Diversity, Outreach, and Development Activities Board

VP Diversity, Outreach & Development

Karl H. Johansson

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Sweden

8 (Africa, Europe, Middle East)

Website

VP Member Activities

Necmiye Ozay

University of Michigan

United States

Website

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

VP Technical Activities

Mario di Bernardo

University of Naples Federico II

Italy

8 (Africa, Europe, Middle East)

Website

Mario di Bernardo

8 (Africa, Europe, Middle East)

Website

Biography

MARIO DI BERNARDO (SMIEEE ’06, FIEEE 2012) is Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy and Visiting Professor of Nonlinear Systems and Control at the University of Bristol, U.K. He currently serves as Deputy pro-Vice Chancellor for Internationalization at the University of Naples and coordinates the research area and PhD program on Modeling and Engineering Risk and Complexity of the Scuola Superiore Meridionale, the new School of Advanced Studies located in Naples. On 28th February 2007 he was bestowed the title of Cavaliere of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic for scientific merits from the President of Italy. He was elevated to the grade of Fellow of the IEEE in January 2012 for his contributions to the analysis, control and applications of nonlinear systems and complex networks. In 2009, he was elected President of the Italian Society for Chaos and Complexity for the term 2010-2013. He was re-elected in 2013 for the term 2014-2017. In 2006 and again in 2009 he was elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. From 2011 to 2014 he was Vice President for Financial Activities of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. In 2015 he was appointed to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society where he was elected member in 2022 for the term 2023-2025. He was Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society for the two-year term 2016-2017. His research interests include the analysis, synchronization and control of complex network systems; piecewise-smooth dynamical systems; nonlinear dynamics and nonlinear control with applications to engineering and computational biology. He authored or co-authored more than 220 international scientific publications including more than 110 papers in scientific journals, a research monograph and two edited books. According to the international database SCOPUS (June 2022), his h-index is 51 and his publications received over 11000 citations by other authors. In 2017, he received the IEEE George N. Saridis Best Transactions Paper Award for Outstanding Research. He serves on the Editorial Board of several international scientific journals and conferences. From 1st January 2014 till 31st December 2015 he was Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems: Regular Papers. He is Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and Associate Editor of the IEEE Control Systems Letters, the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control System Society and the European Control Association (EUCA). He was Associate Editor of Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems; the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Sytems I: Regular Papers from 1999 to 2002 and again from 2008 to 2010, and the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Brief papers from 2003 till 2008. He is regularly invited as Plenary Speakers in Italy and abroad. He was Program co-Chair of the European Control Conference 2019, Publicity Chair of the IEEE ISCAS Conference 2018 and has been organizer and co-organizer of several scientific initiatives and events and received funding from several funding agencies and industry including the European Union, the UK research councils the Italian Ministry of Research and University.

Affiliation(s)

University of Naples Federico II

Italy

VP Financial Activities

Jonathan How

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

United States

1 (Northeastern U.S.)

Website

Jonathan How

1 (Northeastern U.S.)

Website

Biography

Jonathan P. How is the Richard C. Maclaurin Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a B.A.Sc. (Aerospace) from the University of Toronto in 1987, and his S.M. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1990 and 1993, respectively, and then studied for 1.5 years at MIT as a postdoctoral associate. Prior to joining MIT in 2000, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. Dr. How was the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Control Systems Magazine (2015-19), an associate editor for the AIAA Journal of Aerospace Information Systems (2012-21) and IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2018-21). He was the Program Vice-chair (tutorials) for the 2021 Conference on Decision and Control and will be the Program Chair for the American Control Conference in 2025. He was elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control System Society (CSS) for 2020-22, is on the IEEE CSS Long Range Planning Committee (2022 – ), is a member of the IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Aerospace Control and the Technical Committee on Intelligent Control, was a member of the IEEE Fellows Selection committee for CSS (2021-22), and since 2021, he serves as the AIAA Director on the American Automatic Control Council. He is also the Director of the Ford-MIT Alliance and was a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) from 2014-17. His research focuses on robust planning and learning under uncertainty with an emphasis on multiagent systems, and he was the planning and control lead for the MIT DARPA Urban Challenge team. His work has been recognized with multiple awards, including being inducted into the University of Toronto Engineering Hall of Distinction (2022), receiving the 2020 IEEE CSS Distinguished Member Award, the 2020 AIAA Intelligent Systems Award, the 2015 AeroLion Technologies Outstanding Paper Award for Unmanned Systems, the 2015 IEEE CSS Video Clip Contest, the 2011 IFAC Automatica award for best applications paper, and the 2002 Institute of Navigation Burka Award. He also received the Air Force Commander's Public Service Award in 2017. He is a Fellow of IEEE (2018) and AIAA (2016) and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2021.

Affiliation(s)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

United States

WiC Co-Chairs

Dennice F. Gayme

Johns Hopkins University

United States

Afef Fekih

University of Louisianan, Lafayette

United States

5 (Southwestern U.S.)

Website

Afef Fekih

5 (Southwestern U.S.)

Website

Biography

Afef Fekih received the BS, MS and PhD degrees all in Electrical Engineering from the National Engineering School of Tunis, Tunisia in 1995, 1998 and 2002, respectively. Since 2016 she has been a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the director of the advanced controls laboratory at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA. Her research interests focus on control theory and applications, including nonlinear and robust control, optimal control, fault tolerant control with applications to power systems, wind turbines, unmanned vehicles and automotive engines. She co-authored more than 200 publications in international journals, chapters, and conference proceedings. Her research was featured by Thomson Reuters Science Watch® Essential Science Indicators and recognized by multiple awards including the Harold Callais/BORSF Professorship in Electrical and Computer Engineering since 2008, the O’Krepki/LEQSF Regents Professorship in Telecommunications since 2018, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Distinguished Professor Award in 2022.

She is an “appointed member” of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2023-2024). A member of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) Technical Committee on Control Education, the IFAC Technical Committee on Power and Energy Systems, and the IEEE Systems Council Diversity & Inclusion Committee. She is currently serving as the Co-Chair for the IEEE CSS Women in Control standing committee (WiC) and served as vice-chair (2020-2022). She co-organized several outreach activities through the IEEE WiC, where she had been serving as advisory board member since 2014, and media coordinator since 2019. She organized and chaired several sessions at international technical conferences. She served as the local arrangements chair for the 2021 American Control Conference. Currently serving as the publications chair for the 2023 American Control Conference and will be serving as the registration chair for the 2024 American Control Conference. Dr. Fekih is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a member of the IEEE Technology conference editorial board. She has served as a reviewer and guest editor for numerous journals and conferences.

Affiliation(s)

University of Louisianan, Lafayette

United States

President

Carolyn Beck

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

United States

Outreach Task Force Chair

Silvia Mastellone

University of Applied Science Northwestern Switzerland

Switzerland

8 (Africa, Europe, Middle East)

Website

Board Member

Melanie Zeilinger

ETH Zurich

Switzerland

Website