1998 American Automatic Control Council (AACC) Awards

1998 Awards recipients with AACC Awards Chair M. Simaan and AACC President M. Tomizuka and ACC98 General Chair J. Chow.
Standing from left: I. Kanellakopoulos, C. Georgakis, M. Tomizuka, L. A. Zadeh, C. R. Cutler, M. S. El-Aasser, M. Glaum, M. Simaan, J. Chow;
Sitting from left: V. Liotta and P. Dorato.

The Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award

The award is given for distinguished career contributions to the theory or applications of automatic control. The Bellman Control Heritage Award is the highest recognition of professional achievement for U.S. control systems engineers and scientists. Richard E. Bellman, for whom the award is named, was an applied mathematician who pioneered the development of system theory as an academic discipline in the 1950s and 1960s. His accomplishments are described in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 1984. The Bellman Award is unique among the AACC awards in that it is made for lifetime contributions to control and systems engineering. Such contributions may cover a range of technical areas or may have been put into practice in several different fields. The winner of the Bellman Award usually has been involved with the interaction of control or system theory with other scientific disciplines, with the engineering profession, and/or with the implications of controls for society at large.

Awarded to Lotfi A. Zadeh for fundamental contributions to systems theory and pioneering works on fuzzy sets and systems leading to a global trend on machine intelligence quotient systems.

Lotfi A. Zadeh joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1959, and served as its chairman from 1963 to 1968. Earlier, he was a member of the electrical engineering faculty at Columbia University. In 1956, he was a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In addition, he held a number of other visiting appointments, among them a visiting professorship in Electrical Engineering at MIT in 1962 and 1968; a visiting scientist appointment at IBM Research Laboratory, San Jose, CA, in 1968, 1973, and 1977; and visiting scholar appointments at the AI Center, SRI International, in 1981, and at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, in 1987-1988. Currently he is a Professor in the Graduate School, and is serving as the Director of BISC (Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing).

Until 1965, Dr. Zadeh's work had been centered on system theory and decision analysis. Since then, his research interests have shifted to the theory of fuzzy sets and its applications to artificial intelligence, linguistics, logic, decision analysis, control theory, expert systems and neural networks. Currently, his research is focused on fuzzy logic, soft computing and computing with words.

An alumnus of the University of Teheran, MIT, and Columbia University, Dr. Zadeh is a fellow of the IEEE, AAAS, ACM and AAAI, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He was the recipient of the IEEE Education Medal in 1973 and a recipient of the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984. In 1989, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the Honda Prize by the Honda Foundation, and in 1991 received the Berkeley Citation, University of California.

In 1992, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal "for seminal contributions to information science and systems, including the conceptualization of fuzzy sets." He became a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (Computer Sciences and Cybernetics Section) in 1992 and received the Certificate of Commendation for AI Special Contributions Award from the International Foundation for Artificial Intelligence. Also in 1992, he was awarded the Kampe de Feriet Medal and became an Honorary Member of the Austrian Society of Cybernetic Studies.

In 1993, Dr. Zadeh received the Rufus Oldenburger Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers "for seminal contributions in system theory, decision analysis, and theory of fuzzy sets and its applications to AI, linguistics, logic, expert systems and neural networks." He was also awarded the Grigore Moisil Prize for Fundamental Researches, and the Premier Best Paper Award by the Second International Conference on Fuzzy Theory and Technology. In 1995, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor "for pioneering development of fuzzy logic and its many diverse applications." In 1996, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the Okawa Prize "for outstanding contribution to information science through the development of fuzzy logic and its applications."

In 1997, Dr. Zadeh was awarded the B. Bolzano Medal by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic "for outstanding achievements in fuzzy mathematics." He also received the J.P. Wohl Career Achievement Award of the IEEE Systems, Science and Cybernetics Society. He served as a Lee Kuan Yew Distinguished Visitor, lecturing at the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and as the Gulbenkian Foundation Visiting Professor at the New University of Lisbon in Portugal.

