Advisory Board

Click picture or name to read bio Dr. Da Hsuan Feng
Sr. Exec. V.P., National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
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Senior Executive Vice President, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

Fellow of the American Physical Society, 1995

For outstanding contributions to the understanding of nuclear structure physics, particularly for the applications of the coherent states to physics and nuclear physics

Education

  • A.B. (Physics) Drew University, 1968
  • M.Sc. (Physics) University of Minnesota, 1971
  • Ph.D. (Physics) University of Minnesota, 1972

Academic Administration, Corporate, Federal Agency and Advisory Positions

  • Vice President for Research and Economic Development, The University of Texas at Dallas, June 2005 - Now (Direct report to President)
  • Vice President for Research and Graduate Education, The University of Texas at Dallas, December 2000 - June 2005 (Direct dual-report to President and Provost
  • Vice President, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), 1998-2001 Program Director in Theoretical Physics, Physics Division, National Science Foundation, 1983-1985
  • Member of Board of Directors of CellStar Corp, 2005 January - Now.
    CellStar is a global handset distribution company, with annual revenue close to $1 Billion.
  • Member of the Scientific Board of Advisors of Genesis Campus, an accelerator and early stage venture capital firm 2002 - Now
  • Science Advisor to New Economy Strategies, a strategy and implementation firm focused on regional economic development around technology cluster formation and growth 2002 - Now
  • Business Board Chairman of D'Trends Inc, a Bioinformatics company in San Ramon, California 2000 - Now
  • Advisory Board Member of Shenyang Dongyu Group Ltd 2004-Now
  • Advisor to CEO and Founder of Farsighted Group Ltd 2004 - Now
  • Member of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) Science and Engineering Technology (SET) Executive Committee 2004-Now
  • Technical Advisor for Technology SCAN Panel on Exploiting Nanotechnologies, Science and Engineering Research Council, Singapore 2003 - Now
  • Chairman of the Advisory Board, Guangyu Textile Corporation 2005-Now
  • Advisor to Raylight Corporation (a San Diego Biotech startup) 2005-Now
  • Board Member of BioDFW, 2006 - now
  • Board Member of AeA (American Electronics Association) Texas Chapter, 2006 - now
  • Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board, i-Tex Wireless Corp, 2006-Now

Academic Positions

  • Professor of Physics, The University of Texas at Dallas, 2000 - now
  • M. Russell Wehr Chair Professor of Physics, Drexel University, 1991-2000
  • Professor of Physics, Drexel University, 1986-1991
  • Guest Professor, Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan 1991
  • Associate Professor of Physics, Drexel University, 1981-1986
  • Visiting Scientist, Institute of High Energy Physics, China 1981
  • Assistant Professor of Physics, Drexel University, 1976-1981
  • Visiting Professor, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen 1979-1980
  • Visiting Professor, Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, UK 1979 and 1980
  • Senior Research Scientist, University of Texas at Austin, 1974-76
  • United Kingdom Science Research Council Fellow, 1972-74

Honorary Positions

  • Honorary Professor, Peking Union Medical College, China
  • Honorary Professor, Lanzhou University, China
  • Friendship Award, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan, ROC
  • Honorary Professor, Jilin University, China
  • Honorary Professor, Fudan University, China
  • Honorary Research Fellow, Academia Sinica Institute of Nuclear Science, China
  • Honorary Professor, Southwest Jiaotong University, China
  • Honorary Professor, Nanjing University, China
  • Honorary Professor, Northeast University, China
  • Honorary member of the Board of Trustees of Nanjing University, China
  • Vice Chairman of the Board of the Alan G. MacDiarmid Institute of Jilin University

