TC-AC Roster | IEEE Control Systems Society

AC Chair

Gokhan Inalhan

The Sloane Institute

United States

Gokhan Inalhan

Biography

Gokhan Inalhan received the B.Sc. degree in aeronautical engineering from Istanbul Technical University, İstanbul, Turkey, in 1997, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, in 1998 and 2004, respectively.

After working as a Postdoctoral Associate with Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2004 to 2006, he joined the faculty at Istanbul Technical University where he served as the Director of Controls and Avionics Laboratory (2006–2016) and the Director-General of Aerospace Research Centre (2016–2019). He is currently BAE Systems Chair, a Professor of Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence and the Deputy Head of Centre for Autonomous and Cyber-Physical Systems at Cranfield University. He has led and managed numerous grants and industrial projects from FP7, H2020, SESAR, EC Marie-Currie, EPSRC, Boeing, BAE Systems and major Euro-Asian aerospace, defence and aviation companies. He leads the research theme on autonomous systems and artificial intelligence within the School of Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing at Cranfield University. He and his research group focus on design, modeling, GNC, resilience, and security aspects of autonomy and artificial intelligence for air, defense, transportation, and space systems. Current research themes include advanced flight controls and reinforcement learning for autonomous systems, human–autonomy interaction in team concept, urban air and cargo mobility, ATM/UTM, data analytics driven digital twin and surrogate modeling, explainable AI for trustworthy autonomous systems.

Dr. Inalhan and his research are recipient of awards such as IEEE AESS Exceptional Service Award, Boeing Faculty Fellowship, Council of Higher Education Outstanding Achievement and TUBITAK Innovation Success Stories. He has been serving in science, technology, and Advisory Boards of various government and commercial entities and he is a member of the general assembly of ASDA and Eurocontrol Agency Research Team. His professional service span technical committees (IEEE TCAC, AIAA GNC TC), program and editorial boards in which he has been leading themes including autonomy, intelligent systems, and transportation for IEEE CCTA, ICRAT, SESAR SID, and AIAA GNC. He is currently the Technical Editor of IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems: Autonomous Systems. He is a Life-Time Member and Associate Fellow of AIAA.

Affiliation(s)

The Sloane Institute

United States

AC Member

Robert Anderson

Collins Aerospace

United States

Finn Ankersen

European Space Agency

Johannes Autenrieb

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Germany

Mohammad Ayoubi

Santa Clara Universty

United States

Efstathios Bakolas

The University of Texas at Austin

United States

Website

Alec Bateman

Barron Associates, Inc.

United States

Website

Randy Beard

Brigham Young University

United States

Dennis Bernstein

University of Michigan

United States

Justin Bradley

North Carolina State University

United States

Giordana Bucchioni

University of Pisa

Italy

James Buffington

Lockheed Martin

United States

Laurent Burlion

Rutgers University

United States

Website

Elisa Capello

Poilitechnic of Turin

Italy

David Casbeer

Air Force Research Laboratory

United States

Paolo Castaldi

University of Bologna

Italy

Website

Paolo Castaldi

Website

Biography

Prof. Paolo Castaldi received the Master Degree cum laude in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D in System Engineering from UNIBO. He is Associate Professor at Department of Electric, Electronic and Information Engineering of the University of Bologna “Guglielmo Marconi” and has got the Italian Scientific Habilitation as Full Professor. Paolo Castaldi published a research book, several book chapters and more than 250 Scopus refereed journal and conference papers.