Dr. Zadeh holds honorary doctorates from Paul-Sabatier University, Toulouse, France; State University of New York, Binghamton, NY; University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany; University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain; University of Granada, Granada, Spain; Lakehead University, Canada; University of Louisville, KY; Baku State University, Azerbaijan; and the Silesian Technical University, Gliwice, Poland.

Dr. Zadeh has authored close to two hundred papers and serves on the editorial boards of over fifty journals. He is a member of the Technology Advisory Board, U.S. Postal Service; Advisory Committee, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UC Santa Barbara; Advisory Board, Fuzzy Initiative, North Rhine-Westfalia, Germany; Fuzzy Logic Research Center, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas; Advisory Committee, Center for Education and Research in Fuzzy Systems and Artificial Intelligence, Iasi, Romania; Senior Advisory Board, International Institute for General Systems Studies; the Board of Governors, International Neural Networks Society; and is the Honorary President of the Biomedical Fuzzy Systems Association of Japan and the Spanish Association for Fuzzy Logic and Technologies.


The Donald P. Eckman Award

The Donald P. Eckman Award was the first award established by the American Automatic Control Council. It was established in memory of Donald P. Eckman, who made important contributions to control theory and practice in the 1950s and 1960s but died tragically in an automobile accident in 1962. The purpose of this award is to recognize, particularly, important contributions to the control field made by younger researchers. The age limit for the award was originally set at 30 years, but was later extended to 35 years of age (at the time of the award) as the control field grew and matured, in recognition of the difficulty of making leading edge contributions to a more mature field. While the Eckman Award is given for key contributions made prior to the age of 35, the recipient is normally expected to be the type of individual who will remain a leader in the controls profession; he is an example to be emulated by engineers entering the profession.

The Eckman award is often given for key contributions to a single field of research, based on the discovery of a new phenomenon or design method or scientific principle. In practice, the award has usually been given to individuals who make theoretical contributions which have practical implications. However, the development of devices (e.g., as reflected by patents), or significant contributions to engineering practice, might also be recognized.

Prof. Kanellakopoulos flanked by Profs. Simaan and Tomizuka.

Awarded to Ioannis Kanellakopoulos for outstanding theoretical contributions to adaptive nonlinear control accompanied by creative engineering applications.

Ioannis Kanellakopoulos was born in Athens, Greece, in 1964. In 1982 he was admitted into the Department of Electrical Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, after ranking first in the Greek National Admission Exams, an accomplishment for which he received the "Heroes of Polytechneion" Award in 1983. During his undergraduate studies, he received Governmental Fellowships from 1984 to 1987. In 1987 he received his Diploma from this five year program, graduating in the top 1% of his class. He carried out his graduate studies in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Professor Petar Kokotovic as his advisor, receiving the M.S. degree in 1989 and the Ph.D. degree in 1992.

During his graduate studies in Urbana, he was a Research Assistant in the Coordinated Science Laboratory from 1987 to 1991, receiving a Departmental Fellowship in 1987 and a Grainger Fellowship in 1990. In 1991-92 he held a visiting teaching and research position in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara. Since July 1992 he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, where he is currently an Associate Professor.

His primary research interests are in the theory of nonlinear and adaptive control, primarily in constructive design methodologies for uncertain continuous- and discrete-time nonlinear systems, with applications to autonomous vehicle systems and automotive control.

In 1993 he was the co-recipient, along with Professors P. V. Kokotovic and A. S. Morse, of the IEEE Control Systems Society's George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award for the paper "Systematic design of adaptive controllers for feedback linearizable systems," which appeared in the November 1991 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. He was also the recipient of a Research Initiation Award in 1993 and of a CAREER Award in 1995, both from the Electrical and Communications Systems Division of the National Science Foundation. In 1996 he received the Allied Signal Faculty Research Award from the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science, and in 1997 an Honorable Mention as an Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer.


The John R. Ragazzini Education Award

The AACC Ragazzini Award is given for outstanding contributions to Control Education in any form. These contributions can be from any source and in any media, i.e., electronic, publications, courses, etc. Due to the large number of well qualified nominees, this award is often one of the most difficult to assign.