Publications

Accomplishments at UT Dallas

  • As designated by the former President, the Provost, and now the President, my objective at the University of Texas at Dallas is to build as rapidly as possible the research breadth and depth of the University. Taking into account the UT Dallas traditional strengths, size, resources and other boundary conditions, I articulated three concentrations of excellence for UT Dallas in this decade:
    • Digital communications
    • Advanced materials and instrumentations
    • Disease centric post genomic research.
  • Since coming to UT Dallas, and focused on the above goal, I have achieved the following.
  • Research expenditure for UT Dallas increased from $16 Million in 2000 to over $41 Million 2005.
  • Formed a powerful and active external Research Advisory Board to work closely with the internal Research Advisory Council (faculty members)
  • Secured an endowed chair for a James Von Ehr Distinguished Chair in Science and Technology and recruited Dr. Alan MacDiarmid, the 2000 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry to fill this chair. Assisted Dr. MacDiarmid to establish centers bearing his name in Jilin University in China, Kanateka University in India, Victoria University in New Zealand, Chonnam National University in Korea and Universidad Brazilia in Brazil.
  • Recruited Dr. Russell Hulse, Nobel laureate in physics in 1993, as Chair Professor as well as Associate Vice President for Research. Work with Dr. Russell Hulse and the regional educational leaders (Dallas Museum of Natural History, Science Place, Sci-Tech Discovery Center of Plano, Community Empower Foundation and Minnesota Science Museum) to develop an educational project.
  • In close collaboration with the Dean of Natural Science and Chairs of Chemistry and Physics recruited the nanotechnology research team of Honeywell Corporation in New Jersey. This team is now the backbone of UT Dallas' rapidly growing nanoscience program
  • Manage over $50 Million of Federal initiatives (awards for FY03, 4, 5, 6). Projects include
  • SPRING (Strategic Partnership of Research in NanotechnoloGy) project, which linked together UT Dallas, Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Arlington, University of Houston and Air Force Material Command in Dayton, Ohio. Funding for FY03, FY04, FY05 and FY06 is $41.5 million.
  • Request for FY07 is $17.5 million for TEXAS AEROSPACE NANOMATERIALS CONSORTIUM (TANC) FOR AIR DEFENSE SUPERIORITY
  • Metroplex Center for Medical Imaging with UT Southwestern Medical Center, UT Dallas and UT Arlington For FY05, the Senate Defense Appropriation has allocated $7.6 million for the Center
  • UT Dallas-UT Southwestern Medical Center Sickle Cell center. This is the first and only Congressional mandated NIH sickle cell center in southwest United States. Funding for FY03, FY04 and FY05 is $1.5 Million.
  • A ten university - UT Dallas-UTArlington-UNTHSC-UTSAHSC-TAMU-TAMUHSC-UTBrownsville-Baylor Medical Research Center-Southern Methodist University and UT Medical Branch - Institute for Biomedical Science and Technology. Funding for FY06 is $1.8 million. For FY07, the request is $8 Million.
  • A three universities Vanderbilt University-UTDallas-Michigan collaboration in medical device and system biology. FY07 request is $5 million.
  • A four universities UTDallas-UTArlington-LSU-Purdue collaboration in grid computing and network security. FY07 requests is $4 million.
  • Develop research collaborations (nano-at-the-border) with two border campuses of the University of Texas, Brownsville and Pan Am. Allocated $350K (FY04 and FY05 combined) for each campus to jump start their material science research programs.
  • Initiated and secured for FY05 $0.5 Million for three universities (UT Dallas, UT Houston Health Science Center and UT Brownsville) to study health (cohort studies) of Hispanic population in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
  • Established the Oracle Center Of Excellence For Spatial Data Management for the School of Social Science
  • Develop collaborative relations on material research with Raytheon Corporation in Garland and Lockheed Martin Aerospace Corporation in Fort Worth, Texas.
  • Develop collaborative relations on material research with Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and Chonnam National University.
  • Develop a global rapid health response research collaboration with the Center of Public Security Sciences of Nanjing University and the Center of Bio-preparedness of the University of Texas Houston Health Sciences Center.
  • Initiated a FOUR CORNER (UT Dallas, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce and Zezhu Science Park) collaboration for Greater Shanghai and the Metroplex.
  • Founded the Medical Device Action Alliance, a regional effort to promote interdisciplinary research in this technological arena. This Alliance is envisioned to be the platform to mix and churn the robust medical device community with the depressed telecom community.
  • Assisted UT Dallas' Electrical Engineering team to link up with large defense contractors (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Galaxy Scientific, SAIC) to compete the Army's 10 year 93 million flexible panel initiative. Some 50 universities competed for this initiative. UTD was one of the two finalists.
  • Led a Texas-Oklahoma-Mexico Research Executives Delegation to the Republic of Korea, Beijing and Shanghai in October, 2004. Universities involved are UT Dallas, UTArlington, UTAustin, Texas A and M University, University of Houston, University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, University of Tulsa and Monterrey Tec.
  • Coordinated a UT Dallas delegation to visit in December 2004 three Indian Institute of Technology campuses (Bombay, Delhi and Roorkee) and the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research. The delegation is led by Alan MacDiarmid, Nobel laureate in Chemistry for 2000.
  • Member of the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) nanotechnology delegation to visit the Republic of China (Taiwan) National Science Council and its affiliated research centers, April 18-20, 2005.
  • Co-chair for the China-US Universities Presidents Forum. June 1, 2005, Seattle, Washington.
  • Co-chair the November 2005 Latin American Workshop on Legacy of S.S. Chern's Mathematicsin Centro de Investigacion en Matematicas, or CIMAT, in Guanajuato, Mexico
  • Co-chair of the Sixth Emergence Information Technology Conference, August 10-12, 2006

Reports

http://www.utdallas.edu/research/vpred/reports.html

Click picture or name to read bio Dr. Russell A. Hulse
Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics
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Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics (1993)

I was born November 28, 1950 in New York City, the son of Alan and Betty Joan Hulse. My parents tell me that I quickly showed an unusual level of curiosity about the world around me as a child, and that this transformed itself into an interest in science at a very early age. For my part, I certainly recall that science was a defining part of my approach to life for as far back as I can remember. My parents fostered and supported this interest, and I thank them very much for being my first and, by far, most uncritically supportive funding agency. I ran through a seemingly endless series of interests involving chemistry sets, mechanical engineering construction sets, biology dissection kits, butterfly collecting, photography, telescopes, electronics and many other things over the years.

