President

Current

2023 - 2025

Magnus Egerstedt

University of California, Irvine

United States

Email

Past

2021 - 2022

Thomas Parisini

Imperial College London (UK) and University of Trieste (Italy)

Email

Thomas Parisini

Email

Biography

Thomas Parisini received the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science in 1993 from the University of Genoa. He was with Politecnico di Milano and he currently holds the Chair of Industrial Control and serves as the Head of the Control and Power Research Group at Imperial College London. He is a Deputy Director of the KIOS Research and Innovation Centre of Excellence, University of Cyprus. Since 2001 he is also Danieli Endowed Chair of Automation Engineering with University of Trieste. In 2009-2012 he was Deputy Rector of University of Trieste. In 2018 he received an Honorary Doctorate from University of Aalborg, Denmark. He held a "Scholar-in-Residence" visiting position at Digital Futures-KTH, Stockholm, Sweden. He authored or co-authored a research monograph in the Communication and Control Series, Springer Nature, and over 400 research papers in archival journals, book chapters, and international conference proceedings. He is a co-recipient of the IFAC Best Application Paper Prize of the Journal of Process Control, Elsevier, for the three-year period 2011-2013 and of the 2004 Outstanding Paper Award of the IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks. He is also a recipient of the 2007 IEEE Distinguished Member Award. In 2016, he was awarded as Principal Investigator at Imperial of the H2020 European Union flagship Teaming Project KIOS Research and Innovation Centre of Excellence led by University of Cyprus.

Thomas Parisini has served as the 2021-2022 President of the IEEE Control Systems Society and during 2009-2016 he was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Trans. on Control Systems Technology. Since 2017, he is Editor for Control Applications of Automatica and since 2018 he is the Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Control. Among other activities, 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. Prof. Parisini is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the IFAC.

Affiliation(s)

Imperial College London (UK) and University of Trieste (Italy)

Past

2020 - 2020

Anuradha Annaswamy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

United States

Email

Website

Anuradha Annaswamy

Email

Website

Biography

Dr. Anuradha Annaswamy received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Yale University in 1985. She has been a member of the faculty at Yale, Boston University, and MIT where currently she is the director of the Active-Adaptive Control Laboratory and a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Her research interests pertain to adaptive control theory and applications to aerospace, automotive, and propulsion systems, cyber-physical systems science, and CPS applications to Smart Grids, Smart Cities, and Smart Infrastructures. She is the author of a hundred journal publications and numerous conference publications, co-author of a graduate textbook on adaptive control (2004), co-editor of several reports including “Systems & Control for the future of humanity, research agenda: Current and future roles, impact and grand challenges,” (Elsevier) “IEEE Vision for Smart Grid Control: 2030 and Beyond,” (IEEE Xplore) and Impact of Control Technology, (ieeecss.org/main/IoCT-report, ieeecss.org/general/IoCT2-report).

Dr. Annaswamy has received several awards including the George Axelby and Control Systems Magazine best paper awards from the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS), the Presidential Young Investigator award from NSF, the Hans Fisher Senior Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technische Universität München, the Donald Groen Julius Prize from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, a Distinguished Member Award, and a Distinguished Lecturer Award from IEEE CSS. Dr. Annaswamy is a Fellow of the IEEE and IFAC. She has served as the Vice President for Conference Activities (2014-15) and is currently serving as the VP for Technical Activities (2017-18) in the Executive Committee of the IEEE CSS.

Harvard University

United States

Email

Website

Past

2015 - 2015

Maria Elena Valcher

Università di Padova

Italy

Email

ORCID iD

Past

2014 - 2014

Jay Farrell

University of California, Riverside

United States

Email

Past

2013 - 2013

Yutaka Yamamoto

Kyoto University

Japan

Email

Past

2012 - 2012

Christos G. Cassandras

Boston University

United States

Email

Christos G. Cassandras

Email

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

Past

2011 - 2011

Richard Middleton

University of Newcastle

Australia

Email

Richard Middleton

Email

Biography

Professor Richard H. Middleton was born on 10th December 1961 in Newcastle, Australia. He received his B.Sc. (1983), B.Eng. (Hons-I)(1984) and Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has had visiting appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, and the Hamilton Institute (National University of Ireland Maynooth).

