener for three months in Rome in the spring of 1979. This was the true turning point in my career: once we had discovered how geometric methods could be used for “feedback design” (since then, all earlier results in nonlinear control had rather been concerned with “analysis”), we rushed to prepare a paper that eventually was brought to the attention of a larger public at the conference in Harvard in June 1979. In 1980, I was invited to give some lectures at the Conference in Aussois, and this gave me the opportunity to write a long tutorial paper that became the germ of a subsequent monograph.

Once the key to access the field of nonlinear feedback design was found, the subsequent decade (the 1980’s) witnessed an explosion of results. One of the most popular was the development of the nonlinear analog of the concept of system’s zeros, jointly pursued with Chris Byrnes. The road to non-linear zeros was initially rough and rocky; two original conference papers had technical mistakes, that eventually had been fixed, but the intuitions were full of consequences and by now the concept is widely appreciated not only in the context of system stabilization but in broader application areas, the most notable of which is that of walking machines, as demonstrated by this year’s Bode lecturer Jessy Grizzle.

The decade of the 1980’s ended with another “revolution”: the introduction of the concept of input-to-state stability, by Eduardo Sontag in 1989. This concept has changed the way in which people address the problem of stabilization of nonlinear systems. It seems fair to say that most of the results that appeared in the 1990’s in the domain of feedback stabilization of nonlinear systems, such as the milestone contributions of Hassan Khalil, Peter Kokotovic, Miroslaw Krstic, Laurent Praly and Andy Teel, owe a lot to Sontag’s ideas.  

Illustrious colleagues who, more rightfully than me, have preceded me on this podium, have taken this opportunity to share ideas on the field and experiences on their research career. Some of these experiences are similar to mine. As observed by many, chance is an important factor. When I choose Electrical Engineering, I really wanted to become a practitioner and to work in industry, but then I encountered fabulous teachers who made me loving calculus and what was then called “modern control theory” and this completely shifted my goals.  Then, as I said, I happened to find myself at the right time in the right place when nonlinear control theory was about to begin. We should not forget, though, Louis Pasteur’s saying: “chance favors the prepared mind”.

A second important factor is the willingness to constantly seek the simplest and most straightforward conceptual mechanisms leading to the analysis and solution of a given problem. My recommendation, to myself, has always been: don’t be happy right-away with the first argument you see, even if this is correct and complete; try to simplify it as much as possible, and the effort in doing this will eventually pay. This is particularly true in the preparation of tutorial material, were the effort spent inevitably rewards in terms of new ideas and results.  Intimately related to this is the willingness to present results in an elegant and understandable-to-all fashion. Some individuals prefer to write papers and books for the colleagues: I rather prefer to belong to the other category of people (and fortunately there are many of such colleagues in our field) who like to write papers and books to be understood by a large audience. If it had not been for such colleagues, I would have continued struggling with technicalities and loosing any underlying basic vision.

A third factor is the focus on far-sighted and fundamental results. Research interests, in our field as in others, are driven by the relevance of emerging applications but also for the irrepressible need of the human mind to understand the fundamentals and to arrive at conceptual synthesis.  My recommendation to younger people is to always do so in their research: it is true that we need to appease to our funding agencies (today more than yesterday) buy we should not forget that our ultimate mission is that of expanding the frontiers of knowledge and to do so in such a way that others are able to build-up on the results of our work. Specific research topics may experience ephemeral fortune, jumps will certainly occur, but our underlying basic knowledge will constantly grow.   

A question that everybody is supposed to answer at this point is: what will the future of control theory be? My predecessors have expressed opinions that I fully share. Control is a discipline at the crossroads of Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science and, now, also Biology. Thus, it is in a privileged position and this won’t change in the foreseeable future. Applications are flourishing, from sustainable development to advanced health-care. There are new conceptual challenges that only from our privileged position can be met. Success stories are in continuous growth, as witnessed by the excellent report prepared by the Control System Society and a growing community responds to the increasing needs with enthusiasm and hard work. 