He has been plenary speaker, organizer, and program chair. He has been coordinator and member of several research and industrial projects involving experimental aircraft. He is chair of the IFAC TC 7.3 on Aerospace, Member of IEEE TC on Aerospace, Chair of IFAC subcommittee on Coordination of Educational Activities with IEEE and Other Organizations and member of IFAC TC on Education and marine System. Since 2015 he has been Associated Editor of Control Engineering Practice and from 2026 Senior Editor. He is also Associate Editor of the Journal of Franklin Institute, Aerospace Engineering Journal (Wiley) and since 2022 of Frontiers in Control Engineering. He has the license as Private Pilot (PPL) and for piloting drones till 24 kg and has been coordinator of several Permit to Fly procedures. For 25 years has been teaching the course “Advanced Guidance and Control for Aircraft and Spacecraft” for the Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering. His research interests include Intelligent Control of Aerospace and Marine systems, Fault Diagnosis and Fault Tolerant Control, Nonlinear Geometric Approach Theory, Fractional System Control, Predictive Maintenance, Neuro-Fuzzy Systems and System Identification. These techniques have been applied to UAV and experimental aircraft, marine drones, industrial processes, power plants and renewable energy conversion systems such wind turbine and wind farm.

Affiliation(s)

University of Bologna

Italy

Wen-Hua Chen

Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Hong Kong SAR China

Richard Chiang

The Aerospace Corporation

United States

Soon-Jo Chung

California Institute of Technology

United States

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.

Affiliation(s)

California Institute of Technology

United States

Venanzio Cichella

University of Iowa

United States

Website

Raghvendra V. Cowlagi

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

United States

K. Merve Dogan

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

United States

Christopher Eaton

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

United States

Giusy Falcone

University of Michigan

United States

James Richard Forbes

McGill University

Canada

Website

Alessandro Freddi

Università Politecnica delle Marche

Italy

Website

Paul Freeman

Northrup Grumman

United States

Kingsley Fregene

Lockheed Martin

United States

David Fugate

L3 Harris, Aerojet Rocketdyne Segment

United States

Mario Garcia

Public University of Navarra

Kunal Garg

Arizona State University

United States

Website

Dimitry Gorinevsky

Stanford University

United States

Irene Gregory

Ascent Intelligent Control, LLC

United States

Fred Hadaegh

NASA

United States

Astghik Hakobyan

CSIE NPUA

Armenia

Naira Hovakimyan

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

United States

Website

Naira Hovakimyan

Website

Biography

Naira Hovakimyan received her MS degree in Applied Mathematics from Yerevan State University in Armenia. She got her Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics from the Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. She is currently W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the Director of AVIATE Center of UIUC. She has co-authored two books, eleven patents and more than 500 refereed publications. She is the 2011 recipient of AIAA Mechanics and Control of Flight Award, the 2015 recipient of SWE Achievement Award, the 2017 recipient of IEEE CSS Award for Technical Excellence in Aerospace Controls, and the 2019 recipient of AIAA Pendray Aerospace Literature Award. In 2014 she was awarded the Humboldt prize for her lifetime achievements. In 2015 and 2023 she was awarded the UIUC Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising. In 2024 she was recognized as the winner of the College Award for Excellence in Translational Research, and in 2025 she was recognized for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring. She is Fellow of AIAA, IEEE, ASME, IFAC, and senior member of National Academy of Inventors. She is a co-founder and chief scientist of Intelinair. Her work in robotics for elderly care was featured in the New York Times, on Fox TV, CNBC, and her recent NASA ULI award on flying cars led her to a live interview on Cheddar Innovates and many other media platforms. Her research interests are in control and optimization, autonomous systems, machine learning, neural networks, game theory, and their applications in aerospace, robotics, mechanical, agricultural, electrical, petroleum, biomedical engineering, and elderly care.

Affiliation(s)

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

United States

Jonathan How

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

United States

1 (Northeastern U.S.)

Website

Jonathan How

1 (Northeastern U.S.)