The door to a whole range of new experiences opened for me when my father started building a summer house on land given to us by my Aunt Helen in Cuddebackville, New York, about two hours northwest of the city. Eventually, this became a year-round house for my grandparents when they retired and it is where my parents live now that they are retired. I remember spending weekends and summers helping my father put in place walls, rafters, siding and everything else that goes into a house. Among other things, it produced an early familiarity with tools and a do-it-yourself approach which has stood me in good stead over the years. My parents' friends and relatives were apparently not too sure that I should have been given such freedom to work with power tools at an early age, but fortunately I came through the experience with all of my fingers intact. Cuddebackville was also important to me as a place where a city kid could see nature, and as a practical place to work on my bigger projects.

My parents not only supported my interests at home but also suffered along with me (and, most likely, much more than me) when some of my first experiences with school proved to be less than positive. Though I had some elementary school teachers with whom I got along well, there were some real problems with others who found me and my intense interest in science difficult to understand and deal with.

Entering the Bronx High School of Science in 1963 was thus very important to me as it was there that I found myself in a school environment which explicitly emphasized what I found most interesting in life. Yet, as in the years before and after, while schoolwork was an important job to be done my interests in science tended to be expressed most clearly by my home projects. My biggest home project while at Bronx Science was building an amateur radio telescope up at my parents' house in Cuddebackville. I particularly enjoyed building antennas of various types, relying on an amateur radio antenna design book as a guide. The electronics were an odd mix of old television parts, military surplus power supplies, receivers and the like combined with other components I built myself. Unfortunately, the telescope never did work particularly well in terms of detecting radio sources (a little outside technical advice probably would have made a big difference in there somewhere), but I did enjoy myself and I learned a lot in the process.

At the end of high school, I had my first big career decision to make. While I had by then begun to focus more on physics and astronomy amongst the sciences, I also enjoyed designing and building electronic equipment. This lead me to consider electrical engineering as well but, in the end, I decided that a degree in physics was probably the best fit to my interests.

My college choices were limited by the fact that paying for college would have placed an inordinate financial burden on my parents. Fortunately, I was admitted to Cooper Union, a tuition-free college in lower Manhattan. From 1966 to 1970, I lived at home in the Bronx with my parents and commuted to Cooper each day on the New York subway system. Along, with the usual course work, Cooper provided me with my first experience with a new interest, computers. Cooper had an IBM 1620 available for the students to use and, while there were no courses on programming it, there were the instruction manuals. The first project that I selected by way of teaching myself FORTRAN was to use the computer to do orbit simulations, perhaps an early omen of things to come.

After receiving my bachelor's degree in physics from Cooper Union in 1970, I started graduate school at The University of Massachusetts in Amherst. While I knew that I eventually wanted to do my thesis research in astronomy, preferably radio astronomy, I once again leaned towards a broader background and decided to get my doctorate in physics rather than astronomy. I went to UMass not only because its graduate program offered this type of flexibility, but also because it was located not too far from New York in a rather beautiful part of rural western Massachusetts.

The five years I spent in Amherst are some of those which I remember most clearly from my past. Graduate school was an entirely new environment, with new experiences and challenges. The demands were such that, for the first time, I focused almost exclusively on my academic career, with my other outside interests tempered by the demands of the moment.

After passing my Ph.D. qualifying examinations, I turned to finding a thesis project. This represented at long last a convergence of my outside and career interests, as I finally started working in radio astronomy again, now as a career rather than as a hobby. The rest of that story is told in my Nobel lecture.

After completing my Ph.D. in 1975, I had a post-doctoral appointment at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia from 1975 to 1977. While I still enjoyed doing pulsar radio astronomy, from the moment I arrived at NRAO I was increasingly preoccupied with the lack of long-term career prospects in astronomy. While I had some confidence that I could find another position of some sort after NRAO, it was not at all clear to me when, where, and how I would be able to settle down with some reasonable expectation of stability in my career. I certainly knew of astronomers who had been obliged to roam from place to place for many years and the potential for such repeated major dislocations in my personal life was more than I could quite tolerate. In particular, I had the classic problem of how a two-career couple could stay in reasonable geographical proximity, since my friend, Jeanne Kuhlman, was then doing her graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. I therefore decided to try falling back on my broader interests and my physics Ph.D., exercising the option which I had left myself when I started at UMass.

While even with this broader view not many good career opportunities seemed available, I did discover from an advertisement in Physics Today that the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) was hiring. Not only did controlled fusion seem an interesting and diverse field, but the lab was located in Princeton, not too far from Jeanne in Philadelphia.