A fourth, indispensible, factor is the help and support, direct or indirect, of other individuals. In my short autobiographic recollection I have acknowledged only those who directly influenced my own work. Crediting all those who influenced my work indirectly would end-up with naming a large part of the Control Systems Society. But my career was also determined by the help by a few other individuals with whom I did not have specific scientific interactions, who nevertheless – generously and unselfishly – promoted me in various forms: John Zaborszky, Manfred Thoma, Hans Knobloch. The help of all of them has been instrumental in bringing my work to the attention of a wider academic community. 

And, indeed, this is the time of acknowledging longstanding friendships, such as those of Art Krener and Chris Byrnes, who have always been source of scholarly advice and inspiration, of T.J.Tarn and of a small but exceptional set of former students who have made greener the years of my maturity: Alessandro Astolfi, Lorenzo Marconi, Andrea Serrani, Claudio De Persis. And also the time to acknowledge the unselfish support of outstanding Italian colleagues: Sergio Bittanti, Guido Guardabassi, Edoardo Mosca and Roberto Tempo.

I have mentioned a number of unbelievable fortunate events that happened in my career but I have not yet mentioned the most important of them all: having met, in a sunny afternoon of July 1960 on the shores of the Island of Ischia, Maria Adelaide. This has been the most important event in my life and has determined everything that happened since then, including a comfortable career during which she took enormous care of me and of a growing fabulous family. 

Thank you all, again, for your support. To receive this award gives me overwhelming feelings. It is a true, and perhaps undeserved, honor to become part of the community of those who shaped this field. 

I am deeply honoured and humbled to receive this award. I do not want to take up too much of your time but I have been asked to make some brief remarks.

I guess some may think of an award of this type as an “arrival”. However, to me, life is a journey not an arrival. So, in that vein, I would like to tell you a little about my journey.

My journey began in Broken Hill, a small mining town in the Australian desert.

As a young man I had two ambitions

•     Go to a place that had sealed roads, and

•     Live by the ocean where the summer temperatures were less than 120oF

I managed to realize both these life goals in 1962 when I went to Sydney to study engineering at the University of New South Wales.

Actually a third fantastic thing happened to me in Sydney. On July 7, 1962 I went to the Jazz Club in the city of Sydney. There I met this beautiful young girl who has been by my side ever since. My dear wife Rosslyn is my guide and my strength. Actually, I owe everything to her including two wonderful children and three fabulous grandchildren.

Continuing the journey, (now with Rosslyn), we packed a small box in 1970 and headed off to London. It seemed like a big risk for a boy from the desert. However, my advice to young people is to take risks in life. It is only by taking risks that big opportunities are realized.

In London, I had the opportunity to interact with some truly fabulous people including John Westcott, Roger Sargent, Karl Aström, Martin Clark, Mark Davis and Richard Vinter. Their work continues to inspire me to this very day!

Then there was, of course, David Mayne. We became firm friends and have continued to work together for the past 35 years. He has been a constant source of scholarly advice and inspiration. David is too modest to sing his own praise, so let me do it for him. A truly fabulous person!

Let me return to the idea of taking risks. David Mayne and I actually rode motorbikes back to my old home in Broken Hill. 4,000 kms of risk and fun! They say “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Well, clearly the motorbikes didn’t kill David or myself so I guess I can claim credit for making David stronger.

In 1974, I decided to leave London to return to Australia. Here I realized some further life goals. Firstly I was able to live by the ocean away from summer heat. However, more importantly, I was able to join the vibrant new group being established by Brian Anderson at the University of Newcastle.

Brian was the youngest professor ever appointed in Australia. He was hard working, enthusiastic, inspiring and, above all supremely organized. If Brian says that a meeting is scheduled from 9 to 10 am, then you can be certain the meeting will not be running at 10:05. I guess that is another lesson for young people. If something cannot be said succinctly, then it probably shouldn’t be said.

We were actually a very small group in Newcastle and this provided the opportunity to work on a broad spectrum of topics ranging from industrial electronics to radar, telecommunication, signal processing and even a little control theory. We also had a wonderful corporate spirit. Each supported others. I fondly remember working with John Moore, Tony Cantoni, Rob Evans and many others on a diverse range of topics.

