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.