Board of Governors | IEEE Control Systems Society

President

Thomas Parisini

Imperial College London, UK

United Kingdom

Thomas Parisini

Biography

Thomas Parisini received the "Laurea" degree (Cum Laude and printing honours) in Electronic Engineering from the University of Genoa in 1988 and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science in 1993. He was with Politecnico di Milano and since 2001 he is professor and Danieli Endowed Chair of Automation Engineering with University of Trieste. Since 2009, Thomas Parisini is Deputy Rector of University of Trieste and since 2010 he holds the Chair of Industrial Control at the Imperial College London.

He authored or co-authored more than 200 research papers in archival journals, book chapters, and international conference proceedings. His research interests include neural-network approximations for optimal control problems, fault diagnosis for nonlinear and distributed systems and nonlinear model predictive control systems. Among several awards, he is a co-recipient of the 2004 Outstanding Paper Award of the IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks and a recipient of the 2007 IEEE Distinguished Member Award. He is involved as Project Leader in several projects funded by the European Union, by the Italian Ministry for Research, and he is currently leading consultancy projects with some major process control companies (ABB, Danieli, Duferco, Electrolux, among others).

Thomas Parisini currently serves as President of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2021-2022). Past positions include Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, Chair of the Conference Editorial Board, and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Control Systems Society. Moreover, he was an elected member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society and of the European Union Control Association (EUCA) as well as a member of the board of evaluators of the 7th Framework ICT Research Program of the European Union. Thomas Parisini is currently serving as an Associate Editor of Int. J. of Control and has served on several editorial boards of international journals including the IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, Automatica, and the IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks. He was involved in the committees of several international conferences. In particular, he was the Program Chair of the 2008 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and General Co-Chair of the 2013 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. Thomas Parisini is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Affiliation(s)

Imperial College London, UK

United Kingdom

President-Elect

Magnus Egerstedt

University of California, Irvine

United States

Director of Operations

Jorge Cortés

University of California, San Diego

United States

Jorge Cortés

Biography

Jorge Cortés is a Professor with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He received the Licenciatura degree in mathematics from the Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain, in 1997, and the Ph.D. degree in engineering mathematics from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, in 2001. He held postdoctoral positions at the Systems, Signals and Control Department of the University of Twente in 2002 and at the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2002 to 2004. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 2004 to 2007.

Dr. Cortés is the author of "Geometric, Control and Numerical Aspects of Nonholonomic Systems" (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2002) and co-author of "Distributed Control of Robotic Networks" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). He received an NSF CAREER award in 2006 and was the recipient of the 2006 Spanish Society of Applied Mathematics Young Researcher Prize. He has co-authored papers that have won the 2008 IEEE Control Systems Outstanding Paper Award, the 2009 SIAM Review SIGEST selection from the SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, the 2012 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award in the Theory category, and the 2019 IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems Outstanding Paper Award. He has been an IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer (2010-2014) and is an IEEE Fellow. He served in the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (2010-2012), IEEE Control Systems magazine (2012-2016), IEEE Access (2015-2017), Systems and Control Letters (2009-2012), and European Journal of Control (2006-2009) and in the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2005-2009). He currently serves on the editorial board of Journal of Nonlinear Science and Journal of Geometric Mechanics

Affiliation(s)

University of California, San Diego

United States

VP Conference Activities

Carolyn Beck

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

United States

VP Financial Activities

João Hespanha

University of California, Santa Barbara

United States

Website

João Hespanha

Website

Biography

João P. Hespanha received the Licenciatura in electrical and computer engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal in 1991 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and applied science from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut in 1998. From 1999 to 2001, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002, where he currently holds a Professor position with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Prof. Hespanha is Associate Director for the Center for Control, Dynamical-systems, and Computation (CCDC), Vice-Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a member of the Executive Committee for the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB). From 2004—2007 he was an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

His current research interests include hybrid and switched systems; the modeling and control of communication networks; distributed control over communication networks (also known as networked control systems); the use of vision in feedback control; and stochastic modeling in biology.