Indeed, I believe that one of the great things about our field is that it intersects deep theory with a broad range of real world applications. Personally I find nothing more exciting than seeing some idea that I have worked on used in the real world. Many colleagues in industry helped me realize this goal. I particular want to single out John Edwards of Hatch-IAS who inspired me for over 30 years with rolling mill automation challenges.

This leads me to make another suggestion to young people; always think broadly and avoid becoming delta function researchers.

During the early years in Newcastle, I took the opportunity of a study leave at Harvard University. There I worked with Peter Ramadge and Peter Caines on Adaptive Control. To be honest we were all very new to this field and had little idea what we should do. Indeed, we almost gave up hundreds of times. However, with persistence, brilliant ideas from the two Peter’s and amazing insights gained through reading recent results by Vic Solo, we finally saw light at the end of the tunnel.

Many of the world experts on Adaptive Control at that time were working at Yale, so we jumped on a train to proudly show them our results. This led to an amazing exchange with Steve Morse. He simply said “I do no believe it, you must be wrong!” Can I quickly add that Steve did this in an incredibly scholarly fashion. Indeed, once convinced, Steve became our greatest advocate and continues to be so.

So my advice to young people is to always welcome criticism. It can be the most positive influence you will ever have!

Returning to Newcastle. I worked with wonderful colleagues and students. It is a great joy to me to see that they have all excelled in different fields. There are too many to mention here but a short list includes Juan Carlos Agüero, Thomas Brinsmead, Milan Derpich, Jose de Doná, Christian Lovaas, Brett Ninness, Daniel Quevedo, Osvaldo Rojas, Mario Salgado, María Seron, Edwardo Silva, Steve Weller, James Welsh, Juan Yuz and many others. It is actually their combined work that this award is built upon.

I even managed to write several books with my former students. I always underestimated the effort involved (perhaps that was simply a trick to encourage my joint authors not to give up). I remember saying to Mario Salgado, it will just take 300 hours. He often reminds me that it was more like 10,000 hours! The truly amazing fact about all my joint book authors is that we remain friends after all the anguish of book writing.

Maybe the kind of work we all do in our field is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I thus also want to mention the incredibly hard work that my colleagues have put into our research centre in Newcastle over the past decade or so. I especially want to mention my colleagues Reza Mohemani, Minyue Fu and Gregory Adams who made many personal sacrifices to support our joint research work.

I want to conclude by singling out several other people who had a major influence on me.

Firstly, there are Dianne Piefke and Jayne Disney who have managed the financial and administrative side of our research for many years. Their friendly approach and remarkable efficiency has been a key element in our success and is very well known to a large team of academic visitors who have come to Newcastle.

Secondly, there was Stefan Graebe. He is a wonderful systems researcher but also possesses fabulous people skills. Every Friday night he would come to my office with two packets of chile crisps and two cans of cola to discuss the discoveries of the week. Stefan had this incredible ability to focus on what is important. He would say, “you have 3 minutes to explain X.” This was yet another version of the edict that “if it cannot be said succinctly then don’t say it”. Although Stefan had no formal training in finance, he rose to the position of Chief Financial Officer in a major company. So another message for young people is to take on hard jobs, the systems approach and clarity of thinking will see you through.

I also want to mention Rick Middleton. We first met about 25 years ago and have been friends and colleagues ever since. He taught me all about delta operators and how to support and respect others. I know of no nicer person. You are fortunate indeed that he will be the next President of the Control Systems Society.

Next, I want to mention Arie Feuer. He has visited me every year in Newcastle for 20 years. Arie is a firm believer in the value of multidisciplinary research. He has spent 20 years convincing me that Control has much to offer Signal Processing and vice versa. I am a slow learner but I am gradually getting there. By the way, I also made Arie stronger since he also braved a motorbike trip to Broken Hill and survived.

I want to conclude by mentioning others who have been part of my journey, including Lennart Ljung, Torsten Soderström, Michel Gevers, Bill Levine and Julio Braslavsky. All taught me deep secrets of systems science but, perhaps more importantly, the value of friendship.

Well, I guess if I keep naming people who have inspired me, I will end up naming the whole Control Systems Society. So I think I must stop here.

Again, this is a truly great honour. I look forward to continuing this incredible journey with you all.

Thank you!