After interviewing at PPPL, I was offered a position with the plasma modeling group, based on my physics and computer background. Starting at the lab in 1977, my first task was developing new computer codes modeling the behavior of impurity ions in the high temperature plasmas of the controlled thermonuclear fusion devices at PPPL. I had never really done computer modeling before and the art and science of computer modeling is one of the most valuable things which I have learned in the 16 years which I have now been at the lab.

The multi-species impurity transport code which ultimately grew out of this initial work at PPPL is still in use to this day. It models the behavior of the different charge states of an impurity element under the combined influences of atomic and transport processes in the plasma. I oriented my development of this code very much towards its practical use by spectroscopists and other experimentalists in interpreting their data and one of my greatest satisfactions has been that this code has become widely used over the years both at PPPL as well as at other fusion laboratories. My own research with this code included determining transport coefficients for impurity ions by modeling spectroscopic observations of their behavior following their injection into the plasma. In connection with modeling impurity behavior, I also worked on investigating the atomic processes themselves, for example, by helping to elucidate the importance of charge exchange reactions between neutral hydrogen and highly charged ions as an important recombination process for impurities in fusion plasmas. In a rather different sort of contribution, I more recently developed a computer data format which has been adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency as a standard for the compilation and interchange of atomic data for fusion applications.

While I am still involved in supporting this impurity transport modeling code at PPPL, my more active area of work in the past few years has been modeling the transport of electrons in the plasma as revealed by pellet injection experiments. The pellets involved here are pellets of solid hydrogen, injected at high velocity into the plasma. The relaxation of the plasma electron density profile after a pellet has deposited its mass inside the plasma provides an important way of observing plasma transport in action. For this work, I wrote an electron particle transport code which focused on modeling the experimentally observed density profile evolutions using theoretically motivated, highly non-linear forms for the particle diffusion coefficients.

In another recent new direction, I have been working to establish a new effort at PPPL in advanced computer modeling environments. The objective of this research is the development of novel approaches to creating modular computer codes which will make it much easier to develop and apply computer models to an extended range of applications in research, industry and education. I have been pursuing this work in the context of cooperative research and development agreements with an industrial partner, taking advantage of this new type of collaborative arrangement recently made possible between government sponsored research laboratories and the private sector.

By now, it is surely clear that my interest in science has never been so much a matter of pursuing a career per se, but rather an expression of my personal fascination with knowing "How the World Works", especially as it could be understood directly with hands-on experience. This central motivation has been expressed over the years not only in my career but also in a wide range of hobbies. Notable amongst these "hobbies" have always been interests in various areas of science beyond whatever I was professionally employed in at any given time. For example, I have most recently been considering that much of what I have found so interesting about both the natural and man-made world has involved how individual, often autonomous, elements combine to make a functioning whole, either by design or by self-organization. I have thus started to be interested in various aspects of the new so-called "sciences of complexity", especially as they can be explored using computer modeling.

My list of more traditional hobbies and recreational activities has also changed over time. Many activities which I formerly enjoyed, such as amateur radio and woodworking, have been eventually dropped simply because I realized that I did not have enough time and energy to pursue everything I might enjoy doing. A current list of my activities would include nature photography, bird watching (and observing the beauty and drama of nature in general), target shooting, listening to music, canoeing, crosscountry skiing, and other outdoor activities.

I do not pretend to be anything like an accomplished expert in all of the many things that I have ever been or am presently involved in doing. My most fundamental urge has always been just to spend time on what I found the most interesting, trying of course to match this up somehow with the more practical demands of life and a career. In this sense I have come to realize that at times I must not have always been the easiest person to have had as a student, or as an employee, and I therefore appreciate the efforts of those who helped me to accommodate myself to these practical demands, or often, who worked to help accommodate the practical demands to me.

I would like to close on the thought that some of the most enjoyable moments of my life have always involved sharing my various interests with those others who understood them (and me) the best. Thus special thanks go to my parents, to Jeanne Kuhlman, and to all of the good friends that I have had over the years.

From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1993, Editor Tore Frängsmyr , [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1994

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1993

Click picture or name to read bio Dr. Alain Bensoussan
Former Chairman, European Space Agency Council
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DISTINCTIONS

  • Member of the French Academy of Sciences - 2003, Correspondent Member 1986
  • Member of the French Academy of Technology, 2000
  • Member of the International Academy of Astronautics -1999
  • Member of Academia Europae 1985
  • Fellow IEEE - 1985
  • Von Humboldt Prize - 1984
  • Légion d'Honneur (Officier) - 2003
  • Ordre National du Mérite (Commandeur) - 2000
  • BundesVerdienst Kreuz (Officier) - 2003