Dr. Hespanha is the recipient of the Yale University’s Henry Prentiss Becton Graduate Prize for exceptional achievement in research in Engineering and Applied Science, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the 2005 best paper award at the 2nd Int. Conf. on Intelligent Sensing and Information Processing, the 2005 Automatica Theory/Methodology best paper prize, the 2006 George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award, and the 2009 Ruberti Young Researcher Prize. Dr. Hespanha is a Fellow of the IEEE and an IEEE distinguished lecturer since 2007.

Affiliation(s)

University of California, Santa Barbara

United States

VP Member Activities

Maria Domenica Di Benedetto

University of l'Aquila

Italy

Maria Domenica Di Benedetto

Biography

Maria Domenica Di Benedetto is a Professor of Automatic Control at University of L’Aquila (Italy). She received her Master degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of Roma "La Sapienza" and holds the PhD degree (“Docteur-Ingenieur” Spécialité Automatique et Traitement du Signal) and the degree “Doctorat d'Etat ès Sciences” (Spécialité Sciences Physiques), both from Université de Paris-Sud (Orsay, France). She has been Adjunct Professor from 1995 to 2002, and McKay Professor from 1990 to 1995, at the Department of EECS of the University of California at Berkeley. She held visiting positions at MIT, at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique in Nantes (France). Her research interests are in the areas of nonlinear and hybrid systems control theory, diagnosability and predictability in cyber-physical systems, and applications to traffic control, smart grids and biological systems.

From 2001 to 2019, Prof. Di Benedetto has been the Director of the Italian Center of Excellence for Research DEWS "Architectures and Design methodologies for Embedded controllers, Wireless interconnect and System-on-Chip" established at the University of L’Aquila in 2001. She has been the President of the Italian Association of Researchers in Automatic Control (SIDRA) from 2013 to 2019. She is the President of the European Embedded Control Institute since 2009.

Dr. Di Benedetto is a Fellow of the IEEE and IFAC. She has been a member of the IEEE Control Systems Technical Fields Award Committee, Chair of the Standing Committee on Fellow Nominations of the IEEE CSS, member of the IEEE Fellow Evaluation Committee of the IEEE CSS. She is the IFAC Chair of the Nathaniel B. Nichols Medal Selection Committee for the 2020-2023 triennium. She is currently a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE CSS and is serving as the VP for Membership Activities (2020-21) in the Executive Committee of the IEEE CSS. She is Editor of the IEEE Press Book Series in Control Systems Theory and Applications.

Affiliation(s)

University of l'Aquila

Italy

VP Publication Activities

Ioannis Paschalidis

Boston University

United States

Website

Ioannis Paschalidis

Website

Biography

Yannis Paschalidis is a Professor in the College of Engineering at Boston University with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Division of Systems Engineering. He is Director of the Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE) – a Boston University research center with 39 affiliated faculty, more than 100 affiliated graduate students and on the order of $6.6 million of annual research expenditures from sponsored research directed by CISE faculty. He is also affiliated with the BioMolecular Engineering Research Center (BMERC).

He completed his graduate education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) receiving an M.S. (1993) and a Ph.D. (1996) degree, both in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In September 1996 he joined Boston University. He has held visiting appointments with MIT, and the Columbia University Business School. His current research interests lie in the field systems and control, networking, applied probability, optimization, operations research, computational biology, and bioinformatics. Specific applications of interest include communication and sensor networks, protein docking, manufacturing systems, and supply chains.

His work on communication networks has been recognized with a CAREER award (2000) from the National Science Foundation and the second prize in the 1997 George E. Nicholson paper competition by INFORMS. He was an invited participant at the 2002 Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, organized by the National Academy of Engineering. He has served in the program committees of several conferences, including, the INFORMS Applied Probability Conference, the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, and the IEEE INFOCOM. He is a senior member of the IEEE and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and the Operations Research Letters.

