AACC Awards for 2009

The American Automatic Control Council presents a series of five awards each year to recognize excellence and achievement for technological, scientific, and educational contributions in the field of automatic control. These Awards, along with the Best Student Paper Award, will be presented at the 2009 ACC Awards Ceremony on Thursday June 11, 2009.

Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award – George Leitmann, University of California, Berkeley

The Richard E. Bellman Award is given for distinguished career contributions to the theory or application of automatic control. It is the highest recognition of professional achievement for US control systems engineers and scientists. The recipient must have spent a significant part of his/her career in the United States of America.

“For pioneering contributions to geometric optimal control, quantitative and qualitative differential games, and stabilization and control of deterministic uncertain systems, and for exemplary service to the control field.”

George Leitmann is a Professor Emeritus of engineering science and associate Dean for International Relations at the University of California, Berkeley. His 50+year Berkeley career has included everything from research and teaching to serving as the first ombudsman in the UC system.

During seven years at the US Naval Ordnance Test Station, China Lake, he worked mostly on rocket trajectory optimization and testing.  He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1957. With the beginning of his appointment at UC in 1957 he began to extend his work in variational calculus and optimal control theory, both in theory and applications, some of which is contained in an introductory text (1967) and two edited volumes (1965 and '69), later expanded to a basic text (1981). This work was awarded the Goddard aerospace and the flight mechanics awards of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. That in turn led to research in dynamical game theory and its applications, which can be found in three books (1966, 1967 and 1974) and numerous edited volumes. In the early 1970's and extending into the 1990's, this led to research on robust control with applications to uncertain systems in engineering, science, economics and management for which he was awarded the Levy medal of the Franklin Institute and more recently the first Isaacs Award of the International Society of Dynamic Games. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering as well as of six foreign academies of science and engineering, and he holds three honorary doctorates.

Since emeritation in 1991, he has returned to earlier work in the calculus of variations, especially numerous extensions of a 1967 paper, which are based on the methodology of equivalent problem solutions and regularizing transformations, which simplify the classical approach of Caratheodory. Lately, he has also turned to topics of more recent interest such as an analysis of the dynamics of terrorism. Professionally, he edited or co-edited over a dozen journals including the largest and arguably the most prestigious journal of mathematical analysis and applications founded by Richard Bellman, the latter as editor for sixteen years. Since so many of Professor Leitmann's doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows were international ones and his interests always transcended the US border, he became very involved with international collaborations, was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Prize in 1980 and subsequently the A. von Humboldt medal and the Werner Heisenberg medal of the A. von Humboldt Foundation.

John R. Ragazzini Control Education Award – George Stephanopoulos, MIT

The John R. Ragazzini Award is given to recognize outstanding contributions to automatic control education in any form. These contributions can be from any source and in any media, e.g. electronic or print publications, courses, etc.

“For outstanding contributions in process control and systems engineering education through classroom teaching, textbook and monograph publication, and graduate student mentorship.”

George Stephanopoulos is Arthur D. Little Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 1970, a Masters in Engineering degree from McMaster University in 1971, and a Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1974. Before joining MIT, George was a professor at the University of Minnesota and the National Technical University of Athens. From 2000-2005 he held various positions with the Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation including as Chief Technology Officer from 2000-2002. His research interests have spanned process design; process monitoring, diagnosis and control; data rectification; knowledge-based methods; multi-scale systems; and systems biology. George is the author or editor for more than 10 books, monographs, and collections, with his textbook on chemical process control available in English, Greek, and Chinese.

George’s professional service includes: (1) Program Chair for many systems and control meetings including the IFAC Symposium on Fault Diagnosis and Supervision; the IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Systems and Process Engineering; and the IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems; (2) American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Representative to the Board of Directors of the American Automatic Control Council; and (3) Director, Vice Chair, and Chair of the Computing and Systems Technology Division of AIChE. He was a consultant and member of the advisory board of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. George’s accomplishments in research and education have been recognized by many honors and awards including the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher and Scholar Award; the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award from the American Society for Engineering Education; the AIChE Allan P. Colburn Award for Excellence in Publications; the AIChE William H. Walker Award for Excellence in Contributions to the Chemical Engineering Literature; and membership in the National Academy of Engineering.

Control Engineering Practice Award – Suresh M. Joshi, NASA Langley Research Center

The Control Engineering Practice Award is given to one individual or one team to be selected from those nominated for a significant contribution to the advancement of control practice. The primary criterion for selection will be for the application and implementation of innovative control concepts, methodology, and technology, for the planning, design, manufacture, and operation of control systems. Achievement and usefulness will be evidenced by the benefit to society and by the degree of acceptance by those who use control as a tool. The work on which the nomination is based must have been performed while the nominated individual or at least one member of the team was a resident of the USA.