PROFESSIONAL CAREER

  • Distinguished Research Professor, School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas, from August 2004
  • Director, International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis, School of Management, from September 2004
  • Associate then Full Professor at the University Paris-Dauphine, from 1969 to 2004
  • Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris Dauphine, from 2004
  • Part time Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique from 1970 to 1986
  • Part time Professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure from 1980 to 1985
  • On Leave at the European Institute for advanced Studies in Management, Brussels, as Professor from 1971 to 1973, then as Director from 1975 to 1977.
  • Chairman of the Mathematics Department of the University Paris Dauphine, from 1975 to 1977.
  • Président of INRIA, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, from 1984 to 1996.
  • President of CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) from January 1996 to February 2003.
  • Chairman of ESA Council (European Space Agency) from July 1999 to July 2002

SCIENTIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Vice Chairman of the IFAC "Mathematics of control" Committee from 1978 to 1981.
  • Member of the organizing Committee of the IFAC World Congress (1981).
  • Member of the selection Committee for the session Control Theory and Optimization, International Congress of Mathematics, Helsinki 1978 and Chairman for the same session, Warsaw 1982.
  • Chairman of AFIRST, Franco-Israeli Association for Science and Technology from 1992 to March 1999.
  • Member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland.
  • Member of the Board of the Pitman Advanced Publishing Program in Mathematics.
  • Member of the Advisory Board of Mathematical Finance.
  • Editor in Chief of Asymptotic Analysis Journal (IOS Press).
  • Member of the Editorial Board of the following journals:
    • - Journal of Applied Mathematics and Optimization
    • - Journal of Nonlinear Analysis
    • - Numerical Functional Analysis and Applications
    • - Policy Analysis and Information Systems
    • - Sciences de Gestion
    • - Systems and Control Letters
    • - Acta Applicandae Mathematicae
    • - Stochastic Analysis and Applications
    • - Control Theory and Advanced Technology (C-TAT)
    • - International Journal on Stochastic Hydrology and Hydraulics
    • - Kybernetes
    • - Optimal Control - Applications and Methods
    • - Applied Mathematics Letters
    • - Progress in Systems and Control Theory
    • - Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Sciences (M3AS)
    • - Nonlinear Functional Analysis and Control Theory
    • - Applied Mathematical Finance

Description of the Research Works

STOCHASTIC PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

I was among the early initiators of the theory of stochastic PDE in the sense of Ito. I worked in< particular, alone or in cooperation, on stochastic monotone equations, stochastic Navier-Stokes equations, stochastic variational inequalities, and more recently on stochastic inertial manifolds. This theory has found some of its most interesting applications in the study of nonlinear filtering theory, where the work of my former student PARDOUX is a reference. Note that numerical resolution is now within reach, which makes this field of research quite active and quite useful for applications.

FILTERING AND CONTROL OF STOCHASTIC DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

These problems have been at the origin of my research. In particular my thesis (under the supervision of J.L. LIONS) was devoted to Kalman filtering for linear systems with white noise inputs on both time and space. My main contribution was to make use of the theory of cylindrical measures of Gelfand Vilenkin and L. Schwartz. This permits a rigorous approach to a large variety of problems, provided the model is linear. I was in particular able to apply these techniques to a bidimensional model playing a role in image processing, or to the problem of optimal location of sensors. In the problem of control, I contributed strongly to the theory of necessary conditions, and to a rigorous approach of Dynamic Programming via nonlinear semi-groups. The main field of application concerns the stochastic control of systems with partial information, which naturally has a huge domain of applications.

OPTIMAL STOPPING, IMPULSE CONTROL, VARIATIONAL AND QUASI VARIATIONAL INEQUALITIES

I discovered, which is now standardly used, that variational inequalities corresponded to the dynamic programming treatment of optimal stopping, and then solved, with J. L. LIONS, the impulse control problem, via a new theory, called the theory of quasi variational inequalities. This has initiated a long and fruitful cooperation on this topic with J.L. LIONS and many colleagues and students. Many applications of this theory concern old and new problems of Operations Research and Management, as well as Physics and Mechanics.

REGULARITY of NONLINERAR SYSTEMS of ELLIPTIC and PARABOLIC PDE and APPLICATIONS

Stochastic Nash differential games lead to systems of elliptic and parabolic PDE. The regularity of solutions is extremely important for obtaining a Nash point. This has motivated a longstanding cooperation with J. FREHSE, one of the worldwide specialists of the regularity of elliptic systems. I have also solved with him the ergodic case, which even in the case of one equation was open in its full generality.

ROBUST CONTROL and RISK-SENSITIVE CONTROL

My interest for this domain stems from its connection with the field of Risk sensitive stochastic control. In fact, I first solved with J. VAN SCHUPPEN the problem of finding a sufficient statistics (of the same size as the state, which was an open problem) for the LEG (Linear Exponential Gaussian) control. More recently, in cooperation with J. BARAS and R. ELLIOTT, for the partial information case, and H. NAGAI and J. FREHSE for the full information case, I have contributed several results to justify some earlier formal treatment. The connection between robust control and risk sensitive control can be best seen through small noise introduction and singular perturbations. This is a field of very active research worldwide, by the broadness of the applications and the use of many mathematical techniques. It is one of my current research areas.

