November 08, 2010, 1001 ESB

In recent years, we have seen a growing interest in probabilistic and randomized methods for design of uncertain complex systems. In this lecture, we provide a broad perspective of this research area and discuss several randomized algorithms. In particular, we present sequential algorithms for convex problems and we discuss non-sequential algorithms for non-convex problems. Furthermore, we demonstrate the utility of this approach for analyzing specific applications, such as the computation of PageRank in search engine Google and the design of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles.

Roberto Tempo was born in Cuorgne, Italy, in 1956. In 1980 he graduated in Electrical Engineering at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. After a period spent at the Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica, Politecnico di Torino, he joined the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) at the research institute IEIIT, Torino, where he is a Director of Research of Systems and Computer Engineering since 1991. He has held visiting and research positions at Kyoto University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, German Aerospace Research Organization in Oberpfaffenhofen and Columbia University in New York.

Dr. Tempo's research activities are mainly focused on complex systems with uncertainty, and related applications. On these topics he has given several invited lectures at various conferences and workshops, including the recent plenary lectures at SICE (The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers of Japan) Annual Conference, Taipei, Taiwan, and the 29th Chinese Control Conference, Beijing, China, both held during summer 2010. In 2008 he has been an invited speaker at the NATO Lecture Series on "Advanced Autonomous Formation Control and UAV Applications," University of Strathclyde, UK, University of Pamplona, Spain and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland.

Dr. Tempo is author or co-author of more than 150 research papers published in international journals, books and conferences. He is also a co-author of the book "Randomized Algorithms for Analysis and Control of Uncertain Systems," Springer-Verlag, London, 2005. He is a recipient of the "Outstanding Paper Prize Award" from the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) for a paper published in Automatica, and of the "Distinguished Member Award" from the IEEE Control Systems Society. He is a Fellow of the IEEE for "Contributions to Robust Identification and Control of Uncertain Systems" and a Fellow of the IFAC for "Contributions to the Analysis and Control of Uncertain Systems, for Pioneering the Probabilistic Approach to Robustness."

Dr. Tempo is an Editor and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Automatica. He has been Editor for Technical Notes and Correspondence of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control in 2005-2009. He has served as member of the program committee of several IEEE, IEE, IFAC and EUCA (European Union Control Association) conferences, and as Program Chair of the first joint IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, Seville, Spain, 2005. He has been Vice-President for Conference Activities of the IEEE Control Systems Society during the period 2002-2003 and a member of the EUCA Council in 1998-2003. He is currently President of the IEEE Control Systems Society.