In evaluating a nominee for the Ragazzini Award, it is common for the Award Committee to seek evidence beyond what is provided in the nomination, such as searching the Citation Index, or considering the leadership positions assumed by graduate students, or evaluating key research results of former graduate students. Education is viewed as a process which extends beyond the classroom or the advising functions of a particular faculty member. The Ragazzini Award has normally gone to university professors, but there is no formal requirement that nominees must be university professors. Accomplishments of former students may be considered in making the award.

Prof. Dorato flanked by Profs. Simaan and Tomizuka.

Awarded to Peter Dorato for contributions to control systems education and innovative ideas for teaching analytical control methods.

Peter Dorato is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of New Mexico. He received the B.S.E.E., 1955, from the City College of New York, M.S.E.E. degree from Columbia University, 1956, and the D.E.E. degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now the Polytechnic University), 1961. He was a faculty member at the Poytechnic University (1961-1972) and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (1972-1976), and from 1976 to 1984 he was chairman of the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of New Mexico. He was a visiting professor at the University of Colorado, 1969-70, at the University of California at Santa Barbara, 1984-85, and at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, 1991-92. He has also presented special lectures at the University of Rome (Tre), 1997, and the University of Catania, 1990.

He is a Fellow of the IEEE, Distinguished Member of the IEEE Control Systems Society, and a registered professional engineer (in the state of Colorado). He is also an honorary professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China. In 1991 he received the College of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award at the University of New Mexico.

He is currently editor of technical communiques for Automatica, and a past associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and the IEEE Transactions on Education. During 1987-1988 he was chairman of the IEEE Control Systems Technical Committee on Education, and has been a long time advocate for a graduate degree as the first "professional" degree in Engineering. He edited three IEEE Press reprint volumes, Robust Control, Recent Advances in Robust Control, Advances in Adaptive Control, and is co-author of three books, Robust Control for Unstructured Perturbations: An Introduction (Springer-Verlag, 1992), Linear Quadratic Control: An Introduction (Prentice-Hall, 1995), and Robust Control Systems Design (China Aviation Industry Press, 1996).


The Control Engineering Practice Award

The Control Engineering Practice Award is given to one individual or one team to be selected from those nominated for 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. The award consists of a certificate and an honorarium. In the event that the winner is a team, each member of the team will receive a certificate and the honorarium will be divided equally among the team members.

Dr. Cutler flanked by Profs. Simaan and Tomizuka.

Awarded to Charles R. Cutler for outstanding contributions to process control practice through the creation, development, and implementation of dynamic matrix control.

Charles R. Cutler holds a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Lamar University and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston. He worked for Shell Oil Company for 23 years in a variety of assignments in refineries, chemical plants, research, and central engineering. The thread of continuity through these assignments was a close association with computer control and real time optimization. The last four years with Shell, he was the senior engineering manager responsible for the instrumentation, computer control, and real time optimization systems in Shell USA. In 1984, Charles founded the Dynamic Matrix Control Corporation (DMCC) and was the CEO and president for 12 years until it was sold to Aspen Technology in 1996. For the two years following the sale of DMCC to Aspen, he worked as an advisor to Aspen's senior management. He currently works as an independent consultant.

In the mid sixties, Charles was assigned to a Shell Oil research project, which had as its goal, the real time optimization of a fluid catalytic cracking unit. During the implementation phase of the optimization solution it became apparent that the PID algorithm was not capable of obtaining the full benefits of the optimization. A high percentage of the time the optimization used its degrees of freedom to solve for an equal number of physical constraints. The PID algorithm was not effective in controlling the highly interactive system concurrently at a large number of constraints. During the late sixties and early seventies as a graduate student, Charles developed the Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) algorithm to solve the constrained multivariable control problem. Returning to work for Shell, he and others in Shell applied the DMC controller for 11 years until he started DMCC.

Charles and his associates at DMCC developed two software packages, one for constrained multivariable control and the other for real time optimization. The control software permitted an engineer to identify the process dynamics of a system from plant measurements. With the dynamic models of the process known, the software created the control program. It was the first software commercially available that permitted an engineer to build a multivariable controller without having to program the computer. The real time optimization software was the first commercial software that permitted the engineer to use the open equation modeling concept when building the mathematical models of a process unit. These two software packages proved very successful and became the standard for the process industries.


