Biographical Details

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Biographical Details

I received the Diploma in Control Engineering (1972), from the Polytechnical Institute of Bucharest (IPB), Bucharest, Romania, and the Diploma in Mathematics (1978) from the University of Bucharest, Romania. The Diploma theses were dedicated to: "Development of a Unified Teletransmission System", and "Algorithms for Linear Optimal Control", respectively. My Ph.D. thesis in Control Engineering at IPB was entitled "Contributions to the Realization of Model Reference Adaptive Systems" (in Romanian), Polytechnical Institute of Bucharest, 1983, 200 pages.

I have acted both as Researcher and Associate Professor in Control Engineering, and Applied Mathematics at several Romanian institutions: Research Institute for Informatics (ICI, now National Institute for Research & Development in Informatics), Polytechnical Institute of Bucharest (IPB, now "Politehnica" University of Bucharest), and Institute for Applied Informatics (AISTEDA), Bucharest.

Since 1977 till 1992 (intermitently), as a Scholar, I have taught at IPB (Programming Languages, Nonlinear Optimization, Control Systems Design) and, in 1993, at AISTEDA (Control Systems Design).

I am now First Degree Senior Research Worker (equivalent to full professor) at ICI (Applied Research Department). From 1995 till March 2003, I was Vicechairman of the Scientific Board of ICI. I was also Secretary of the Scientific Board (1990-1995).

Honors/Awards:

"Tudor Tanasescu" Romanian Academy Prize, 1992, for works in applied mathematics (awarded in 1994).

General Association of Engineers in Romania Award for works in linear-quadratic optimization (awarded in 1997).

Mentioned in the Editions 16, 17 and 18 of Who's Who in the World, Marquis Who's Who, 121 Chanlon Road, New Providence, NJ 07974, U.S.A.

Mentioned in the 2002 Edition of Who's Who in Romania (in Romanian), Pegasus Press, Bucuresti, Romania.

I have carried out and worked on over 45 Romanian Projects and Research Themes, comprizing about 90 reports. I have been involved in both fundamental and applied research, in several domains: optimal and adaptive control, mathematical programming, numerical linear algebra, and high-performance scientific computations. A special attention has been devoted to investigations of theoretical properties of algorithms (for instance, analysis of convergence and stability of stochastic adaptive algorithms), as well as to experimental studies of the numerical behaviour of their associated computer implementations (for instance, original implementations of several algorithms for adaptive and optimal control, including structure preserving algorithms based on symplectic transformations, computer aided control systems design, nonlinear optimization, numerical linear algebra, statistics). High-performance algorithms for control theory computations and subspace-based system identification, suitable for large-scale applications, have been also investigated and developed, mainly in the Numerics in Control Network (NICONET). Part of these algorithms have been published in scientific books and journals.

Main Achievements: I am the author or co-author of several software packages, books, papers, and technical reports in the control engineering field and, more generally, applied mathematics:

Software packages;

Books;

Papers;

Technical Reports;

Foreign grants.

I have contributed to many scientific International Conferences (Prague, Zürich, Davos, Ilmenau, Berlin, Tunis, Vilnius, Budapest, Lyon, Madrid, Copenhagen, Grenoble, Chicago, Sydney, Rome, Dearborn, Kuwait, Padova, Plovdiv, Cambridge, Karlsruhe, Hawai'i, Perpignan, Anchorage, Boston, Porto, Philadelphia, Glasgow, Rhodes, Rotterdam, Kusadasi, Yokohama, etc.) and National Conferences (Bucuresti, Cluj-Napoca, Iasi, Craiova, Timisoara, Galati, Constanta, etc.). I was:

member of the organizing committees of NICONET Workshops on Numerical Control Software:
- December 4, 1998, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain,
- December 3, 1999, INRIA Rocquencourt, France,
- January 19, 2001, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium;
co-organizer and lecturer for the training sessions at Workshop and training course entitled Advanced Computational Tools for Computer-aided Control Systems Design, September 27-29, 2001, University of Bremen, Germany;
lecturer for the Tutorial Course entitled Advanced Computational Tools for CACSD, Sept. 2, 10:30-12:30, at The 7th European Control Conference ECC'03, Sept. 1-4, 2003, University of Cambridge, UK; lecture entitled System Identification Using Subspace Methods;
member of the program committees for several conferences, e.g.,
- The Tenth IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Aided Control System Design (CACSD'99), August 22-27, 1999, Hawai'i, U.S.A.;
- The IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Aided Control System Design (CACSD'00), September 25-27, 2000, Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.A.;
- IFAC Workshop on Adaptation and Learning in Control and Signal Processing (ALCOSP 2004), August 30 - September 1, 2004, Yokohama, Japan;
co-organizer of sessions at, e.g.,
- The IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Aided Control System Design (CACSD'00), September 25-27, 2000, Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.A.;
- Fourth SIAM Conference on Linear Algebra in Signals, Systems and Control, August 13-16, 2001, Boston, U.S.A.;
- CCA/CACSD 2002 IEEE Conferences, September 18-20, 2002, Glasgow, Scotland;
- The 7th European Control Conference ECC03, September 1-4, 2003, Cambridge, UK;
(co)chairman of sessions at, e.g.,
- The 12-th IFAC World Congress, July 18-23, 1993, Sydney, Australia;
- The Tenth IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Aided Control System Design (CACSD'99), August 22-27, 1999, Hawai'i, U.S.A.;
- The IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Aided Control System Design (CACSD'00), September 25-27, 2000, Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.A.;
- Fourth SIAM Conference on Linear Algebra in Signals, Systems and Control, August 13-16, 2001, Boston, U.S.A.;
- CCA/CACSD 2002 IEEE Conferences, September 18-20, 2002, Glasgow, Scotland;
- The 7th European Control Conference ECC03, September 1-4, 2003, Cambridge, UK.