Website

Biography

Jonathan P. How is the Richard C. Maclaurin Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a B.A.Sc. (Aerospace) from the University of Toronto in 1987, and his S.M. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1990 and 1993, respectively, and then studied for 1.5 years at MIT as a postdoctoral associate. Prior to joining MIT in 2000, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. Dr. How was the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Control Systems Magazine (2015-19), an associate editor for the AIAA Journal of Aerospace Information Systems (2012-21) and IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2018-21). He was the Program Vice-chair (tutorials) for the 2021 Conference on Decision and Control and will be the Program Chair for the American Control Conference in 2025. He was elected to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control System Society (CSS) for 2020-22, is on the IEEE CSS Long Range Planning Committee (2022 – ), is a member of the IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Aerospace Control and the Technical Committee on Intelligent Control, was a member of the IEEE Fellows Selection committee for CSS (2021-22), and since 2021, he serves as the AIAA Director on the American Automatic Control Council. He is also the Director of the Ford-MIT Alliance and was a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) from 2014-17. His research focuses on robust planning and learning under uncertainty with an emphasis on multiagent systems, and he was the planning and control lead for the MIT DARPA Urban Challenge team. His work has been recognized with multiple awards, including being inducted into the University of Toronto Engineering Hall of Distinction (2022), receiving the 2020 IEEE CSS Distinguished Member Award, the 2020 AIAA Intelligent Systems Award, the 2015 AeroLion Technologies Outstanding Paper Award for Unmanned Systems, the 2015 IEEE CSS Video Clip Contest, the 2011 IFAC Automatica award for best applications paper, and the 2002 Institute of Navigation Burka Award. He also received the Air Force Commander's Public Service Award in 2017. He is a Fellow of IEEE (2018) and AIAA (2016) and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2021.

Affiliation(s)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

United States

Richard A. Hull

Collins Aerospace

United States

Heather Hussain

Boeing

United States

Inseok Hwang

Purdue University

United States

Sungwan Kim

Seoul National University

South Korea

Ilya Kolmanovsky

University of Michigan

United States

ORCID iD

Deniz Kurtoglu

University of South Florida

United States

Moussa Labbadi

Bretagne INP, IRDL–UMR CNRS 6027

France

Website

Andrea L'Afflitto

Virginia Tech

United States

Fred Levi

AFOSR

United States

Richard Ling

Honeywell

Brett Lopez

UCLA

United States

Martina Mammarella

CNR-IEIIT

Italy

Website

Antonio Amor Menezes

University of Florida

United States

Website

Claudia Moreno Chicumque

Northrup Grumman

United States

Ramy Mourad

Boeing

Arnab Mukherjee

IIT Bombay

India

Negar Nazari

UC Berkeley

United States

Marco Nicotra

University of Colorado, Boulder

United States

Website

Mike Oppenheimer

Air Force Research Laboratory (Wright-Patterson)

United States

Radhakant Padhi

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

India

Radhakant Padhi

Biography

Prof. Radhakant Padhi earned his Masters in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1996, followed by his Ph.D. from Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST) – Rolla, USA, in 2001. After two years of postdoctoral studies, he joined the Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as a faculty member in December 2003, where currently he a full professor. He has briefly served the Defence Research and Development Organisation of India as a scientist during 1996-1997.

Prof. Padhi’s research interests are in the broad area of systems theory and applications, with emphasis on synthesis algorithms in optimal control, nonlinear control, intelligent control and state estimation. He works on diverse application areas such as guidance and control of aerospace vehicles, target tracking for guidance, integrated guidance control and estimation, automatic drug delivery for biomedical systems, control of distributed parameter systems and industrial process control. He has more than 240 publications in international journals and conferences, three of which have been cited more than 100 times. Two of his books (one on Satellite Formation Flying and one on Applied Optimal Control and State Estimation) are going to be published soon by Springer and Wiley respectively. The nonlinear and optimal guidance and control algorithms developed by him are of wide applicability across various disciplines and have been accepted well across the globe.

Prof. Padhi is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE), a Fellow of the Institution of Electronics and Communication Engineers (IETE), a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers (India), an Associate Fellow of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a Senior Member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a member of the Council of International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). He is a Technical Committee member of Aerospace Control in both IEEE and IFAC. He is a life member of the Aeronautical Society of India, Systems Society of India and Soft Computing Research Society of India. He is a steering committee member of the Asian Control Association as well, representing India. He has received several awards for his valuable research contributions as well, the most recent being the Excellence in Aerospace Education award from the Aeronautical Society of India. He is currently an associate editor of three journals, namely IFAC Mechatronics, Unmanned Systems, and Intl. J. of Aeronautical & Space Sciences. He has executed over 25 industry-sponsored research projects and delivered several keynote and plenary talks in various conferences.

