Robert F. Stengel
Robert F. Stengel
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Robert Stengel is Professor and former Associate Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. Prior to his 1977 Princeton appointment, he was with The Analytic Sciences Corporation, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, U.S. Air Force, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. A principal designer of the Project Apollo Lunar Module manual attitude control logic, he also contributed to the design of the Space Shuttle guidance and control system. From 1977 to 1983, he was Director of Princeton’s Flight Research Laboratory, where he investigated aircraft flying qualities, digital control, and system identification using two variable stability, fly-by-wire aircraft. Current research interests include bioinformatics, nonlinear, robust, and adaptive control systems, dynamics of aerospace vehicles, optimization, and intelligent systems. Dr. Stengel received degrees from M.I.T. (Aeronautics & Astronautics, S.B., 1960) and Princeton University (Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences, M.S.E., M.A., Ph.D., 1965, 1966, 1968). He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the AIAA. He received the AIAA Mechanics and Control of Flight Award (2000) and is a recipient of the FAA’s first annual Excellence in Aviation Award (1997). He was Associate Editor at Large of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vice Chairman of the Congressional Aeronautical Advisory Committee, and Chairman of the AACC Awards Committee. He has served on numerous governmental advisory committees. He has been a member of the Program Council for the New Jersey Space Grant Consortium and of the National Research Council Committee on Naval Capabilities for Theater Missile Defense. Dr. Stengel directs the Laboratory for Control and Automation and the undergraduate Program in Robotics and Intelligent Systems at Princeton. He has taught courses on robotics and intelligent systems, control and estimation, aircraft flight dynamics, and space flight (the freshman seminar, From the Earth to the Moon). Dr. Stengel wrote the book, Optimal Control and Estimation (Dover, 1994) and has authored or co-authored numerous technical papers and reports.