Invited talks and seminars (partial list):

Universite Catholique de Louvaine, Louvaine-la-Neuve, Dec. 1996, Jan. 19 2001;
Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, March 1997;
Kuwait University, Kuwait, May 1998;
Technical University Plovdiv, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Aug. 1998;
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, December 9, 1999;
Romanian Academy, Bucharest, March 27, 2001;
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain, September 18-19, 2001;
Division of Automatic Control, Linkoping University, Sweden, October 30, 2001;
Department of Computing Science and HPC2N, Umea University, Sweden, November 1-2, 2001;
Department of Mathematics, Northern Illinolis University, DeKalb, U.S.A., July 22, 2002;
Fakultat Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, Institut fur Mathematik, Technische Universitat Berlin, F.R.G., January 8, 2004.

Memberships:

Member of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), U.S.A.;
Senior member of The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE), U.S.A., and member of IEEE Control Systems Society, IEEE Signal Processing Society, and IEEE Communications Society;
Outreach member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.;
Member of the Working Group on Software (WGS);
Member of the Numerics in Control Network (NICONET) and of the NICONET International Society, Belgium;
Affiliate member of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), Laxenburg, Austria;
Member of IFAC Technical Committee TC 1.2., Adaptive and Learning Systems. Technical Committee Chair: Prof. Akira Sano, Keio University, Japan;
Member of the National IFAC Committee, Bucharest, Romania;
Member of the National Geographic Society, U.S.A.;
Member of the Romanian Society for Automatics and Technical Informatics (SRAIT), and member of the Directory Board of SRAIT (1991-1995).

Editor/Reviewer:

Member of the Editorial Board of the international journal Studies in Informatics and Control, Bucharest, Romania;
Reviewer for the international journals
- Computational Optimization with Applications (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, U.S.A.);
- IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (Control Systems Society);
- Linear Algebra and Its Applications;
- The Electronic Journal of Linear Algebra (The International Linear Algebra Society);
- SIAM Review (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics);
- SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications;
- Future Generation Computer Systems;
- Journal of Applied Mathematics (Hindawi Publishing Corp., Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44223 USA);
- Numerical Algorithms;
- International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences, etc.
Reviewer for several conferences, e.g.,
- The Tenth IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Aided Control System Design (CACSD'99), August 22-27, 1999, Hawai'i, U.S.A.;
- The IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Aided Control System Design (CACSD'00), September 25-27, 2000, Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.A.;
- The 9th IFAC/IFORS/IMACS/IFIP/ Symposium on Large Scale Systems: Theory and Applications (LSS 2001), July 18-20, 2001, Bucharest, Romania;
- CCA/CACSD 2002 IEEE Conferences, September 18-20, 2002, Glasgow, Scotland;
- The 7th European Control Conference ECC'03, Sept. 1-4, 2003, University of Cambridge, UK;
- American Control and Decision Conference CDC03, December 2003, U.S.A.;
- IFAC Workshop on Adaptation and Learning in Control and Signal Processing (ALCOSP 2004), August 30 - September 1, 2004, Yokohama, Japan;
- 2004 IEEE CCA/ISIC/CACSD Conferences, Taipei, Taiwan, September 2004.
Unofficial reviewer for several Ph. D. Theses, books, and software tools. Several books published abroad contain explicit acknowledgements to Dr. Sima, e.g.,
- Van Overschee, P., and B. De Moor, Subspace Identification for Linear Systems : Theory - Implementation - Applications, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston/London/Dordrecht, 1996, ISBN 0-7923-9717-7 (page xiii);
- Anderson, E., Z. Bai, C. Bischof, S.Blackford, J. Demmel, J. Dongarra, J. Du Croz, A. Greenbaum, S. Hammarling, A. McKenney, and D. Sorensen, LAPACK Users' Guide: Third Edition, Software . Environments . Tools, SIAM, Philadelphia, 1999, ISBN 0-89871-447-8 (page xxi);
- B. N. Datta, Numerical Methods for Linear Control Systems Design and Analysis, Elsevier/Academic Press, 2004, ISBN 0-12203-590-9 (page xxi).

Software packages

Vasile Sima, 2004, June 30