IEEE CSS Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize

To recognize outstanding achievement in research in systems and control by a young researcher and to honor the memory of Dr. Antonio Ruberti.

Historical Background:

Established in 2005; Revised 2015.

The Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize was established in 2005 to honor the memory of Antonio Ruberti. Antonio Ruberti was one of the first three Professors of Automatic Control in Italy (together with Giorgio Quazza and Antonio Lepschy). In 1964 the first chair of Automatic Control was established at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and he was hired to occupy that position. He was Faculty Dean and later Rector (for 11 years) of "La Sapienza", Minister of Minister of University and Scientific Research, Commissioner of the EU for Science, Research and Education, and he later held several other positions in EU Commission till his sudden and unexpected death in 2000. His scientific interests in the field of system and control were very wide. In particular, he was one of the early pioneers of geometric control methods for nonlinear systems. For further information about Professor Ruberti, please follow this link to the following website dedicated to his contribution - currently under construction.

Prize:

$5,000, photo-engraved Plaque, and travel expenses to the CDC (round trip restricted minimal coach air fare, conference registration, and up to 4 conference-rate hotel nights for a 3-day conference, and up to 5 conference-rate hotel nights for a 4-day conference).

Funding:

Funded annually by the Antonio Ruberti Foundation through an MOU agreement with the Society.

Presentation:

At the annual awards ceremony of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

Basis for Judging:

Based on the research contributions of the nominee. Contributions to either the theory or applications of systems and control will be considered equally. The determining factor will be the perceived impact of the nominee on the field as evidenced by publications, patents, products, or other tangible items. 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.

Eligibility:

The nominee must be 40 years old or younger on January 1st of the year nominated. IEEE or CSS membership is not required.

Nomination Details:

Nominations and reference letters are due by May 15 and must be submitted using the IEEE Control Systems Society Awards nomination system at awards.paperplaza.net.

Nomination Form

Nomination System Instructions

2023

Fabio Pasqualetti

For foundational contributions to the theories of cyber-physical security, complex networks, and data-driven control

2022

Javad Lavaei

Biography

Javad Lavaei is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an Assistant Professor at Columbia University from 2012 to 2015. He received the Ph.D. degree in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology in 2011 and received the Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize for the best university-wide Ph.D. thesis. Javad Lavaei has won several awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers given by the White House, DARPA Young Faculty Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Director's Fellowship, Office of Naval Research's Director of Research Early Career Grant, and Google Faculty Award. Javad Lavaei is a senior editor of the IEEE Systems Journal and has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, and IEEE Control Systems Letters. He has also served on the conference editorial boards of the Control Systems Society and European Control Association. Javad Lavaei is a recipient of 2015 INFORMS Optimization Society Prize for Young Researchers, 2016 Donald P. Eckman Award given by the American Automatic Control Council, 2016 INFORMS ENRE Energy Best Publication Award, 2017 SIAM Control and Systems Theory Prize, 2020 Journal of Global Optimization Best Paper Award, and 2022 Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize. He has received over 10 best paper awards from the Control Systems Society, INFORMS, and Power & Energy Society. Javad Lavaei is a Fellow of IEEE.

Affiliation(s)

University of California, Berkeley

United States

For outstanding and highly interdisciplinary contributions to distributed control, nonlinear optimization, and innovative applications to energy systems.

2021

Necmiye Ozay

Website

Biography

I received my B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul in 2004, my M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA in 2006 and my Ph.D. degree again in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, MA in 2010. Between 2010 and 2013, I was a Control and Dynamical Systems postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. I joined the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, in Fall 2013, where I am currently an associate professor. I am part of the Michigan Controls Group, a core member of Michigan Robotics, and also affiliated with the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) and Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery & Engineering (MICDE).

My research interests include dynamical systems, control, optimization and formal methods with applications in cyber-physical systems, system identification, verification and validation, and autonomy. My papers received several awards including an IEEE Control Systems Society Conference on Decision and Control Best Student Paper Award in 2008 and a best paper award from the Journal of Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems for the years 2014-2016. I received a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2014, an NSF CAREER Award, a NASA Early Career Faculty Award and a DARPA Director’s Fellowship in 2016, an ONR Young Investigator Award, and the 1938E Award from the University of Michigan College of Engineering in 2018, and a 2019 Henry Russel Award from the University of Michigan, Rackham Graduate School. I was selected as an Outstanding Reviewer of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control in 2011. I was one of the co-chairs of the 22nd ACM Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control in 2019. I am currently an associate editor for the Journal of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems, Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, and Automatica. I am a member of the IEEE and ACM. I am also a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society Technical Committees on Hybrid Systems and on Robust and Complex Systems (formerly known as, Computational Aspects of Control System Design).

Affiliation(s)

University of Michigan

United States

For fundamental contributions to control and identification of hybrid and cyber-physical systems

2020

Ufuk Topcu

For fundamental contributions to the verification and synthesis of nonlinear, hybrid and learning-enabled control systems with applications in autonomy

Acceptance Speech

2019

Aaron Ames

For fundamental contributions to the nonlinear control of hybrid and safety-critical systems, with application to walking robots and robotic assistive devices that restore mobility

2018

Vijay Gupta

For contributions to the fundamentals of networked and cyber-physical systems

2017

Wei Ren

For pioneering contributions to distributed coordination and control of multi-agent systems

2016

Yasamin Mostofi

For contributions to the fundamentals of communications and control co-optimization in mobile sensor networks

2015

Paulo Tabuada

For contributions to the analysis and design of cyber-physical systems

2014

Murat Arcak

For contributions to the theory and applications of nonlinear control, stability and passivity

2013

Alexandre Bayen

For his contributions to control and estimation of partial differential equations with applications to large-scale sensing in traffic flow and shallow-water systems

