Citation: For pioneering contributions to analysis and control of nonlinear distributed parameter systems accompanied by creative applications to advanced materials processing, particulate processes and fluid dynamic systems.

Biography: Panagiotis D. Christofides was born in Athens, Greece, in 1970. He received the Diploma in Chemical Engineering degree in 1992, from the University of Patras, Greece, the M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics in 1995 and 1996, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1996, all from the University of Minnesota. Since July 1996 he has been with the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is currently Associate Professor. His theoretical researchinterests include nonlinear control, singular perturbations, and analysis and control of distributed parameter systems, multiscale systems and hybrid systems, with applications to advanced materials processing, particulate processes, biological systems and fluid flows. His research work has resulted in a large number of articles in leading scientific journals and conferences and two books entitled Nonlinear and Robust Control of PDE Systems: Methods and Applications to Transport-Reaction Processes (Birkhäuser, 2001) and Model-Based Control of Particulate Processes (Kluwer Academic, 2002).

Professor Christofides has been a member of the Control Systems Society Conference Editorial Board and is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the 2004 Program Coordinator of the Applied Mathematics and Numerical Analysis Area of AIChE and the Program Vice-Chair for Invited Sessions for the 2004 American Control Conference. Professor Christofides has received the Teaching Award from the AIChE Student Chapter of UCLA in 1997, a Research Initiation Award from the Petroleum Research Fund in 1998, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 1998, the Ted Peterson Student Paper Award from the Computing and Systems Technology Division of AIChE in 1999 and a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research in 2001. He has also received twice the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award in 2000 (with Antonios Armaou) and 2004 (with D. Ni, Y. Lou, L. Sha, S. Lao and J. P. Chang), and the Donald P. Eckman Award in 2004, all from the American Automatic Control Council.

2003: Claire Tomlin

Citation: For pioneering contributions to hybrid control systems and embedded software for real-time control, with application to air traffic control, avionics, and computational biology.

Biography: Claire Tomlin received the Ph. D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1998. Since September 1998 she has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in Electrical Engineering. She is a graduate fellow in the Division of Applied Sciences at Harvard University in 1994, and she has been a visiting researcher at NASA Ames Research Center during 1994-1998, at Honeywell Technology Center in 1997, and at the University of British Columbia in 1994.
Claire Tomlin is a recipient of the AIAA Outstanding Teacher Award, Stanford (2001), NSF Career Award, Stanford (1999), Terman Fellowship, Stanford (1998), the Bernard Friedman Memorial Prize in Applied Mathematics, Berkeley (1998), and the Zonta Amelia Earhart Award for Aeronautics Research (1996-98). She was an invited participant in the National Academy of Engineering¡¦s Frontiers of Engineering Program in 2002,and she is currently a member of DARPA¡¦s Information Systems and Technology (ISAT) study group. Her research interests are in hybrid systems,air traffic control automation, fight management system analysis and design,and modeling and analysis of biological cell networks.

2002: Ilya Kolmanovsky