The O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award

The Best Paper Award is given for the best paper presented at the previous year's American Control Conference. In 1987 it was named after O. Hugo Schuck, a pioneer in the practice of flight control design at Honeywell, Inc., and later at NASA. This award was established with the purpose not only of recognizing technical contributions, but also the manner and effectiveness with which they are communicated to the community at the American Control Conference. There are no restrictions on the number, age, or affiliation of authors.

The main source of nominations for the Best Paper Award is submissions by attendees at the conference, who are provided with nomination forms at the registration desk to be used for the following year's conference. Nominations from other sources, following the conference, are also acceptable. Selection criteria include quality of the written and oral presentation, technical contribution, timeliness, and practicality.

V. Liotta, M. El-Aasser, C. Georgakis, and M. Glaum are flanked by M. Simaan and M. Tomizuka

Awarded to:

V. Liotta, C. Georgakis, and M. S. El-Aasser
for their paper "Real-Time Estimation and Control of Particle Size in Semi-Batch Emulsion Polymerization" Proc. of the 1997 ACC, pp. 1172-1176

and to

M. Glaum and G. Zames
for their paper "A function Calculus For Identification and System Analysis" Proc. of the 1997 ACC, pp. 2083-2087.

Vincenzo Lioatta received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1990 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University in 1996. Upon receiving his doctorate, he began employment at Air Products and Chemicals, in Allentown, PA. His professional interests include state estimation, model predictive control, and emulsion polymerization dynamics.

Christos Georgakis is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and founding director of the Chemical Process Modeling and Control Research Center at Lehigh University. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of Minnesota and was on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty (1975-1983), where he was a du Pont Assistant Professor and Edgerton Associate Professor.

He was a Dreyfus Foundation Teacher Scholar (1979-1982) and a Professor of Measurement and Control at the University of Thessaloniki in Greece (1980-1983). He has served as an AIChE Representative to the ACC (1988-1990), as director of the AACC (1992-1994), and as director of the CAST division of the AIChE (1994-1997). He is presently the Chair of the IFAC Technical Committee on Process Control. He has published more than 100 papers and has supervised 19 M.S. theses and 29 Ph.D. theses.

Mohamed S. El-Aasser is Chairman of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Iacocca Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, and Director of the Emulsion Polymers Institute and the Center for Polymer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. He received the Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1972 from McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

His research interests include kinetics and mechanics of emulsion polymerization and surface, colloidal, and morphological phenomena of latex systems. He has 252 published papers, 4 edited books and holds 9 U.S. patents.


Michael Glaum received the B.Math. degree from the University of Waterloo, during which time he worked for WATCOM Systems in Waterloo, Ontario. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the Centre for Intelligent Machines, McGill University. He recently completed contract work with KVH Industries in Rhode Island on control systems for satellite communications. His technical interests include RF and photonic devices, modelling, real-time software development, and feedback control.

George Zames received the B.Eng. degree in 1954 from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and the Sc.D. degree in 1960 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. Dr. Zames was the Macdonald Professor of Electrical Engineering at McGill University. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and the IEEE. He received many awards for his research, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965, the IEEE Field Award for Control Systems Science and Engineering in 1985 and the I. Walton Killam Prize for Engineering in 1995.

George Zames' principal contributions were to systems and control theory. His fundamental papers appearing in the nineteen sixties contained the small gain theorem, the passivity theorem, and the circle criterion in the input-output form. In the nineteen seventies he co-authored papers on the stabilizing effects of dither and, in 1976, he proposed a theory of metric complexity for feedback hierarchies. In 1979-81, he co-authored a paper introducing the Gap Metric and then, in a separate contribution, he introduced H feedback synthesis theory. More recently, he was working on system identification and a theory of adaptive systems.

George Zames passed away on August 10th, 1997 in Montreal at the age of 63. He is survived by his wife Eva and their two sons Ethan and Jonathan.