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.  By now it has become a tradition for the recipient of the Field Award to share with the community his past experiences, views on where the subject is going, and future prospects.  Over the next 7 or 8 minutes, I too would like to continue this tradition by making a few remarks that are partly autobiographical and partly philosophical.

About forty years ago Andy Warhol said that “In future everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes.”  This is my fifteen minutes of fame, but what with inflation and all that, my fifteen minutes have shrunk to eight minutes.

My first comment is: It is essential to have role models.  While I have been influenced by several distinguished researchers during my adult life, undoubtedly my first role model was my father, who was a professor of mathematics.  I was about eight years old when I first began to notice that our house in the South Indian city of Tirupati was always full of my father’s college students, who were constantly discussing what my father called “the subject.”  I asked him what they were doing and he said “Oh, we are trying to find ‘results.’”  I asked him what a “result” was and he said “Well, it is something new.”  Within a few days I got my own first “result”, namely: If you square a number, and multiply the two numbers on either side, the difference is always one.  Or in modern algebraic notation, (n+1)(n-1) = n^2-1.  When I showed this to my father, he said “Well, a result is not something that you did not know before, it is something nobody knew before.”  My first reaction was to be amazed that any human being could possibly find out something that nobody knew before, but my next reaction was that if he could do it, then I was also going to do the same thing – I was going to become a researcher and find lots of “results.”  It was exactly the kind of thing a silly little kid would think, but it definitely did set me on the path to being a researcher.

At a time when many young people seem to be so confused about what they want to do, it was really a blessing for me to know so early in life exactly what I wanted to be, even if I had no idea how to go about it.  My father was a most remarkable researcher.  He published his first paper at the age of 21, and when he passed away at the age of 84, he had five or six papers under review.  Mathematics is supposed to be a young person’s game, and I can’t think of anyone else who published steadily for more than sixty years.  I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my debt to my father.

My second comment is: Don’t rule out the role of chance in life.  Modern man suffers from the hubris that he can control nature, and therefore life is deterministic.  But random events and arbitrary choices have unpredictable consequences.  In my case, when I was finishing up my Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, I was pretty clear in my mind what I was going to do for my Master’s and Ph.D.  I was simply fascinated by passive network synthesis, the relationship between positive real functions and energy dissipation, and such topics.  So I had decided to study circuit theory for my graduate degrees.  Now by the time I reached the final semester of my undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, to graduate all I had to do was to take six elective courses in anything at all.  So I chose six electrical engineering courses, which, as you can imagine, all met on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  So the result was that I had classes solidly from 9:30 until 3:30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and no time for lunch.  After doing this for one week, I realized that I wasn’t going to survive the semester with this kind of schedule.  So I dropped my lunchtime course and looked for a course that met on Tuesday and Thursday.  The only course I could find was an introductory control systems course.  Believe me, that was the only reason I signed up for that course, not any interest in control theory.  But somehow this chance deviation into the controls course had quite unforeseen consequences, as you can all see.

My third point is: If you aspire to success, you must work on entire areas, not just individual research problems.  I got this advice from the late George Zames, back in 1975, and it really changed the way I do research.  Until then I was like a gun-slinger, working on whatever problems caught my fancy, with no particular theme or coherence to my work.  But after I got this advice from George, I consciously tried to work on entire areas, and it has definitely paid off in terms of the impact I have had on the field.

My fourth point is: Don’t be afraid to change research areas often.  Changing areas requires a lot of courage, because you get pushed out of your comfort zone.  But it has its own rewards.  A related point is: When you do move into a new area, work out everything for yourself from scratch, and don’t always believe everything you read.  This is the reason why I like to write a lot of books.  It’s only when you start writing a book that you realize just how poorly you understand the subject.  Writing a book forces you to develop a holistic view of the subject.  The benefit is that if you do even a halfway decent job of explaining a particular subject, then pretty soon everyone begins to look at things your way.

In this connection I would like to acknowledge my debt to Charlie Desoer.  When he invited me to join him and finish up our book on feedback systems, I was just 25 years old.  It was his generosity that made him reach out to such a kid on such an important project.  Working on that book made me realize the importance of making it easy for the reader to dip in and out of a book.  Even thirty years ago, most people did not have the time to read a book in its entirety.  They just want to look up something very specific, and the author has to facilitate that.  I have consciously tried to make my books highly “modular” and I think this has caused them to be pretty popular.

