IEEE CSS Award for Technical Excellence in Aerospace Control

The award will be given annually to a person or team of people that performed an aerospace control engineering activity during the previous 36 months that demonstrates excellence and significant results with demonstrated impact. Examples of results evidence are either a paper appearing in an IEEE publication that specifically addresses aerospace control issues, or a patent application or award that significantly advances the state-of-the-art in aerospace controls. Innovative products that have appeared in the marketplace will also be considered. The award is similar to the outstanding paper awards for the CSS transactions and magazine in the sense that it recognizes an outstanding paper or patented idea as opposed to cumulative contributions over a career.

Historical Background:

(Established in 2009) (revised Prize, Eligibility, Presentation and Administration/Selection 2015; revised 2019)

Prize:

Certificate laminated on a Plaque, plus up to $500 towards expenses for travel to accept the award. If the prize is awarded to a group, each group member will receive a certificate and one individual will receive travel reimbursement.

Funding:

The award will be funded by an endowment managed by the IEEE Foundation. The annual income from the fund will be used to fund the award in perpetuity. The total amount of the prize (travel plus plaque) shall not exceed the amount paid out by the endowment in a given year.

Presentation:

The award will be presented at the Society Awards Ceremony held during the annual IEEE Conference on Decision & Control.

Basis for Judging:

Contributions (for instance, papers, products, prototypes and /or patents) will be judged on the
following criteria:
> Originality of technical innovation,
> Significance/relevance to the aerospace community,
> Clear description of the aerospace application,
> Potential impact on the practice of aerospace engineering,
> The broader impacts of the contribution towards the benefit of society at large and towards
the CSS diversity and inclusiveness goals in terms of geography, gender, and work sector.
The award will be given only if a suitable candidate is identified.
Voting procedure
> Selection of winners will be carried out before July 15, by the TEAC award subcommittee,
whose members are appointed by April 15 by the committee chair (in consultation with the
CSS Awards Chair).

Eligibility:

CSS membership is required. Any aerospace control engineering activity and results that occurred in the 36 months previous to the award nomination submittal deadline is eligible. The broader impacts of the contribution towards the benefit of society at large and towards the CSS diversity and inclusiveness goals in terms of geography, gender, and work sector.

Nomination Details:

Nominations and up to 4 additional supporting letters describing the outstanding contribution to aerospace control should be submitted on the IEEE CSS Awards nomination system, http://awards.paperplaza.net/ by May 15 of each year.

Nomination Form

Nomination Instructions

2024

Christopher Elliott

For contributions to the fielding of adaptive flight control and the development of flight control for the safe operation of advanced fighter aircraft.

2023

Marco Pavone

Biography

Dr. Marco Pavone is an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, where he also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Electrical Engineering, in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, and in the Information Systems Laboratory. He is a Research Affiliate at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology. Before joining Stanford, he was a Research Technologist within the Robotics Section at JPL. He received a Ph.D. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010. Dr. Pavone’s areas of expertise lie in the fields of controls and robotics.

Dr. Pavone is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, a NASA Early Career Faculty Award, a Hellman Faculty Scholar Award, and was named NASA NIAC Fellow in 2011. At JPL, Dr. Pavone worked on the end-to-end optimization of the mission architecture for the Mars sample return mission. He has designed control algorithms for formation flying that have been successfully tested onboard the International Space Station.

Dr. Pavone is the Director of the Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL). The goal of ASL is the development of methodologies for the analysis, design, and control of autonomous systems, with a particular emphasis on large-scale robotic networks and autonomous aerospace vehicles. The lab combines expertise from control theory, robotics, optimization, and operations research to develop the theoretical foundations for networked autonomous systems operating in uncertain, rapidly-changing, and potentially adversarial environments. Theoretical insights are then used to devise practical, computationally-efficient, and provably-correct algorithms for field deployment. Applications include robotic transportation networks, sensor networks, agile control of spacecraft during proximity operations, and mobility platforms for extreme planetary environments. Collaborations with NASA centers are a key component of the research portfolio.

Affiliation(s)

Stanford University

United States

For outstanding contributions to optimal control and decision making and their application to aerospace robotics

2022

Isaac Kaminer

For contributions to optimal control and its diverse applications to adversarial large scale UAV swarming, efficient cooperative motion planning and multi-vehicle thermaling

2021

Eugene Lavretsky

For the development, maturation and transition of robust and adaptive flight control technologies to aerial vehicles and systems.

2020

Maruthi Akella

For significant contributions to learning and adaptive control for aerospace applications

Acceptance Speech

2019

Behçet Açikmese

For outstanding contributions to convex optimization-based control and its transitions and applications to aerospace applications

2018

Panagiotis Tsiotras

For outstanding contributions in control theory and transitions to aerospace applications

2017

Naira Hovakimyan

For pioneering innovations in adaptive control and its application to aerospace systems

2016

Kevin Wise

For contributions to the flight demonstration of the Phantom Eye high altitude long endurance UAV using robust adaptive control