Affiliation(s)

Boston University

United States

VP Technical Activities

Jing Sun

University of Michigan

United States

Board of Governors Appointed Members

Alexandre Bazanella

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Brazil

Sonja Glavaski

Hiroshi Ito

Kyushu Institute of Technology

Japan

Eric Kerrigan

Imperial College London

United Kingdom

Yan Wan

University of Texas, Arlington

United States

Website

Yan Wan

Website

Biography

Dr. Yan Wan is currently an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University in 2009 and then postdoctoral training at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests lie in the modeling, evaluation and control of large-scale dynamical networks, cyber-physical system, stochastic networks, decentralized control, learning control, networking, uncertainty analysis, algebraic graph theory, and their applications to UAV networking, UAV traffic management, epidemic spread, complex information networks, and air traffic management. She received research grants from the NSF, ONR, NIST, IEEE, and MITRE Corporation as subcontracts from FAA. Her research has led to over 140 publications and successful technology transfer outcomes. She has been recognized by several prestigious awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, RTCA William E. Jackson Award, U.S. Ignite and GENI demonstration awards, IEEE WCNC and ICCA Best Paper Awards, UNT Early Career Award for Research and Creativity, and Tech Titan of the Future – University Level Award. Her research on UAV-carried Wi-Fi system for emergency communication has been reported by many government-agency websites and media outlets, including NSF, NBC, NPR, Huffington Post, and the Washington Times. She is the Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control, Conference Editorial Board Member of the IEEE Control Systems Society, Vice President for IEEE ComSoc Fort Worth Chapter, and Technical Committee Member of AIAA Intelligent Systems.

Affiliation(s)

University of Texas, Arlington

United States

Melanie Zeilinger

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Switzerland

Website

Board of Governors Elected Members

Carolyn Beck

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

United States

Christos G. Cassandras

Boston University

United States

Christos G. Cassandras

Biography

Christos G. Cassandras is Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Boston University, Head of the Division of Systems Engineering, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and co-founder of the Center for Information and Systems Engineering. He received degrees from Yale University, Stanford University, and Harvard University. In 1982-84 he was with ITP Boston, Inc. and in 1984-1996 he was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts/Amherst. He specializes in the areas of discrete event and hybrid systems, cooperative control, stochastic optimization, and computer simulation, with applications to computer and sensor networks, manufacturing systems, and transportation systems. He has published over 350 refereed papers in these areas, and five books. He has collaborated with The MathWorks, Inc. in the development of the discrete event and hybrid system simulator SimEvents. Dr. Cassandras was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (1998-2009) and the 2012 President of the IEEE Control Systems Society. He is the recipient of several awards, including the 2011 IEEE Control Systems Technology Award, the Distinguished Member Award of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2006), IFAC’s 1999 Harold Chestnut Prize, 2011 and 2014 prizes for the IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge competition, the 2014 Engineering Distinguished Scholar Award at Boston University, several honorary professorships, a 1991 Lilly Fellowship and a 2012 Kern Fellowship. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the IFAC.

Affiliation(s)