Affiliation(s)

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

India

Dimitra Panagou

University of Michigan

United States

Rushabh Patel

Systems Technology

United States

Christopher Petersen

USAF

United States

Sean Phillips

Air Force Research Laboratory

United States

Website

Anna Prach

Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology

Singapore

Zhihua Qu

Professor

University of Central Florida

United States

Camille-Alain Rabbath

Defense Research and Development Canada and Queen’s University

Canada

Guilherme Raffo

Federal University of Minas Gerais

Brazil

Lawrence Robertson

Air Force Research Laboratory (Kirtland)

United States

Amit Sanyal

Syracuse University

United States

Website

Miguel Sanz

Universidad Publica de Navarra

Spain

Islam A. Shehata

Khalifa University

United Arab Emirates

Hyo-Sang Shin

KAIST

South Korea

Carlos Silvestre

University of Macau/IST Lisbon

Portugal

Daniel de Matos Silvestre

NOVA University of Lisbon

Portugal

Abhinav Sinha

University of Cincinnati

United States

Margareta Stefanovic

University of Denver

United States

Website

Dr. Kamesh Subbarao

University of Texas, Arlington

Dr. Kamesh Subbarao

Biography

Director of the Aerospace Systems Laboratory in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington. He received his BTech from the IIT, Kanpur (1993), M.E. from the IISc, Bangalore (1995), and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University (2001), all in aerospace engineering. He worked as an Applications Developer at MathWorks (2001–2003) in the Controls and Systems Identification and Estimation Toolboxes group. From 1995 to 1998, Dr. Subbarao was at the Aeronautical Development Agency in Bangalore, where he contributed to the verification and validation of the flight control laws for India's indigenous light combat aircraft leading to airworthiness certification. Since joining UT Arlington, he has contributed in the areas of flight mechanics and control, astrodynamics, nonlinear and adaptive control, linear and nonlinear filtering/estimation, cooperation and coordination for multiple unmanned vehicles subject to measurement uncertainties and distributed time delays. Dr. Subbarao's research has been funded largely by ONR, NASA, NSF, AFRL, DARPA, and Lockheed Martin. He received the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company Excellence in Teaching Award (2016), President's Excellence in Teaching Award (Tenured) 2021, and College of Engineering Teaching Award, 2022. He also received the AIAA Foundation Graduate Award for “Model Reference Adaptive Control” (2001). He is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the American Astronautical Society, Associate Fellow of AIAA and Senior Member of IEEE and ASME. He has authored over 200 journal and peer-reviewed conference publications and is the Associate Editor for the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics and the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control.

Affiliation(s)