In 1991 he was awarded the Australian Telecommunications and Electronics Research Board Outstanding Young Investigator award. In 1994 he was awarded the Royal Society of New South Wales Edgeworth-David Medal; he was elected to the grade of Fellow of the IEEE starting 1999, and received the M.A. Sargent Award from the Electrical College of Engineers Australia in 2004. He has served as an associate editor, associate editor-at-large and senior editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the IEEE Transactions on Control System Technology, and Automatica, as Head of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Newcastle; as a panel member and sub-panel chair for the Australian Research Council; as Vice President - Member Activities and also as Vice President – Conference Activities of the IEEE Control Systems Society; President (2011) of the IEEE Control Systems Society; as Director of the ARC Centre for Complex Dynamic Systems and Control; a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Control Systems Society, and as a research professor at the Hamilton Institute, The National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

He is currently director of the University of Newcastle Priority Research Centre for Complex Dynamic Systems and Control. His research interests include a broad range of Control Systems Theory and Applications, including Systems Biology.

Affiliation(s)

University of Newcastle

Australia

Past

2010 - 2010

Roberto Tempo

Politecnico di Torino

Italy

Email

Past

2009 - 2009

Tariq Samad

Honeywell Labs

United States

Email

Tariq Samad

Email

Biography

Tariq Samad holds the Honeywell/W.R. Sweatt Chair at the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for the nation’s longest-running M.S. in Management of Technology program and has an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Samad joined TLI in 2016 after a 30-year career with Honeywell, for the last half of which he was a Corporate Fellow with Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions (ACS). During his career with Honeywell, he contributed to and led automation and control technology developments for applications in electric power systems, clean energy, building management, the process industries, automotive engines, unmanned aircraft, and advanced manufacturing. His research interests relate broadly to automation, intelligence, and autonomy for complex engineering systems. In 2015-2016 he also served as the first Global Innovation Leader for the business.

Dr. Samad was the President of the American Automatic Control Council for 2014-15 and the President of the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2009. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of IFAC and the recipient of a few awards including the 2008 IEEE CSS Control Systems Technology Award, a Distinguished Member Award from IEEE CSS, and an IEEE Third Millennium Medal. He is the former editor-in-chief of IEEE Press and has recently launched a new book series for Wiley/IEEE Press on “Technology Management, Innovation, and Leadership.” He is the founding chair of the new Industry Committee for IFAC. Dr. Samad holds 20 patents and has authored or edited over 100 publications. He is currently working on the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Systems and Control (co-editor-in-chief, Springer, 2014). He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Smart Grid Interoperability Panel and he co-led technology deep dives on advanced sensing, controls, and platforms for manufacturing as part of the U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Partnership initiative. Dr. Samad holds a B.S. degree in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

University of Texas, Dallas

United States

Email

Website

Mark Spong

Email

Website

Biography

Mark W. Spong received the Doctor of Science degree in systems science and mathematics in 1981 from Washington University in St. Louis. He has held faculty positions at Lehigh University, Cornell University, and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently, he is a professor of Systems Engineering, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and holder of the Excellence in Education Chair in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. He was Dean of the Jonsson School at UT Dallas from 2008-2017. During his tenure as dean he added four departments of engineering, nine new degree programs, and more than doubled the number of students and faculty. Spong is past president of the IEEE Control Systems Society, and a fellow of both the IEEE and the IFAC. His main research interests are in robotics, mechatronics, and nonlinear control theory. He has authored or coauthored more than 300 technical articles, five books, and holds one patent. His notable awards include the 2018 Bode Lecture Prize from the IEEE Control Systems Society, the 2016 Nyquist Lecture Prize from the ASME, the 2011 Pioneer in Robotics Award from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, the first IROS Fumio Harashima Award for Innovative Technologies in 2007, the Senior Scientist Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Distinguished Member Award from the IEEE Control Systems Society, the John R. Ragazzini and O. Hugo Schuck Awards from the American Automatic Control Council, and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal.