EXACT CONTROLLABILITY

After the introduction of the HUM method by J. L. LIONS, and its use by many authors, I got interested in developing a general theory of exact controllability for infinite dimensional systems, where the dynamics is driven by a skew-symmetric operator. In this way, one can unify most of the existing results concerning wave equations, Maxwell equations.

HOMOGENIZATION

Initiated by the probabilistic interpretation of homogenization, my interest in this domain has widened into an important cooperation with J.L. LIONS and G. PAPANICOLAOU, where we have developed many general approaches to this very fruitful theory. More recently with L. BOCCARDO and F. MURAT I have considered the homogenization of Bellman equations, and with G. BLANKENSHIP the case of random homogenization.

REGULAR and SINGULAR PERTURBATIONS

Homogenization can be viewed as a particular situation of singular perturbations. But of course many other situations can be considered. It was natural for me to be interested in their application to Control theory, both deterministic and stochastic, and in the latter case with full or partial information. Many particularly useful results can be obtained in the case of partial information, where one can derive approximate but accurate finite dimensional feedback laws, where the optimal one is infinite dimensional.

SPECIFIC PROBLEMS in OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT and in FINANCE

Since Control Theory has a lot of applications in many areas of Quantitative Management, I have cooperated with several specialists of the field to obtain the solution of concrete problems. My current interest lies in Operations Management and in Finance. I have been working in the design of complex options with M. CROUHY and D. GALAI. More recently, with my student H. Julien, I have investigated models of options for incomplete markets, where the incompleteness arises from "frictions" in the management of portfolios. Another approach to this problem has been developed with N. TOUZI and J. L. MENALDI, using penalty approximations and Viscosity methods. Since I joined UTD, the University of Texas at Dallas, I have been working on Inventory Control problems, with S. Sethi, M. Cakanyldirim, and PhD students. Our research focuses on stochastic models with partial information ( a field where little is available ), on service constraint models, on s, S policies I have been also involved , jointly with S. SETHI, in models of Economic Growth developed by K.J. ARROW and al., taking into account population growth aspects.

Managerial and scientific responsibilities

1975-1984

At the University I have been chairman of the mathematics department for 2 years (1975-1977) and chairman of the CEREMADE (applied mathematics research laboratory of the University Paris Dauphine) for another 2 years (1973-1975). This has involved supervising teaching and research programs, looking for new teaching and research staff, and managing corresponding budgets. From 1977 to 1979, I have been Director of EIASM, the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels. I had previously, in 1971- 1973 been one of the first two French faculty of this newly created institute. This institute had been created with the help of the Ford Foundation, at the initiative of several European organizations, to strengthen research and advanced training in Management in Europe, at a time where very little existed. My presence was justified by the fact, that I was one of the few European applied mathematicians interested in quantitative management and by the active role of my university in the creation of this institute.

As Director, I had to implement a new strategy, due to the scarcity of resources which unfortunately but inevitably hits this kind of international organization, born at a period of prosperity and in a specific context of justification, which is less present after several years. In fact, from a full staff faculty, which is very costly, I turned to the concept of scientific network. This is a concept which is widely used now, especially since the European Community has initiated a European Research Program (in 1983) and is now at the core of the European research area, proposed for the 6th framework program, but was rather original in those days. Keeping this concept operational till now has permitted EIASM to survive and to play an active role in unifying the European scientific community in Management. Needless to say, I got there experience in an international scientific environment, had to bridge some cultural gaps, had to discuss budget issues with several organizations of different countries. At the same time, I was not, being a mathematician, among the most representative of the field. I tried, with success, to use this drawback as an asset, since I could be considered as neutral by all the active (in those days not so many) members of the community, and I brought the spirit of a research oriented director, in a domain which had not so much cultivated this flavor in the past, (again in those days in Europe).