Now here is the last and final point: The family comes first and foremost.  Shakunthala and I have been married now for thirty six years, and without doubt I could not have achieved what little I did without her support over the years.  Everyone who knows her is extremely fond of her, and indeed some of our relatives who come to Hyderabad stay with us, even if they have their own houses in the city.  That’s how affectionate and universally well-loved she is.  While our daughter Aparna was growing up, I always tried to be there when she needed me.  In fact I would wait until she went off to sleep at 9 PM or so, and then start my “second shift” as I used to call it.  Now she’s not “my little baby” anymore, and is going to get her own Ph.D. very shortly.

Let me conclude with a little attempt at crystal ball-gazing.  What is the future of control theory and its applications?  I believe the strength of control theory derives from two aspects: First, as engineers we are problem-driven, and not technique-driven.  Second, we know bits and pieces of lots of branches of mathematics, which is the queen of all science to quote Gauss.  Because of these two factors, we are able to look at each problem on its own merits, instead of forcing it to fit into a preconceived formalism.  To illustrate just how widely applicable control theory really is, note that controls people are branching out into all sorts of areas like communications, mathematical finance, and even biology, but we don’t see people from those areas moving into control!  In short, control theory is a “great place to be from” and I don’t see that changing in future.  Fads may come and fads may go, but control theory will go on forever, because of its ability to adapt itself constantly.

When I was doing my Ph.D., the whole new vista of mathematical control theory was just opening up.  Now, with all the doom and gloom of the financial meltdown all around us, paradoxically I think the current generation of young control theorists has at least two exciting opportunities, namely in mathematical finance, and in “in silico” drug discovery.  I would like to describe, extremely briefly, these two opportunities.

I really think that we control theorists can play an important role in mathematical finance; indeed, we have already been doing it for the past decade and a half.  Again to over-simplify grossly, I view option pricing as computing an expected value, and hedging as stochastic control.  But the spectacular failure of all the pricing and hedging models, which is at the core of the financial meltdown, shows that it is necessary to incorporate human behavior into the models.  The volatility of an asset, which is a key parameter in mathematical finance, is not a natural constant like the Young’s modulus of steel; rather, the volatility is what everyone thinks it is at a given point in time!  Suppose everyone in the market place uses the same “incorrect” formula to compute the price of an asset-based derivative.  Then will the formula gradually become “correct” over time, as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy?  What we really need is a new approach that may be called “flocking theory meets Black-Scholes”!

The current situation in drug discovery reminds me of VLSI synthesis about 30 years ago.  Back then, “yields” in chip fabrication were about 3% to 5%, and every single fabrication facility had its own in-house design team.  Over the past three decades, we have moved towards “virtual foundries” that can design a VLSI system purely using CAD tools, and design is now decoupled from fabrication.  Interestingly, the “yield” on drug molecules is now between 1.5% to 2%, or about the same as for VLSI thirty years ago.  But I see the emergence of “virtual” drug discovery companies, and indeed one of my research groups is working on precisely this area.  Of course, the human body is a lot more complex than an inanimate silicon wafer, but I really do believe that by bringing the rigor of the “systems approach” to problems of drug discovery, we can make substantial contributions.

In conclusion, I feel privileged to join the ranks of the previous winners, many of whom are all-time greats of control theory.  I wish everyone in the room the same success I have had if not very much more.  Thank you and good night!

Dear Colleagues,

It is an honor and simultaneously a humbling event to be in front of such a distinguished audience today. Occasions such as this are rare, and present an opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of others. This is especially necessary in my case, since my career has largely been a series of happy accidents, of standing on the shoulders of many giants.

My technical career began, as is probably true for most of us, with my mother. She succeeded in schooling three children, even though my father was a geologist, living in tents, moving every week or so, walking about 17 miles each day Geiger counter in hand, and being allowed to return home only for a few months each year during the monsoon season. I also benefited from the care of my grandfather, a person of infinite wisdom. Later, I was fortunate to rub shoulders with some of the brightest students from the country at IIT Madras. Ultimately what rubbed off though was a sense of their high standards, and the lifelong calibration that results from having known people of the highest quality.