University of Texas, Arlington

Wei Sun

University of Oklahoma

United States

Vassilios Tsachouridis

Collins Aerospace

Ireland

Ercument Turkoglu

University of Tarsus

Turkey

Kamran Turkoglu

Applied Intuition

United States

Vasileios Tzoumas

University of Michigan

United States

James Usevitch

Brigham Young University

United States

Rafael Vazquez

Universidad de Sevilla

Spain

Website

John Wagner

Clemson University

United States

Wenbin Wan

University of New Mexico

United States

Website

Kevin Wise

Boeing

United States

Kevin Wise

Biography

Kevin A. Wise is a VP, Distinguished Senior Technical Fellow, Flight Controls, in The Boeing Company, is President and CEO of Innovative Control Technologies (INNCON), LLC, and is a Chief Advisor at Kelda Dynamics in Norway. He received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1980, 82, and 87, respectively. Since joining Boeing in 1982, he has developed vehicle management systems, flight control systems, and control system design tools and processes for advanced piloted and unpiloted aircraft and weapon systems. Some programs include T-7A Redhawk, KC-46 Tanker boom, 777X, Dominator UAS, Phantom Eye Hydrogen Powered UAS, QF-16 Full Scale Aerial Target, X-45 J-UCAS, X-36, SDB and JDAM, and HAVE SLICK. At INNCON, Dr. Wise teaches workshops in dynamics and control and has developed advanced drilling solutions leveraging aerospace technologies to improve oil and gas production, setting new drilling records in Texas. His research interests include intelligent autonomy and battle management, aircraft and missile dynamics and control, hypersonic GNC, robust adaptive control, optimal control, robustness theory, and intelligent drilling solutions. He has authored more than 100 technical articles and seven book chapters; he has published a textbook titled Robust and Adaptive Control Theory, with Aerospace Examples; and he teaches control theory at Washington University in St. Louis and at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Wise is a Hagler Institute Fellow at Texas A&M, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, is an IEEE Fellow, IFAC Fellow, and Fellow of the AIAA.

Affiliation(s)

Boeing

United States

Enver Yucelen

LACIS

United States

Tansel Yucelen

University of South Florida

United States

Tansel Yucelen

Biography

Dr. Tansel Yucelen is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Director of the LACIS, and the Director of the Forum on Robotics and Control Engineering (FoRCE) at the University of South Florida. He received the Doctor of Philosophy in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in May 2012. Prior to joining the University of South Florida, he held Research Engineer positions in the School of Aerospace Engineering and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology from December 2011 to August 2013. He also held an Assistant Professor position in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology from August 2013 to August 2016, where he created and directed the Advanced Systems Research Laboratory and the Control Systems Forum. He participated in summer programs at the Air Force Research Laboratory Aerospace System Directorate in Dayton, Ohio, from May 2014 to July 2014 and at the Munitions Directorate in Eglin, Florida from May 2015 to July 2015.

Dr. Yucelen is a member of the National Academy of Inventors in recognition of advanced technological development and innovation and a senior member of the AIAA and the IEEE. In addition, he is the recipient of the 2018 University of South Florida Research and Innovation Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award, 2017 University of South Florida College of Engineering Junior Outstanding Research Achievement Award, 2016 ACGSC Dave Ward Memorial Lecture Award (for the outstanding contributions to the field of adaptive control), 2016 AIAA Technical Contribution Award (for the creation of novel flight control synthesis and analysis algorithms), 2015 Oak Ridge Associated Universities Junior Faculty Award (for public recognition of the quality and promise of research), and 2014 Class of 1942 Excellence in Teaching Award. His research places a strong emphasis on both theoretic research and experimentation for addressing fundamental and open real-world technological problems. Specifically, his research falls into dynamical systems and controls with specializations in 1) adaptive and robust control of safety-critical systems; 2) distributed estimation and control of networked multiagent systems; 3) resilient and secure robotics, autonomous vehicles, and cyber-physical systems; and 4) biologically-inspired complex, large-scale, and modular systems. He has co-authored more than 200 archival journal and conference publications in these areas and his contributions were implemented on various platforms including AirSTAR of the NASA Langley Research Center.

Dr. Yucelen is an active member of the AIAA, ASME, and IEEE societies as well as AIAA Technical Committee (TC) on Guidance, Navigation, and Control (invited by Dave Doman and Susan Frost), AIAA TC on Intelligent Systems (invited by Nhan Nguyen), IEEE TC on Adaptive Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning (invited by Silvia Ferrari), IEEE TC on Aerospace Control (invited by Kingsley Fregene), IEEE TC on Control Education, IEEE TC on Intelligent Control (invited by Jagannathan Sarangapani), IEEE TC on System Identification and Adaptive Control, and IFAC TC on Adaptive and Learning Systems (invited by Fouad Giri). He is also the creator of the Guidance, Navigation, and Control Listserv - a communication tool for researchers and educators in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control field. Dr. Yucelen's additional professional experiences include the organization of 2 local workshops at the University of South Florida; 5 workshops and 4 invited sessions at the top scientific and engineering conferences on dynamical systems and controls; and various associate editor, conference program committee, conference technical area chair, conference session chair, and reviewer roles.

Affiliation(s)

University of South Florida

United States

Pan Zhao

University of Alabama

United States

Website