PRESIDENT of INRIA

I have been appointed President of INRIA on December 18, 1984. This appointment is made by two Ministers, the Minister of Science and the Minister of Industry. The term is for 3 years, renewable. I have accomplished 4 mandates. When I left INRIA it had around 1500 staff, in which half are full time civil servants. It had a budget of more than 100 M$, including 20% of owned resources (not governmental subsidy). It is located in 5 campuses: Rocquencourt, Sophia-Antipolis, Rennes, Nancy and Grenoble, plus a few people scattered elsewhere, in particular in Toulouse. Its main responsibility is to bridge the gap between Fundamental Research in Computer Science, Control, Scientific Computing and the real needs of industry, both information technology industry and economic sectors using information technology. Although not a university, INRIA has a fundamental role in training, and it contains 500 student members among its staff. Since 1984, INRIA has almost doubled its size, has grown from 3 to 5 campuses, has put forward an active strategy of transfer, not only by getting contracts with industry, but also being quite active in encouraging spin off companies (around 20 in 10 years, representing the creation of 800 high tech jobs). INRIA has been very present on the international scene, not only by the reputation and visibility of its staff, but also by many important international agreements, including an agreement with NSF, and the opening of a center in Moscow, the Lyapunov Institute in cooperation with Moscow State University. The most recent and spectacular illustration of this presence is the creation under the sponsorship of MIT and INRIA, of the International World Wide Web Consortium, which will gathers around a hundred of organizations (mainly industries) from America, Europe and Asia. Being President of INRIA means being both Chairman of the Board and Director of the Institute. It involves supervising the scientific orientations and the strategy of transfer and international cooperation. The President has to deal constantly with ministries and local authorities, with industry representatives and with academic institutions. He has a wide range of action, provided he can be convincing internally about the objectives and externally about the achievements of the institute. Due to the role of INRIA, I have been appointed, as member or chairman, in many committees, boards or scientific councils, of other organizations, or playing a national or an international role. Of course, this has increased my knowledge and experience of the scientific and industrial environment, as well has allowed me to promote the realizations of the institute. In addition, I had to become a generalist in the field of information technology and to understand the main scientific and industrial issues. I had to write several synthesis reports, in particular to present lectures to an audience of non specialists ( scientists of other disciplines, or decision makers from industry or government), or to define the position of INRIA on main issues of concern.

PRESIDENT of CNES

I have been appointed President of CNES on January 31, 1996, and elected Chairman of the Council of the European Space Agency, for a three years term starting July 1st, 1999. I have been renewed in my position of President of CNES for a three year term ending in February 2003. CNES is the French space Agency, as well as a centre of excellence for technology. It represents 2500 persons, including the space port of Europe, in Kourou, French Guyana. The responsibility of the President concerns the definition of the strategy and the orientations of the Center, in particular the reinforcement of the European cooperation and international programs. Space is a strategic issue of the construction of Europe, and in this position I have had to deal a lot with industry. One of the important tasks concerns the European space programs and the restructuring issues, both in industry and in the public sector.

DIRECTOR of ICDRIA

The International Center for Decision and Risk Analysis (ICDRIA) has been created in the School of Management of the University of Texas at Dallas in August 2004. The objective is to develop research in Risk Management and Decision Making, across industry or in relation with security issues. This is a fast growing field, with a strong interdisciplinary flavor. The goal is to build in a few years a full program of education and applied research in this domain.

LIST of PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

  • Filtrage Optimal des Systmes Lineaires (Dunod, 1971).
  • Management Application of Modern Control Theory, (North Holland, 1974), with G. HURST & B. NASLUND.
  • Applications des Inéquations Variationnelles en contrôle Stochastique, (Dunod, 1978), with J.L. LIONS (English translation: Application of Variational Inequalities in Stochastic Control, North Holland, 1982).
  • Asymptotic Methods in Periodic Media, (North Holland, 1978), with J.L. LIONS & G. PAPANICOLAOU.
  • Stochastic Control by Functional Analysis Methods, (North Holland, 1982).
  • Impulsive Control and Quasi-Variational Inequalities, (Dunod, 1982), with J.L. LIONS, traduction russe 1987.
  • Mathematical Theory of Production Planning, (North Holland, 1983), with M. CROUHY & J. M. PROTH.
  • Perturbations Methods in Optimal control, (Dunod-Gauthier Villars, 1988).
  • Stochastic Control with Partial Information (Cambridge University Press), 1992.
  • Representation and Control of Infinite Dimensional Systems, with G. Da Prato, M. Delfour et
  • S.K. Mitter, (Birkhauser) vol.1, 1992.
  • Representation and Control of Infinite Dimensional Systems, with G. Da Prato, M. elfour et
  • S.K. Mitter, (Birkhauser) vol.2, 1993.
  • Regularity results for nonlinear Elliptic systems and applications, with J. FREHSE, (Springer),
  • Applied Mathematical Sciences, vol. 151, 2002.
  • Representation and Control of Infinite Dimensional Systems, 2nd Edition, with Giuseppe Da Prato, Michel C. Delfour and Sanjoy K. Mitter, Birkhauser, to be published (2006).

EDITED BOOKS

  • 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th International Conference on Analysis and optimization of Systems, (Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990), with J.L. LIONS.
  • Applied Optimal Control (North Holland, 1978), with P. KLEINDORFER & C. S. TAPIERO.
  • Stochastic Optimal Control and Applications, (North Holland, 1980), with P. KLEINDORFER & C. S. TAPIERO.
  • Mathematical Techniques of Optimization, Control and Decision, (Annals of the CEREMADE), (Birkhauser, 1981), with J. P. AUBIN & I. EKELAND.

