2025 IEEE CSS Awards

Every year the IEEE and the Control Systems Society recognize 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 2025 IEEE CSS Awards Chair is Thomas Parisini, 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)
• Astolfi, Alessandro (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)
• Tarbouriech, Sophie (Roberto Tempo Best CDC Paper Award)
• Mehta, Prashant (CDC Best Student-Paper Award)
• Namerikawa, Toru (CCTA Best Student-Paper Award)
• Banavar, Ravi (Control Systems Society Graduate Collaboration Fellowship)

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 2025 award was given to the paper "Nonlinear Opinion Dynamics with Tunable Sensitivity” co-authored by Anastasia Bizyaeva, Alessio Franci, and Naomi Ehrich Leonard, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 68, no. 3 (2023): 1415-1430.

The TCST Outstanding Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. The 2025 award was given to the paper "A Modular Framework for Task-Agnostic, Energy Shaping Control of Lower Limb Exoskeletons" co-authored by Jianping Lin, Gray C. Thomas, Nikhil V. Divekar, Vamsi Peddinti, and Robert D. Gregg, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology 32, no. 6 (2024): 2359-2375.

The TCNS Best Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems. The 2025 award was given to the paper "The END: Estimation Network Design for Games Under Partial-Decision Information" co-authored by Mattia Bianchi and Sergio Grammatico, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems 11, no. 4 (2024): 2200-2212.

The CSM Outstanding Paper Award recognizes outstanding articles or columns published in IEEE Control Systems Magazine. The 2025 award was given to the paper “Quantum Computing Through the Lens of Control: A Tutorial Introduction” co-authored by Julian Berberich and Daniel Fink, IEEE Control Systems Magazine 44, no. 6 (2024): 24-49.

The Control Systems Letters Outstanding Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published in the IEEE Control Systems Letters. The 2025 award was given to the paper “Temporal Forward–Backward Consistency, Not Residual Error, Measures the Prediction Accuracy of Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition" co-authored by Masih Haseli and Jorge Cortés, IEEE Control Systems Letters 7 (2023): 649-654.

The Control Systems Technology Award recognizes outstanding contributions to control systems technology, either in design and implementation or project management. The 2025 award was conferred to José Luis Guzmán, Manuel Berenguel, F. Gabriel Acien, and Ana Sánchez Zurano, University of Almería, honored for the application of automatic control as an enabling technology for sustainable bioprocesses based on microalgae in a blue economy.

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 2025 CSS Transition to Practice Award is Reza Moheimani, University of Texas at Dallas, honored for pioneering advancements in control of the scanning tunneling microscope, and successful transfer to 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 2025 award was given to Ilya V. Kolmanovsky, The University of Michigan, honored for contributions to constrained and model predictive control of aerospace systems.

The Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize recognizes outstanding achievements in research in systems and control by a young researcher. The 2025 Ruberti Prize was given to Thinh T. Doan, University of Texas at Austin, honored for fundamental contributions to the optimization and control theoretic foundations of machine learning.

The Roberto Tempo Best CDC Paper Award recognizes the best paper presented at the annual IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. The 2025 award was given to the 2024 CDC paper “Average Number of Mistakes in Sequential Risk-averse Scenario Decision-making” by Simone Garatti, Algo Carè, and Marco C. Campi, 63rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pp. 8245-8250, 2024.

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 Awardees: Mohamad Louai Shehab and Alperen Tercan
• Paper Title: Efficient Reward Identification in Max Entropy Reinforcement Learning with Sparsity and Rank Priors
• Authors: Mohamad Louai Shehab, Alperen Tercan, and Necmiye Ozay
• Session: ThC08.1
•  
• Outstanding Student Paper Awardee: Amir Shakouri
• Paper Title: A New Perspective on Willems’ Fundamental Lemma: Universality of Persistently Exciting Inputs
• Authors: Amir Shakouri, Henk J. van Waarde, and M. Kanat Camlibel: Universality of Persistently Exciting Inputs
• Session: WeC02.1
•  
• Outstanding Student Paper Awardee: Leonardo F. Toso
• Paper Title: Learning Stabilizing Policies via an Unstable Subspace Representation
• Authors: Leonardo F. Toso, Lintao Ye, and James Anderson
• Session: FrB18.6
•  
• Outstanding Student Paper Awardees: Joudi Hajar and Reza Ghane
• Paper Title: Beyond Quadratic Costs: A Bregman Divergence Approach to H-Infinity Control
• Authors: Joudi Hajar, Reza Ghane, and Babak Hassibi
• Session: WeB17.1

The winner of the IEEE 2025 CDC Best Student Paper Award will be announced at the CSS Awards Ceremony (Thursday, December 11, 18:45-19:45, Asia).

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 2025 awards went to Amir Aghdam, Concordia University, Dennice Gayme, John Hopkins University, and Afef Fekih, University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The Outstanding Chapter Award recognizes a chapter for demonstrating a high level of activity, innovation, or growth. The 2025 Award went to the Control, Robotics, Cybernetics Joint Chapter of IEEE Vancouver Section, Canada, in recognition of their efforts in organizing many controls-focused technical and social events for their membership in 2024.

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.

• Outstanding Student Paper Awardee: Philipp Santer
• Paper Title: A Model Predictive Control Approach to Trajectory Tracking with Human-Robot Collision Avoidance
• Authors: Philipp Santer, Andreas Völz, and Knut Graichen
•  
• Outstanding Student Paper Awardee: Felix Brändle
• Paper Title: On the Effects of Angular Acceleration in Orientation Estimation Using Inertial Measurement Units
• Authors: Felix Brändle, David Meister, Marc Seidel, Robin Strässer, and Frank Allgöwer
•  
• Best Student Paper Awardee: Yingjie Hu
• Paper Title: Optimal Measurement Projection in GNSS-RTK Factor Graph Optimization
• Authors: Yingjie Hu, Stefano Di Cairano, and Karl Berntorp

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 2025 awardees are Felipe Cinto, Youssef Ait-Si, and Kaiyun Xie.

The IEEE CSS Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize recognizes distinguished contributions to control systems science or engineering. The Chair of the Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize Committee was the 2024 CSS President, Magnus Egerstedt. The 2025 Bode Lecture Prize was given to Jacquelien M.A. Scherpen, for groundbreaking contributions to nonlinear balancing, model reduction and passivity-based control.

The Control Systems Award recognizes outstanding contributions to control systems engineering, science, or technology. The Chair of the Control Systems Award was Alberto Isidori. The 2025 Control Systems Award was given to Malcolm S. Smith for contributions to robust control, network synthesis, and applications to mechanical systems.