“For outstanding contributions to control systems analysis and synthesis methodologies for advanced aerospace vehicles and systems”

Suresh M. Joshi is Senior Scientist for Control Theory at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. He received his BS and MS degrees from India (Banaras University and IIT-Kanpur) and his PhD in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY (1973).

His main research interests have been various aspects of multivariable control theory and design with applications to advanced aerospace vehicles and systems. Some of his research contributions include: novel decoupled control laws for space-based high-precision pointing systems; fundamental theory and design methods for robust attitude control and vibration suppression for flexible spacecraft; control methods for robustly stable closed-loop maneuvering of nonlinear multibody flexible spacecraft; control of dynamic systems in the presence of actuator and sensor nonlinearities; active noise control methods; and more recently, adaptive control methods for dynamic systems in the presence of anomalies  and failures with application to aircraft. He also served as a key technical leader in NASA’s Control-Structure Interaction (CSI) program, which incorporated his dissipativity-based robust control design methods to produce an integrated control-structure design methodology for optimal spacecraft design. In addition to control systems, his technical interests also include digital signal processing, digital communications, target tracking, and active control of noise.

Joshi is the author/coauthor of over 200 publications including 3 books in control engineering and aerospace applications. He is a Fellow of the IEEE (1993), the AIAA (1994), and the ASME (1998), and a recipient of the IEEE Control System Technology Award (1995), IEEE Judith A. Resnik Award (2003), ASME-DSCD Charles S. Draper Innovative Practice Award (2006), and IEEE Region 3 (Southeastern US) Outstanding Engineer Award (2007).  He is also an amateur cartoonist and contributed the “Out of Control” cartoons to the IEEE Control Systems Magazine form 1985 until 1994.

Donald P. Eckman Award – Paulo Tabuada, University of California at Los Angeles

The Donald P. Eckman Award recognizes an outstanding young engineer in the field of automatic control. The recipient must be younger than 35 years on January 1 of the year of the award. Contributions may be technical or scientific publications, theses, patents, inventions, or combinations of the above in the field of automatic control made while the recipient was a resident of the USA.

“For pioneering contributions in the design and implementation of hybrid and embedded control systems.”

Paulo Tabuada was born in Lisbon, Portugal, one year after the Carnation Revolution. He received his "Licenciatura" degree in Aerospace Engineering from Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal in 1998 and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2002 from the Institute for Systems and Robotics, a private research institute associated with Instituto Superior Tecnico. Between January 2002 and July 2003 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. After spending 3 years at the University of Notre Dame, as an Assistant Professor, he joined the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he directs the Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory.

Paulo Tabuada was the recipient of the Francisco de Holanda prize in 1998 for the best research project with an artistic or aesthetic component. He was a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at the 2001 American Control Conference and at the 2001 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, as a student, and at the 2008 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, as an advisor. He was the recipient of a NSF CAREER award in 2005 and of the 2009 Donald P. Eckman award from the American Automatic Control Council. He is an IEEE Senior Member, co-edited the volume Networked Embedded Sensing and Control published by Springer, co-chaired the International Conference Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control 2009 (HSCC'09), and serves as an associate editor for the IEEE Embedded Systems Letters. His latest book, on verification and control of hybrid systems, will be published by Springer during the summer of 2009.

His research interests include modeling, analysis, and control of real-time, embedded, networked, and distributed systems; geometric control theory, and mathematical systems theory.

O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award

The O. Hugo Schuck Awards are given to recognize the best two papers presented at the previous ACC. One award is for a paper emphasizing contributions to theory and the other for a paper emphasizing significant or innovative applications. Criteria for selection include the quality of the written and oral presentation, the technical contribution, timeliness, and practicality.