It was an accident that brought me to the US. One of my table tennis partners sent me an application form from some place called Washington University, for some program, called Control Systems Science and Engineering. I decided to go there only after I calculated that, in the US, I could actually obtain an MS in nine months, and then return to resume my carefully laid plans for a management career, all within the span of a year. Such indeed are the plans of men and mice!

At Washington University I was a beneficiary of the far-reaching systems vision of John Zaborszky, and of his generosity in allowing us to work with anyone we chose, which in my case was Jan van Schuppen. Those were however the days following the great Boeing layoff, and with an utterly mediocre thesis to boot, I was grateful to receive exactly one job offer, from the Mathematics Department at the Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County. There, I benefited greatly from the discipline of mathematics, and from interacting with top-notch analysts such as Tom Seidman.

Ladies and gentlemen, many of you will agree with me when I say that we in this room are very fortunate and truly lead very envious lives. To quote Longfellow, not only do we get to savor:

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

And all the sweet serenity of books.”

but, as if that were not enough, we are in the thick of a heady technological revolution, where nothing seems to be really impossible or undreamable. The times, ladies and gentlemen, as Dylan said, are a changing.

But more than technology and books, what I especially treasure is that over the years I have been fortunate to actually meet a number of great people. One who comes to mind is the incomparable Pravin Varaiya. I have been privileged to have countless hours of conversations indulged in walks all over the world, freely moving between systems theory, economics and politics, and other things under the sun, and his deep perception has educated me beyond my Ph.D. and given me much food for thought.

Over the past three decades, I have also been inspired by another man of letters, Sanjoy Mitter. He has served as an oasis of calm in a frenzied research world, and a connoisseur of systems research. It is because of him that visiting MIT has always been the emotional equivalent of coming home to discuss what you are thinking of, with someone who understands you.

Yet another person of indefatigable energy and positivity, one whose energy level is hard to keep up with, is Karl Astrom. His broad minded appreciation of ideas while being the most practically effective of engineers, his directness of purpose, infectious enthusiasm, incredible depth of knowledge and experience for all things control, has been a great source of positive feedback for me.

It was a fortuitous coincidence that brought me to Illinois. At the podium after my talk at the 1983 CDC in San Antonio, Petar Kokotovic asked me what I wanted were I to move to Illinois, to which my complete reply was, “The usual things.” That was it. When I returned from an overseas trip five or six weeks later there was a job offer for me at Illinois, sans list of references, sans vita, and even sans interview. To this day, I continue to believe that my job at Illinois is completely illegal. I have been inspired by watching his lifelong attention to the lifelong careers of students and colleagues, his careful nurture of scientific ideas, his infinite subtlety, his unsurpassed leadership of institutions, and his ability to make wherever he is the Mecca of control. We have shared many a passionate and free ranging discussion on things political, literary, and scientific.

Indeed I have been truly fortunate in meeting many a kindred soul and great mind. Victor Solo, Marco Campi, John Tsitsiklis, Venkat Ananthram, Jean Walrand, Laurent Praly, Carlos Humes, Vivek Borkar, John Baillieul, Tyrone Duncan, Hector Sussmann, Liang-Liang Xie, Mike Harrison, Peter Caines, Massimo Franceschetti, Graham Goodwin, Steve Morse, Kameshwar Poolla, Bob Gallager, Steve Marcus, John Baras, Harold Kushner, Ray Rishel. The names are too numerous to mention. Then there are my graduate students, whose presence has inspired and rejuvenated me.

Places make people, and I am fortunate to be a member of the Coordinated Science Lab at the University of Illinois, my second home away from home. It is the best research environment in the world.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this award belongs as much to my dear wife Jaya, as to me. She has been my soulmate for the past quarter century. She has been the source of my positive feedback. I have been blessed with her and our two proudest creations, our children Ashwin and Shilpa. It is not only poets who have muses, researchers do too, and she is mine. I dedicate this award to her, and to our two children Ashwin and Shilpa.

Thank you for this honor.