This CCDC award recognizes a PhD student judged to have written the best PhD thesis in the area of Control, Dynamical-Systems, or Computation over the period of evaluation. The Award consists of a $1000 prize and a plaque to be presented no more often than annually at a CCDC function.
Theses will be evaluated based on their originality, technical excellence, anticipated impact, and clarity. This award is intended to promote continued research excellence in the Center and recognize and publicize work of exceptional quality by our CCDC students.
Guidelines
Eligibility
A UCSB PhD student that graduated under the supervision of a faculty member of the CCDC.
Timing
- The nomination window closes at the end of October each year.
- The filing date for thesis should be within the past three years prior to nomination closing date.
Nomination
For a thesis to be nominated, the following material should be send to <ccdc-admin@ece.ucsb.edu> by Oct 31st:
- A nomination letter from the advisor describing the originality and significance of the work
- A list of publications that resulted from the thesis
- An electronic copy of the thesis
- Thesis filing date
Evaluation procedure
A award selection committee will be constituted every year by the CCDC director after nominations are received. The committee will typically consist of 3 suitably selected faculty members, one from each of ME, ECE, ChE, unless the particular mix of nominations necessitates expertise from other departments.
Past Award Recipients
- 2010 Ketan Savla - Multi-UAV Systems with Motion and Communication Constraints. Advisor: Francesco Bullo
- 2011 Abhyudai Singh - Stochastic Modeling of Chemical Reactions and Gene Regulatory Networks. Advisor: Joao Hespanha
- 2012 Sriram Ventateswaran - Networked Estimation and Communication with Minimalist Models. Advisor: U. Madhow
- 2013 Christopher Mayhew - Hybrid Control for Topologically Constrained Systems. Advisor: Andrew Teel
- 2014 Rebecca Harvey - Development and Implementation of the Health Monitoring System for the Artificial Pancreas. Advisor: Frank Doyle
- 2015 John Simpson-Porco - Distributed Control of Inverter-Based Power Grids. Advisor: Francesco Bullo
- 2016 Daniel Wilson - Model Reduction for Treatment of Neurological Diseases and Cardiac Arrhythmias. Advisor: Jeffrey Moehlis
- 2017 Anantharaman Subbaraman - Robust stability theory for stochastic dynamical systems. Advisor: Andrew Teel
- 2017 David Copp - Simultaneous Nonlinear Model Predictive Control and State Estimation: Theory and Applications. Advisor: Joao Hespanha
- 2018 Philip Brown - Robust Methods for Influencing Strategic Behavior. Advisor: Jason Marden
- 2019 Hassan Arbabi - "Koopman spectral analysis and study of mixing in incompressible flows" Advisor: Igor Mezic
- 2019 Maurice Filo - “Topics in Stochastic Stability, Optimal Control and Estimation Theory” Advisor: Bassam Bamieh
- 2020 Jorge Poveda - "Robust Hybrid Systems for Control, Learning, and Optimization in Networked Dynamical Systems" Advisor: Andrew Teel
- 2021 Allan Avila - "Theory and Applications of Pull-Back Operator Methods in Dynamical Systems" Advisor: Igor Mezic
- 2022 Robert (Koty) McAllister - "The stochastic robustness of model predictive control and closed-loop scheduling" Advisor: Jim Rawlings
- 2022 Bharat Monga - "Model-Based and Machine Learning-Based Control of Biological Oscillators" Advisor: Jeff Moehlis
- 2023 Rahul Chandan - "Strategic Mechanisms in Multi-Agent Coordination" Advisor: Jason Marden
- 2023 Raphael Chinchilla - "Minmax Optimization: New Applications and Algorithms" Advisor: Joao Hespanha