O. Hugo Schuck Award for Best Application Paper at the 2008 ACC

K. Stegath, N. Sharma, C. M. Gregory, and W. E. Dixon, “Nonlinear Tracking Control of a Human Limb via Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation”

Warren Dixon received his Ph.D. in 2000 from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Clemson University. After completing his doctoral studies he was selected as an Eugene P. Wigner Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) where he worked in the Robotics and Energetic Systems Group. In 2004, he joined the faculty of the University of Florida in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. Dr. Dixon’s main research interest has been the development and application of Lyapunov-based control techniques for uncertain nonlinear systems. He has published 2 books, an edited collection, 4 chapters, and over 170 refereed journal and conference papers. Dr. Dixon was awarded the 2001 ORNL Early Career Award for Engineering Achievement for his contributions to Lyapunov-based control methods. He was awarded the 2004 DOE Outstanding Mentor Award for his student advising at ORNL. He was awarded a NSF CAREER award in 2006 for new development and application of Lyapunov-based control methods. He was also awarded the 2006 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Early Academic Career Award. Dr. Dixon is a senior member of IEEE. He serves on several technical committees and conference program committees. He also serves on the conference editorial board for the IEEE CSS and RAS and the ASME DSC. He served as an appointed member to the IEEE CSS Board of Governors for 2008. He is currently an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics: Part B Cybernetics, Automatica, International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, and Journal of Robotics.

Chris Gregory received his Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology from the University of Georgia in 2002 and completed subsequent post-doctoral training in muscle biology at the University of Florida in 2005. Dr. Gregory received a Career Development Award (level I) from the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2005 and was named to the faculty at University of Florida in 2006 as a Research Assistant Professor. Dr. Gregory’s research focuses on the study of skeletal muscle form and function. Specifically, he studies the impact that skeletal muscle characteristics have on functional performance in a variety of populations that experience muscle atrophy following periods of disuse. Currently, his research is aimed at examining factors that impact fatigability during application of electrical stimulation to human skeletal muscle with the goal of developing therapeutic interventions to assist persons with neurological injuries during functional tasks (including performance of regular exercise). Dr. Gregory incorporates a combination of techniques including dynamometric assessments, electrophysiological testing, biomechanical analyses and magnetic resonance techniques to investigate human skeletal muscle in-vivo. Dr. Gregory was recently awarded a Career Development Award (level II) from the Department of Veterans Affairs as well as a Rehabilitation Research Career Development Award (K12) from the National Institutes of Health.  During his career, Dr. Gregory has published over 80 manuscripts, conference proceedings, book chapters and abstracts on topics including muscle physiology, biochemistry, exercise and electrical stimulation of skeletal muscle.  Dr. Gregory is a member of the American Physiological Society, American Physical Therapy Association and the American College of Sports Medicine.

Nitin Sharma received his B.E. degree in Industrial Engineering from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology (Currently, Thapar University), Patiala, India in 2004. After finishing his studies, he worked as an Assistant Manager in Maruti Suzuki Ltd., Gurgaon, India till 2006. He is currently working toward the PhD degree in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville.

Keith Stegath was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, in 1957. He received the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering and the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florida in 2007 and 2005. He has initiated several businesses ventures and currently has a contract with the International Fund for Animal Welfare to develop a robot whose purpose is to disentangle whales from rope and netting.

O. Hugo Schuck Award for Best Theory Paper at the 2008 ACC

Robert D. Gregg and Mark W. Spong, “Reduction-based Control with Application to Three Dimensional Bipedal Walking Robots”

Robert D. Gregg received the B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley in May 2006 and the M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in December 2007.  He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois, under the direction of Mark W. Spong.  His main research interest is in the control of complex high-dimensional robotic systems, particularly dynamic walking bipeds in three dimensions.

Robert received the Best Student Paper Award of the 2008 American Control Conference in Seattle, WA for his work on reduction-based control and directional dynamic walking.  He is a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society, and is the elected graduate student representative of the faculty Senate Executive Committee at the University of Illinois.  He has also served on the Organizing Committees of the 2008 Coordinated Science Laboratory Student Conference and the 2009 University of Illinois Student Interdisciplinary Conference.

Mark W. Spong is Dean of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and the Lars Magnus Ericsson Professor in Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. Prior to joining UT Dallas he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was the Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory.

Dr. Spong received the B.A. degree, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in mathematics and physics from Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio in 1975, the M.S. degree in mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1977, and the M.S. and D.Sc. degrees in systems science and mathematics in 1979 and 1981, respectively, from Washington University in St. Louis.

He was the 2005 President of the IEEE Control Systems Society. He was Vice President for Publication Activities of the IEEE Control Systems Society from 2000-2002, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology from 1997-2000, and a member of its Board of Governors from 1994-2002. His research interests are in nonlinear control theory and robotics. He has published over 250 technical articles in control and robotics and is co-author of four books.

Dr. Spong is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Distinguished Member of the IEEE Control Systems Society. His recent awards include the 2008 IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award, the 2007 IROS Fumio Harashima Award for Innovative Technologies, the Senior Scientist Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, and the O. Hugo Schuck Award and John R. Ragazzini Award from the American Automatic Control Council.