George J. Pappas

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."