2024 IEEE CSS Awards

Every year the IEEE and the Control Systems Society recognizes the outstanding contributions of individuals belonging to our technical community by giving a number of awards. The Control Systems Society is grateful for the work each member of the corresponding committee or subcommittee devotes to the selection process.

The 2024 IEEE CSS Awards Chair is John Baillieul, and the Awards Nomination Chair is Claire Tomlin. The subcommittee Chairs are

• Grüne, Lars (George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award)
• Fleming, Andrew (TCST Outstanding Paper Award)
• Arcak, Murat (TCNS Outstanding Paper Award)
• Mesbahi, Mehran (CSM Outstanding Paper Award)
• Papachristodoulou, Antonis (L-CSS Outstanding Paper Award)
• Duncan, Stephen (Control Systems Technology Award)
• Salapaka, Murti (Transition to Practice Award)
• Hovakimyan, Naira (CSS Aerospace Award)
• Dochain, Denis (Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize)
• Colaneri, Patrizio (Roberto Tempo Best CDC Paper Award)
• Mehta, Prashant (CDC Best Student-Paper Award)
• Namerikawa, Toru (CCTA Best Student-Paper Award)

More details about the awards, the nomination process and past winners can be found on the IEEE CSS web site http://ieeecss.org/awards/awards-program

The George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. The 2024 award was given to the paper "Safety verification and robustness analysis of neural networks via quadratic constraints and semidefinite programming” co-authored by Mahyar Fazlyab, Manfred Morari and George J. Pappas, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 67, no. 1 (2022): 1-15.

The TCST Outstanding Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. The 2024 award was given to the paper "Experimental Testing of a Preview-enabled Model Predictive Controller for Blade Pitch Control of Wind Turbines" co-authored by Michael N. Sinner, Vlaho Petrović, Apostolos Langidis, Lars Neuhaus, Martin Kühn and Lucy Y. Pao, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology 30, no. 2 (2022): 583-597.

The TCNS Outstanding Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems. The 2024 award was given to the paper “Distributed and Localized Model Predictive Control—Part II: Theoretical Guarantees” co-authored by Carmen Amo Alonso, Jing Shuang Li, James Anderson and Nikolai Matni, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems 10, no. 3 (2023): 1113-1123.

The CSM Outstanding Paper Award recognizes outstanding articles or columns published in IEEE Control Systems Magazine. The 2024 award was given to the paper “Data-Driven Control Based on the Behavioral Approach: From Theory to Applications in Power Systems” co-authored by Ivan Markovsky, Linbin Huang and Florian Dörfler, IEEE Control Systems Magazine 43, no. 5 (2023): 28-68.

The Control Systems Letters Outstanding Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published in the IEEE Control Systems Letters. The 2024 award was given to the paper “Euclidean Contractivity of Neural Networks With Symmetric Weights" co-authored by Veronica Centorrino, Anand Gokhale, Alexander Davydov, Giovanni Russo and Francesco Bullo, IEEE Control Systems Letters 7 (2023): 1724-1729.

The Control Systems Technology Award recognizes outstanding contributions to control systems technology, either in design and implementation or project management. The 2024 award was conferred to Anuradha Annaswamy, MIT, honored for pioneering innovations in design and implementation of control and optimization in propulsion systems, aerospace systems, automotive systems, and power systems.

The Transition to Practice Award recognizes outstanding collaborative scientific interactions between industry or research laboratories and academic communities that transition basic controls and system theory to practical systems for the benefit of society at large. The winner of the 2024 CSS Transition to Practice Award is Thomas Parisini, Imperial College London, Aalborg University and University of Trieste, honored for the research, development, and transition to practice of monitoring and control tools and digital twins for the process and metal industry.

The Award for Technical Excellence in Aerospace Control recognizes a person or team of people that performed an aerospace control engineering activity demonstrating excellence & significant results with a demonstrable impact. The 2024 award was given to Christopher Elliott, CMElliott Applied Science, LLC, honored for contributions to the fielding of adaptive flight controls and the development of flight controls for the safe operation of advanced fighter aircraft.

The Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize recognizes outstanding achievements in research in systems and control by a young researcher. The 2024 Ruberti Prize was given to Na Li, Harvard University, honored for fundamental contributions to control, learning, and optimization of cyber-physical systems and application to biomedical and energy systems

The Roberto Tempo Best CDC Paper Award recognizes the best paper presented at the annual IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. The 2024 award was given to the 2023 CDC paper “Variational Principles for Mirror Descent and Mirror Langevin Dynamics” by Belinda Tzen, Anant Raj, Maxim Raginsky and Francis Bach, 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pp. 6301-6306, 2023.

