Distinguished Lecturer Chair

Current

2025 - 2025

Sanjay Lall

Stanford University

United States

Past

2021 - 2023

Masayuki Fujita

University of Tokyo

Japan

Email

Website

Masayuki Fujita

Email

Website

Biography

Masayuki Fujita is a Professor at The University of Tokyo and a Visiting Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is also the Vice President of SICE in 2020. He was the Research Supervisor for Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) during 2012-2019. He received the Dr. of Eng. degree in Electrical Engineering from Waseda University, Tokyo, in 1987. Prior to his appointment at The University of Tokyo, he held professor/faculty appointments at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Kanazawa University and Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His research interests include passivity-based control in robotics and robust control. He is the coauthor of the book "Passivity-Based Control and Estimation in Networked Robotics" (Springer, 2015). He was the CSS Vice President Conference Activities and a member of CSS Board of Governors. He served as the General Chair of the 2010 IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control. He was also the Director of SICE, the Head of SICE Technical Division on Control, the Chair of SICE Technical Committee on Control Theory. He served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, Automatica, Asian Journal of Control, and an Editor for the SICE Journal of Control, Measurement, and System Integration. He is a recipient of the 2008 IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award, was a Plenary Lecturer of 54th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in 2015, and was an IEEE Control System Society Distinguished Lecturer during 2017-2019. He also received the 2010 SICE Education Award and the Outstanding Paper Awards from the SICE and ISCIE. He is a Fellow of IEEE and SICE.

Affiliation(s)

University of Tokyo

Japan

Past

2000 - 2020

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.

Affiliation(s)

Honeywell Labs

United States

Incumbent(s)

Sanjay Lall

Masayuki Fujita

Tariq Samad