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

United States

Email

Website

Tamer Bașar

Email

Website

Biography

Tamer Basar is the Fredric G. and Elizabeth H. Nearing Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received BSEE from Robert College, Istanbul, in 1969, and the M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D. from Yale University, during 1970-2. After stints at Harvard University and Marmara Research Institute (Gebze, Turkey), he joined UIUC in 1981, where he has been since then with the ECE Department and the Coordinated Science Lab. He has authored or co-authored over 400 publications (including two books and several edited volumes) in the general areas of systems, control, dynamic games, information theory, communication systems and networks, and mathematical economics. He was elected Fellow of IEEE in 1983, and served CSS in various capacities, such as: President (2000), Editor for Techn. Notes & Corresp. for TAC (1992-4), and CDC General Chair (1992) and Program Chair (1989). He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Automatica, the Editor of the Birkhäuser Series: Systems & Control: Foundations & Applications, Managing Editor of the Annals of the International Society of Dynamic Games, and member of editorial and advisory boards of several international journals in control, wireless networks, and applied mathematics. Among some of his recent recognitions are Tau Beta Pi Drucker Eminent Faculty Award of UIUC (2004), election to the National Academy of Engineering (2000), IEEE Millennium Medal (2000), Axelby Outstanding Paper Award (1995) and Distinguished Member Award (1993) of CSS, and Medal of Science of Turkey (1993). He will also receive the Quazza Medal of IFAC in 2005. His current research interests are in routing, pricing, and congestion control in communication networks; control over wired and wireless networks; mobile computing; and robust and risk-sensitive estimation and control.

University of Notre Dame

United States

Past

1996 - 1996

Michael Masten

Texas Instruments, Inc.

United States

Email

Past

1995 - 1995

Derek Atherton

University of Sussex

United Kingdom

Email

Past

1994 - 1994

Herbert Rauch

Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory

United States

Email

Past

1993 - 1993

University of Toronto

Canada

Email

Edward Davison

Email

Biography

Edward J. Davison received the A.R.C.T. degree in piano in 1958, the B.A.Sc. in Engineering -Physics and the M.A. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1960, 1961 respectively, and the Ph.D. degree and Sc.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1964 and 1977, respectively.

He was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Toronto in 1964 – 1966, an Assistant Professor in the Dept of Electrical and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley in 1966 – 1967, and an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor in the ECE Department, University of Toronto, in 1967 – 1968, 1968 – 1974, 1974 – 2001 respectively. He was appointed a University Professor, Dept. of ECE, University of Toronto in 2001 and University Professor Emeritus, in 2004.

He was inducted into the University of Toronto’s Engineering Alumni Hall of Distinction in 2003 and was awarded the Electrical and Computer Engineering Club Teaching Award in 2002. He has been a Designated Consulting Engineer of the Association of Professional Engineers of the Province of Ontario since 1979 and was President of Electrical Engineering Consociates Ltd., 1997 – 1999. His research interests are in the area of Control Systems Theory and Automation, with a particular interest in Large Scale Systems, Decentralized Control, Robustness, Controller Design of Large Flexible Space Structures, and Process Control. He has published over 500 research papers, of which one of his papers (1966) has appeared in the Citation Index of Current Contents, and two of his papers have been chosen for best paper awards in the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (1973), (1980).

The Ohio State University

United States

Email

Jose B. Cruz, Jr.

Email

Biography

Jose B. Cruz, Jr. received the B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of the Philippines (UP), April 1953, S.M. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), June 1956, and the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, October 1959.

