Petar V. Kokotovic

Petar V. Kokotovic (Serbian Cyrillic: Петар В. Кокотовић) is a professor in the Department of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He has made contributions in the areas of adaptive control, singular perturbation techniques, and nonlinear control.

Biography

He was born in Belgrade in 1934.^[1] He received B.S. (1958) and M.S. (1963) from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and a Ph.D. (1965) from the USSR Academy of Sciences (Institute of Automation and Remote Control), Moscow.

He came to the U.S. in 1965 and was a professor at the University of Illinois for 25 years. He joined the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1991.

In 2002, he received the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award from the American Automatic Control Council. The citation reads, "For pioneering contributions to control theory and engineering, and for inspirational leadership as mentor, advisor, and lecturer over a period spanning four decades."^[2]

He is an IEEE Fellow and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. His honors include the IEEE Control Systems Field Award, the IF AC Quazza Medal, the D.C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award and two Outstanding IEEE Transactions paper awards."^[3]

Work

Kokotovic has made contributions in the areas of adaptive control, singular perturbation techniques, and nonlinear control, especially the backstepping stabilization method. Kokotovic’s impact as an educator is evident in the success of his students. The list of those he has mentored, many of whom are IEEE Fellows, reads like a worldwide “Who’s Who” of control engineers. His lively and dynamic style inspires innovation while instilling the value of using engineering to solve real problems.^[4]

Center for Control, Dynamical-systems and Computation

Kokotovic is the founder and director of the University of California-Santa Barbara’s Center for Control, Dynamical Systems and Computation. This center has become a role model of cross disciplinary research and education. One of the Center’s achievements is a fully integrated cross-disciplinary graduate program for electrical and computer, mechanical and environmental, and chemical engineering fields. While at the University of Illinois at Urbana, he pioneered singular perturbation techniques, used today in power systems and adaptive controllers.

Constructive nonlinear control

At the University of California his group developed constructive nonlinear control methods and applied them, with colleagues from MIT, Caltech and United Technologies Research Center, to new jet engine designs. As a long-term industrial consultant, he has contributed to computer controls at Ford and to power system stability at General Electric.

Works

With his 30 Ph.D. students and 20 postdoctoral researchers, Dr. Kokotovic has co-authored numerous papers and 10 books. Books:

• 1995, Nonlinear and Adaptive Control Design with M. Krstic and I. Kanellakopoulos. John Wiley & Sons, New York.

Professor Petar Kokotovic

Awards

• Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award, American Automatic Control Council, 2002.^[2]
• IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal, IEEE, 2001^[5]
• Member, National Academy of Engineering, 1996
• The 1995 IEEE Control Systems Award^[6][7]
• The 1993 IEEE Outstanding Transactions Paper Award
• Foreign Expert to Evaluate French National Institute (INRIA), 1992
• IEEE Bode Prize Lecture, 1991
• Quazza Medal, Highest Triennial Award, International Federation of Automatic Control, 1990
• Grainger Endowed Chair, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1990
• D.C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1987
• Outstanding Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 1984
• Lecturer at the French National Seminar (CNRS) on "New Tools for Control," Paris, 1982
• Foreign expert to evaluate West German's Institute for Flight Dynamics, 1980
• Fellow of the IEEE, 1980

See also

• Backstepping

References

External links

• "I.E.E.E. Bio Page of Petar Kokotovic". Retrieved 2008-01-17.