Masayoshi Tomizuka is the Cheryl and John Neerhout, Jr., DistinguishedProfessor of the College of Engineering, at the University of California, Berkeley.He was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1946. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees inMechanical Engineering from Keio University, Tokyo, Japan and his Ph. D. degreein Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 13 February 1974. He joined the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. At UC Berkeley, Professor Tomizuka teaches courses in dynamic systems and controls. He has supervised nearly 80 Ph. D. students to completion. His current research interests are mechatronics, optimal and adaptive control, digital control, signal rocessing, motion control, and control problems related to robotics, machining, manufacturing, information storage devices and vehicles. He served as Vice Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in charge of instruction from 1989 to 1991, Vice Chair in charge of graduate studies from 1995 to 1996, and the Director of Engineering Systems Research Center from 1999 to 2002. From December, 1991 to August, 1992, he was the Visiting Toshiba Professor in Intelligent Mechatronics at the University of Tokyo. He has served as a consultant or an advisor for various organizations. He served as Program Director of the Dynamic Systems, Sensing, Modeling and Control Program at the National Science Foundation from Sept. 2002 to Dec. 2004.
Professor Tomizuka has served as Senior Technical Editor of the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, J-DSMC (1988-93), Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics (1997-99) and Associate Editor of the Journal of the International Federation of Automatic Control, Automatica. He was General Chairman of the 1995 American Control Conference, and served as President of the American Automatic Control Council (1998-99). He is a Fellow of the ASME, the IEEE and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He has received several awards including the J-DSMC Best Paper Award (1995), the Pi Tau Sigma-ASME Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award (1997), and the Rufus Oldenburger Medal (2002). The Oldenburger Medal was awarded to him for his seminal contributions in the area of adaptive control, preview control and zerophase control, which have led design improvements in the control of mechanical motion including machine tools, disk drives and robotic systems.