2012

Massimo Franceschetti

For his contributions in physical and information-based foundation of networked control and communication systems

2011

Pablo Parrilo

Biography

Pablo A. Parrilo is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently Associate Director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), and is also affiliated with the Operations Research Center (ORC). Past appointments include Assistant Professor at the Automatic Control Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Visiting Associate Professor at the California Institute of Technology, as well as short-term research visits at the University of California at Santa Barbara (Physics), Lund Institute of Technology (Automatic Control), and University of California at Berkeley (Mathematics). He received an Electronics Engineering undergraduate degree from the University of Buenos Aires, and a PhD in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology. His research interests include optimization methods for engineering applications, control and identification of uncertain complex systems, robustness analysis and synthesis, and the development and application of computational tools based on convex optimization and algorithmic algebra to practically relevant engineering problems. Prof. Parrilo has received several distinctions, including a Finmeccanica Career Development Chair, the Donald P. Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council, the SIAM Activity Group on Control and Systems Theory (SIAG/CST) Prize, the IEEE Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize, and the Farkas Prize of the INFORMS Optimization Society. He is an IEEE Fellow.

Affiliation(s)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

United States

For fundamental contributions to optimization theory and its applications

2010

George J. Pappas

Website

Biography

George Papas earned his B.S. in 1991 and M.S. in 1992 in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before coming to Berkeley. While a student at Berkeley, he also served as a graduate fellow in the Division of Applied Sciences at Harvard in 1994. He was the recipient of the Berkeley EECS Eli Jury Award for Excellence in Systems Research in 1999.

Pappas was hired as a professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE) at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000, with secondary appointments in the Departments of Computer and Information Sciences, and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. He served as the Deputy Dean for Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2008 to 2012, when he was named Chair of the ESE Department. He is a member and former director of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab and a member of the Penn Research In Embedded Computing and Integrated Systems Engineering (PRECISE) Center. His research focuses on control theory and in particular, hybrid systems, embedded systems, hierarchical and distributed control systems, with applications to unmanned aerial vehicles, distributed robotics, green buildings, and biomolecular networks.

Pappas won an NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2004 and became an IEEE Fellow in 2009. He has received numerous awards including the IEEE Control Systems George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award in 2009, the IEEE Control Systems Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize in 2010, the American Control Conference O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award in both 2014 and 2016, the Penn George H. Heilmeier Faculty Award for Excellence in Research in 2015, the ICRA Best Paper Award in 2017, and the Penn Provost's Award for Distinguished PhD Teaching and Mentoring also in 2017. Pappas was named Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) in 2019 "for contributions to hybrid and networked control systems with applications to robotics."

Affiliation(s)

University of Pennsylvania

United States

For fundamental contributions to embedded, hybrid, and networked control systems

2009

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

For fundamental contributions to adaptive control and to the theory of switched and hybrid systems

2008

Rodolphe Sepulchre

For contributions to the theory and applications of nonlinear dynamical systems, in particular, coordination, synchronization, and control

2007

Alessandro Astolfi

Biography

Alessandro Astolfi (F’09) was born in Rome, Italy, in 1967. He received the Graduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Rome, Rome, in 1991, the M.Sc. degree in information theory and the Ph.D. degree with Medal of Honor with a thesis on discontinuous stabilization of nonholonomic systems from ETH-Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland, both in 1995 and the Ph.D. degree for his work on nonlinear robust control from the University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy, in 1996.,Since 1996, he has been with the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College London, London, U.K., where he is currently a Professor of nonlinear control theory and the Head of the Control and Power Group. From 1998 to 2003, he was also an Associate Professor with the Department of Electronics and Information, Politecnico of Milano. Since 2005, he has also been a Professor with Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Ingegneria Informatica, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome. He has been a Visiting Lecturer in nonlinear control with several universities, including ETH-Zurich (1995–1996); Terza University of Rome (1996); Rice University, Houston, TX, USA (1999); Kepler University, Linz, Austria (2000); SUPELEC, Paris, France (2001); and Northeastern University (2013). He is the author of more than 150 journal papers, 30 book chapters, and more than 240 papers in refereed conference proceedings. He is the author (with D. Karagiannis and R. Ortega) of the monograph Nonlinear and Adaptive Control With Applications (Springer-Verlag). His research interests include mathematical control theory and control applications, with special emphasis on the problems of discontinuous stabilization, robust and adaptive control, observer design, and model reduction.

Prof. Astolfi was the recipient of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) A. Ruberti Young Researcher Prize (2007), the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Googol Best New Application Paper Award (2009), the IEEE CSS George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award (2012), and the Automatica Best Paper Award (2017). He was also the recipient of the 2015 Sir Harold Hartley Medal, for outstanding contribution to the technology of measurement and control, from the Institute of Measurement and Control. He is a Distinguished Member of the IEEE CSS, and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the International Federation of Automatic Control. He served as an Associate Editor for the Automatica, the Systems and Control Letters, the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the International Journal of Control, the European Journal of Control, and the Journal of the Franklin Institute; an Area Editor for the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing; a Senior Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control; and an Editor-in-Chief for the European Journal of Control. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. He served as the Chair of the IEEE CSS Conference Editorial Board (2010–2017) and in the International Program Committee (IPC) of several international conferences. He has been a Member of the IEEE Fellow Committee (2016, 2019).

Affiliation(s)

Imperial College London

United Kingdom

University of Rome Tor Vergata

Italy

For contributions to the theory and applications of nonlinear control systems

2006

Vincent Blondel

For fundamental contributions to control theory, especially stabilization, computational complexity issues, and decidability

2005

Richard Braatz

For theoretical results in the robust control of complex systems, and their application in the process, pharmaceutical, and microelectronics industries