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I started this website when I was a graduate student at Northeastern University in the department of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering (MIME) and Electrical and Computer Engineering. I finished my Ph.D. in  Computer System Engineering in the spring of 1998. This degree program allowed me to concentrate in  Intelligent and Robust Control and Software Engineering. 

After finishing my Ph.D. I joined the research faculty  at the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) of Penn State. I joined initially to study the software engineering of intelligent control systems. However, my major contribution were made in the area of tracking maneuvering targets. 

From 1999 until 2003  I was a professor in the Computer Science Department at at State University of New York at Plattsburgh.

Graduate Education

I began my graduate education working with  Prof. Mieczyslaw M. Kokar. I completed my Master's dissertation with him on hybrid systems: Q2 Symbolic Reasoning about Noisy Dynamic Systems.   I then switched for my Ph.D. dissertation to Prof. Bahram Shafai.

My Ph.D. thesis is entitled  Robust Qualitative and Quantitative Methods for Disturbance Rejection and Fault Accommodation. Our quantitative methodology is based on our new technique for building robust fuzzy controllers. First behaviors are developed to achieve stability, and then the controller is augmented with behaviors that achieve the desired tracking performance. This methodology is a new approach to designing fuzzy controllers, that build on design methodologies used in classical control.

We also developed a new quantitative methodology for rejecting unmeasured input disturbances using integral action to supplement the proportional action of the standard observers and estimators, creating the Proportional-Integral (PI) observer. We have show through simulations using the 1992 ACC Benchmark that a PI Kalman filter-based state feedback controller can robustly suppress vibrations in a lightly damped structure created by an unknown, arbitrarily shaped disturbance.

A short abstract of the thesis is available as well as the extended introduction taken from the thesis. A more detailed understanding of my research can be obtained by reading my publications.  Email me if you want a copy of my thesis.