The CDC Outstanding Student Paper and Best Student Paper Awards recognize excellence in a paper presented at the IEEE CDC, whose primary author is a student member of the IEEE. One of the Outstanding Student Paper awardees will be selected as the winner of the Best Student Paper Award, and will receive that award in lieu of the Outstanding Student Paper Award. Awards are based on originality, clarity, and potential impact on practical applications or theoretical foundations of control. The student winners are:

• Outstanding Student Paper Awardee: Mahrokh Ghoddousi Boroujeni
• Paper Title: A PAC-Bayesian Framework for Optimal Control with Stability Guarantees
• Authors: Mahrokh Ghoddousi Boroujeni, Clara Lucia Galimberti, Andreas Krause, and Giancarlo Ferrari-Trecate
• Session: ThC02.3
•  
• Outstanding Student Paper Awardee: Mohammad Al-Jarrah
• Paper Title: Data-Driven Approximation of Stationary Nonlinear Filters with Optimal Transport Maps
• Authors: Mohammad Al-Jarrah, Bamdad Hosseini and Amirhossein Taghvaei
• Session: TuA14.3
•  
• Outstanding Student Paper Awardee: Asmaa Eldesoukey
• Paper Title: An excursion onto Schrodinger’s bridges: Stochastic flows with spatio-temporal marginals
• Authors: Asmaa Eldesoukey, Olga Movilla Miangolarra, and Tryphon T. Georgiou
• Session: TuC10.2
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• Outstanding Student Paper Awardee: Spencer Kraisler
• Paper Title: Output-feedback Synthesis Orbit Geometry: Quotient Manifolds and LQG Direct Policy Optimization
• Authors: Spencer Kraisler and Mehran Mesbahi
• Session: ThA12.4

The winner of the IEEE 2024 CDC Best Student Paper Award will be announced at the CSS Awards Ceremony (Wednesday, December 18, 18:45-20:00, MiCo Auditorium).

The CSS Distinguished Member Awards are conferred to selected members of our community who have made significant technical contributions as well as having provided outstanding long-term service to the society. The 2024 awards went to Fabrizio Dabbene, CNR-Politecnico di Torino, Maria Domenica Di Benedetto, Universita' dell'Aquila, and Yannis Paschalidis. Boston University.

The Outstanding Chapter Award recognizes a chapter for demonstrating a high level of activity, innovation, or growth. The Vice-President of Member Activities, Kristin Y. Pettersen was responsible for this award. The 2024 Award went to the Nanjing Chapter, chaired by Bin Jiang in recognition of its initiatives to promote the advances of control theory and practice through technical activities, educational outreach and conferences.

The CCTA Best Student Paper Awards recognize excellence in a CCTA paper whose primary contributor(s) is a (are) student member(s) of the IEEE. One of the Outstanding Student Paper awardees is selected as the winner of the Best Student Paper Award, and receives that award in lieu of the Outstanding Student Paper Award. The awardee list is:

• Best Student Paper Awardee: Toshiyuki Oshima
• Paper Title: Online Coverage Path Generation for Aquatic Environmental Monitoring with Multiple USVs through Constraint-based Control
• Authors: Toshiyuki Oshima, Yo Toyomoto and Takeshi Hatanaka
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• Best Student Paper Awardee: Mingyang Chen
• Paper Title: A Game-based Optimal and Safe Lane Change Control of Autonomous Vehicles in Mixed Traffic Scenario
• Authors: Mingyang Chen, Jingjing Jiang and Boli Chen
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• Best Student Paper Awardee: Fabian Flürenbrock
• Paper Title: Model-based Estimation of Ventricular Cerebrospinal Fluid Volume
• Authors: Fabian Flurenbrock, Simon Muntwiler, Leonie Korn, Marianne Schmid Daners and Melanie N. Zeilinger

The IEEE Control Systems Society Graduate Collaboration Fellowship aims to promote and provide support to initiate collaborative research with a hosting faculty member of well-established institutions in the area of Systems and Control for outstanding graduate students in developing geographical regions by visiting leading institutions in countries outside their own. The 2024 awardees are Hanxu Zhao, Dinesh Patra, Chendi Qu, Yingjie Gong, David Erazo-Caicedo, Sebastián Martínez, Paulo Henrique Foganholo Biazetto and Jiaxin Yu.

The IEEE CSS Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize recognizes distinguished contributions to control systems science or engineering. The Chair of the Bode Lecture Prize is the CSS President, Magnus Egerstedt. The 2024 Bode Lecture Prize was given to Karl Henrik Johansson, for outstanding contributions to networked control with applications to transportation and automation systems.

The Control Systems Award recognizes outstanding contributions to control systems engineering, science, or technology. The Chair of the Control Systems Award is Alberto Isidori. The 2023 Control Systems Award was given to Alain Bensoussan for fundamental contributions to stochastic control, control-theoretic methods in management and finance, and impactful leadership of scientific and engineering organizations.