Soon-Jo Chung

Biography

Soon-Jo Chung is the Bren Professor of Aerospace in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT).  Prof. Chung is also a Research Scientist of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Prof. Chung received the S.M. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Sc.D. degree in Estimation and Control with a minor in Optics from MIT in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He received the B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from KAIST in 1998 (school class rank 1/120).

From 2009 to 2016, Prof. Chung was an associate professor and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prof. Chung was a Member of the Guidance & Control Analysis Group in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a JPL Summer Faculty Research Fellow and Faculty Affiliate working on distributed small satellites during the summers of 2010-2014.  Professor Chung's research focuses on distributed spacecraft systems, space autonomous systems, and aerospace robotics, and in particular, on the theory and application of complex nonlinear dynamics, control, estimation, guidance, and navigation of autonomous space and air vehicles. He is the recipient of the UIUC Engineering Dean's Award for Excellence in Research, the Beckman Faculty Fellowship of the U of Illinois Center for Advanced Study, the AFOSR Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, the NSF CAREER award, three best conference paper awards (2015 AIAA GNC, 2009 AIAA Infotech, 2008 IEEE EIT), and three best student paper or finalist awards. He also received multiple teaching awards including the UIUC List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent and the instructor/advisor for the 1st place national winning team of the AIAA Undergraduate Team Space Design Competition.

Prof. Chung is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, and AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. He was the lead guest editor of the Special Section on Aerial Swarm Robotics published in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.