Industrial & enterprise systems engineering professor Dušan Stipanović has been elevated to an IEEE Fellow in the Class of 2024. One of the most selective and prestigious honors in engineering, fellowship is reserved designation reserved for IEEE members who have “contributed significantly to the advancement of engineering, science, technology, and society-at-large.” No more than 0.1% of the IEEE voting membership may be elevated to Fellows each year.
Stipanović has been elevated “for contributions to control of complex systems.” A complex system is one comprised of smaller subsystems that are either physically connected or exchange information. Such systems include robotics, traffic systems and autonomous vehicles. The latter is an example of a “multi-agent system” that involves multiple intelligences.
“With rapid technological progress, we are surrounded even more by complex systems, and their control and guaranteed safe operation are of essential importance,” he said. “This is where I did my most important work, in making technical assurances that such objectives are indeed possible for these systems.”
Working on the problem of collision avoidance in multi-agent systems, Stipanović provided a mathematical guarantee that it is possible to satisfy multiple objectives simultaneously. He is currently working to implement such “multi-objective controls” in autonomous vehicles and integrate their controls with traffic optimization principles. He is also working on robotic rehabilitation.
Stipanović earned a doctorate in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University in 2000. He was a research associate at Santa Clara University and Stanford University before joining the faculty at the U. of I. in 2004. He has served as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I and II and the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications. He is a recipient of the Bessel Award in Mathematics from the Humboldt Foundation and the 1,000 Talents Award from the People’s Republic of China. He is also affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory.
Stipanović is joined by four other faculty members from The Grainger College of Engineering elevated to IEEE Fellow this year.