He is Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University (OSU). Previously, he served as Dean of the College of Engineering at OSU from 1992 to 1997, and as a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California in Irvine (UCI) from 1986 to 1992 and at the University of Illinois from 1965 to 1986. He was a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard University in 1973 and visiting associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964–1965. He served as instructor at UP 1953–1954 and research assistant at MIT, 1954–1956.

Dr. Cruz, Jr., is the author or coauthor of six books, 23 chapters in research books, and more than 250 articles in research journals and refereed conference proceedings. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 1980, Chair of the NAE Electronic Engineering Peer Committee 2003, NAE Membership Committee 2003–2007, and he was elected a corresponding member of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST, Philippines) in 2003. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), elected 1989; a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), elected in 2004; a Fellow of IFAC, elected in 2007; recipient, Curtis W. McGraw Research Award of ASEE, 1972; recipient, Halliburton Engineering Education Leadership Award, 1981; Distinguished Member, IEEE Control Systems Society, designated in 1983; recipient, IEEE Centennial Medal, 1984; recipient, IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award, 1989; recipient, ASEE Centennial Medal, 1993; and recipient, Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award, American Automatic Control Council (AACC), 1994.

In addition to membership in ASEE, AAAS, NAE, NAST, he is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), the Philippine American Association for Science and Engineering (PAASE, Founding member 1980, Founding President-Elect 1981, Chairman of the Board 1998–2000), Philippine Engineers and Scientists Organization (PESO), National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), Sigma Xi, Phi Kappa Phi, and Eta Kappa Nu.

He has served on various professional society boards and editorial boards, and he served as an officer of professional societies, including IEEE wherein he was President of the IEEE Control Systems Society in 1979, Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, a member of the IEEE Board of Directors from 1980 to 1985, IEEE Vice President for Technical Activities in 1982 and 1983, and IEEE Vice President for Publication Activities in 1984 and 1985. He served as Chair of the Engineering Section of AAAS in 2004–2005. He served as a member of the Board of Examiners for Professional Engineers for the State of Illinois, 1984–1986

Past

1970 - 1970

John Zaborszky

Washington University

United States

Email

Past

1968 - 1969

Nathaniel Nichols

Aerospace Corporation

United States

Nathaniel Nichols

Biography

Nathaniel B. Nichols (1914–1997) was an American control engineer who made significant contributions to the field of control theory. He is well known for his book Theory of Servomechanisms, one of the most widely read books in control engineering.

Nichols received a B.S. in chemistry in 1936 from Central Michigan University, and an M.S. in physics from the University of Michigan in 1937.

He was President of the IEEE Control Systems Society in 1968 and the American Automatic Control Council in 1974 and in 1975; and a recipient of the Rufus Oldenburger Medal (1969) and the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award (1980).

Nathaniel B. Nichols was born in Nottawa Township, Mich., USA, Nichols received a B.S. in chemistry in 1936 from Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Mich., and an M.S. in physics from the University of Michigan in 1937.

He was a Servo Group leader at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass., USA, from 1942-46, where he developed automatic radar tracking and fire control computers, and power-driven servomechanisms. He was director of research at Taylor Instrument Company from 1946-50 and later became chief engineer at Taylor. He joined Aerospace Corporation, San Bernadino, Calif., in 1963 as director of the sensing and information division, and retired in 1987.

In 1996 the International Federation of Automatic Control established the Nathaniel B. Nichols Medal to be awarded for distinguished achievements in control engineering. In addition, the Nichols Chart, the Ziegler-Nichols PID tuning algorithms, and the classic MIT Radiation Lab book "Theory of Servomechanisms," co-authored by Nichols, are cornerstones of control practice.

Affiliation(s)

Aerospace Corporation

United States

Past

1966 - 1967

Louis Kazda

University of Michigan

United States

Past

1965 - 1965

Hugo Schuck

Honeywell, Inc.

United States

Past

1963 - 1964

Harold Chestnut

General Electric Corporation

United States

Past

1961 - 1962

John Salzer

Hughes Research & Development Laboratories (retired)

United States

Past

1959 - 1960

A Historical Listing

Incumbent(s)