Boston University

United States

Elisa Franco

University of California, Los Angeles

United States

Website

Jonathan How

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

United States

Miroslav Krstic

University of California, San Diego

United States

Yasamin Mostofi

University of California, Santa Barbara

United States

Daniel Abramovitch

ACC

Agilent Labs

Graziano Chesi

University of Hong Kong

Hong Kong SAR China

Maurice Heemels

University of Technology, Eindhoven

Netherlands

Website

Maurice Heemels

Website

Biography

Maurice Heemels received the M.Sc. degree in mathematics and the Ph.D. degree in control theory (both summa cum laude) from the University of Technology, Eindhoven (TU/e), the Netherlands, in 1995 and 1999, respectively. From 2000 to 2004, he was with the Electrical Engineering Department, TU/e, and from 2004 to 2006 with the Embedded Systems Institute (ESI). Since 2006, he has been with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, TU/e, where he is currently a Full Professor. He held visiting professor positions at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Switzerland (2001), and at the University of California at Santa Barbara (2008). In 2004, he worked also at the company Oce, the Netherlands. His current research interests include hybrid and cyber-physical systems, networked and event-triggered control systems and constrained systems including model predictive control. Maurice served/s on the editorial boards of Automatica, Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, Annual Reviews in Control, and IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. He was a recipient of a personal VICI grant awarded by STW (Dutch Technology Foundation, NWO/TTW) and is the current chair of the IFAC Technical Committee on Networked Systems. He is the founding father of a bi-annual PhD school on multi-disciplinary research topics such as hybrid, networked and cyber-physical systems educating over 600 PhD students worldwide since 2003. He was IPC (co-)chair of IFAC ADHS'12, ECC'13, IFAC NECSYS'13, and IFAC ADHS'18. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

See www.heemels.tue.nl for more information.

Affiliation(s)

University of Technology, Eindhoven

Netherlands

Naomi Leonard

Princeton University

United States

Naomi Leonard

Biography

Naomi Ehrich Leonard is the Edwin S. Wilsey Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, associated faculty in Applied and Computational Mathematics, and Director of the Council on Science and Technology at Princeton University. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the IEEE, SIAM, IFAC, and ASME. She received her B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland. Between degrees, she worked in the electric power industry. Her current research focuses on theory and application in multi-agent systems, mobile sensor networks, collective animal behavior, and human decision dynamics. She studies how network structure, heterogeneity of information, leadership, and nonlinearity determine robust and flexible collective dynamics, and she designs methodology for distributed control of multi-agent systems with provable performance. In collaboration with biologists, she examines the dynamics of human decision-making under uncertainty and explores mechanisms that explain the inspiring dynamics of animal groups, including fish, honeybees, zebras, starlings, and harvester ants. Leonard led a large,multidisciplinary project that culminated in a major field demonstration in Monterey Bay, CA of a first-of- its-kind automated and adaptive ocean observing system, featuring a coordinated network of underwater robotic vehicles. She also works at the intersection of dance and collective dynamics.

Affiliation(s)

Princeton University

United States

Christophe Prieur

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

France

Sarah Spurgeon

University College London

United Kingdom

Belinda Batten

Oregon State University

United States

Yoshio Ebihara

Kyushu University

Japan

Alexander Horch

HIMA Group

Germany

Kristin Y. Pettersen

Norwegian University of Science & Technology

Norway

Kristin Y. Pettersen

Biography

Kristin Ytterstad Pettersen (F’17) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering cybernetics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway, in 1992 and 1996, respectively.

Since 1996, she has been a Faculty Member with the Department of Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU, where she is currently a Professor. She was the Director of the NTNU ICT Programme of Robotics from 2010 to 2013, the Vice-Head of the Department from 2009 to 2011, and the head of the Department from 2011 to 2013. She is currently an Adjunct Professor with Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), Kjeller, Norway. She is also a Key Scientist with the CoE Centre for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems, NTNU, from 2013 to 2022. She is a Co-Founder of the NTNU spin-off company Eelume AS, Trondheim, where she was the CEO from 2015 to 2016. She has authored or co-authored four books and over 250 papers in scientific conferences and journals. Her current research interests include nonlinear control of mechanical systems with applications to robotics, especially marine robotics and snake robotics.

Dr. Pettersen was a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society from 2012 to 2014. She is a member of the IFAC Council, the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences, and the Academy of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. She has also held and holds several board positions in industrial and research companies. She was a recipient of the Outstanding Paper Award from the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology in 2006 and 2017.

Affiliation(s)

Norwegian University of Science & Technology

Norway

Sophie Tarbouriech

Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

France

Paul Van den Hof

Eindhoven University of Technology

Netherlands