ARTICLES

More than 300 articles & communications in International Journals and proceedings. (list available upon request)

Click picture or name to read bio Dr. Hasan Pirkul
Dean, School of Mgmt., University of Texas at Dallas
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Hasan Pirkul is the dean of the School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas. He concurrently holds the Caruth Chair of Management. Prior to joining UT Dallas, he was at Max M. Fisher College of Business of the Ohio State University, where he was director of Information Systems Programs and founding director of the Center for Information Technologies in Management as well as professor of accounting and information systems.

A graduate of the University of Rochester, he received an M.S. degree in management science in 1980 and a Ph.D. degree in computer information systems in 1983, after earning a B.S. degree in industrial engineering from Bogazici University in 1977. His research interests include design of telecommunication networks, distributed computer system design, knowledge-based systems, locating facilities, neural networks, genetic algorithms, tabu research and other heuristic algorithms.

Dr. Pirkul is a member of the Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations and Dallas Council on World Affairs. He participates on the Dallas Morning News Technology Board. He was a member of the Metroplex Technology Business Council (MTBC) Entrepreneurship Committee and a founding member of Dallas Chamber of Commerce Technology Business Council. He has served as chairman as well as a team member for the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) for the accreditation of both U.S. and international universities. He is a member of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” class. He was selected as one of the Most Influential People in Collin County by Inside Collin County Business.

Additionally, Dr. Pirkul was recognized as one of the “Technologists of the Year” by Texas Technology magazine. He also was recognized by the Greater Dallas Indo-America Chamber of Commerce for Outstanding Contribution in Education and by the Greater Dallas Asian American Chamber of Commerce as Educator of the Year. He has served as chairman of The Institute for Operations Research and Management Science College on Information Systems as well as for the Technical Section on Telecommunications in the same organization. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Information Technology and Management. He also has served as an associate editor of such leading academic journals as Management Science, Operations Research and Journal of Database Management. In addition, he serves on editorial boards of a number of leading academic journals and has chaired and/or served on program committees of numerous national and international conferences.

Click picture or name to read bio Dr. Miroslav Vlcek
Vice-Rector, Intl. Relations, Czech Techn. Univ., Prague
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degree :
2000 - prof. in Theory of Electrical Eng. - Czech Technical University in Prague
1994 - DrSc. in Radioelectronics - CTU in Prague
1975 - RNDr. in Theoretical Physics - Charles University
 
profession:
2000 - recent vice-rector for international relations, CTU
1998 - 1999 vice-dean for science and research
1998 dean
 
teaching :
2004 - recent Mathematical Algorithms
1996 - recent Systems and Processes
1993 - recent Digital Filter Design, lectures for PhD. students
 
membership in boards:
2006 - recent scientific council of the Charles University
1994 - recent scientific council of the Faculty of Transportation Sciences, CTU
1994 - 2005 scientific council of the Czech Technical University (CTU)
1994 - 2005 scientific council of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, CTU
2000 - 2005 scientific council of University of Economy
 
research activity:
digital signal processing, design of digital filters, approximation
theory, higher transcendental functions, numerical algorithms
 
other membership:
1999 - 2002 member of expert group of parliament council for science and tertiary education
1998 - recent Eisenhower Fellow Czech Republic
 
activity abroad:
1999 - 1997
Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany, Lehrstuhl fur Allgemeine und Theoretische Elektrotechnik, research visit, 9 months
1998
Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship, USA, 2 months programme devoted to university top management and visit covering 14 prestigious US universities and 3 governmental institutions for science and education and Congress of the United States of America
1996
Institut National des Telecommunication, France Telecom, Evry, Francie, 1 month research visit
1988
Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany, Lehrstuhl fur Allgemeine und Theoretische Elektrotechnik, 1 year research visit
 
born: May 1st, 1951 in Prague
status: married, 2 children
credo: Non vis sed saepe cadendo
hobby: mathematics, baroque music, hiking
 
Click picture or name to read bio Dr. Andrei Zabrodskii
Director, loffePhysico-Technical Institute
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Professor Andrei Zabrodskii is the Director of the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia. Professor Zabrodskii concurrently holds the Laboratory Nonequilibrium Processes in Semiconductors chair. He is also Head of the Department of the Advanced Technologies in Electronics at the St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University and Professor of Experimental Physics at the St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University, from which he was graduated in 1970. He has received PhD degree (Cand.Sci. – Russian) in 1979 and Doct.Sci. in 1987, both from the Ioffe Institute.

Prof. Zabrodskii is the laureate of the Prize of the USSR Council of Ministers for his research in the area of transmutation doping of semiconductors and development of the sensing devices for cryogenic temperatures (1983) and many other prizes. His current research interests include physics of nonequilibrium systems, neutron transmutation doping of semiconductors and other areas of semiconductor physics. He has co-authored over 160 scientific publications on these topics.

Prof. Zabrodskii is a member of a number of scientific councils including Council on Physics of Semiconductors of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Scientific Council of the Ioffe Institute where he is the Chairman. He serves on editorial boards of a number of leading academic journals and serves on program committees of numerous national and international conferences, including chairing International Winter School on Physics of Semiconductors.

   
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