Co-Design Problem Paper from CMU Portugal Alumni Awarded

Co-Design Problem Paper from CMU Portugal Alumni Awarded
Sérgio Pequito and two colleagues received the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award at the 2016 American Control Conference.

SergioPequito_Award_AACC The paper “Minimum Cost Constrained Input-Output and Control Configuration Co-Design Problem: A Structural Systems Approach,” written by CMU Portugal Alumni Sérgio Pequito, CMU Alumni Soummya Kar, and George J. Pappas, the Joseph Moore Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, received the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award at the 2016 American Control Conference, that took place last July.

“I was pleased, honored and humbled to accept this award since it is one of the major recognitions in my field. Also, being recognized for your hard work motivates you to work even harder to excel”, recalls Sérgio Pequito.

The former CMU Electrical and Computer Engineering PhD student highlights that this award was only possible due to his previous research.

“I received the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award at the 2016 American Control Conference for a paper that was only possible due to the techniques developed during my PhD”, refers Sérgio Pequito.

“We gave new insights in what to measure and control, and to which actuator do we need to provide the measurements; thus, unveiling a relationship that remained elusive for quite some time”, explains Sérgio Pequito.

According to the American Automatic Control Council, “the O. Hugo Schuck Award is given to recognize the best two papers presented at the previous Automatic Control Council. One award is for a paper emphasizing contributions to theory and the other emphasizing significant or innovative applications”.

Pequito’s co-authored paper was selected thanks to the written and oral presentation, the technical contribution, timeliness, and practicality.

Sérgio Pequito is a postdoctoral researcher in general robotics, automation, sensing & perception laboratory (GRASP lab) at University of Pennsylvania. Sérgio has been linked to CMU Portugal Program since 2009, as a dual degree doctoral student at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade de Lisboa and CMU. He received his BSc and MSc in Applied Mathematics from the IST.

Pequito’s research consists of understanding the global qualitative behavior of large scale networked systems from their structural or parametric descriptions and providing a rigorous framework for the design, analysis, optimization and control of large scale (real-world) systems. He was awarded with the best student paper finalist in the Conference of Decision and Control 2009, the ECE Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award at CMU and Carnegie Mellon Graduate Teaching Award (university-wide) [Honorable Mention], both in 2012. Besides the 2016 O. Hugo Schuck Award in the Theory Category, Pequito was finalist at the 2016 EECI European PhD Award on Control for Complex and Heterogeneous Systems.

Related articles:

Sérgio Pequito Gives a Talk on “A Framework for Structural Input/Output and Control Configuration Selection of Large-Scale Systems”

Sérgio Pequito Receives ECE Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award at CMU

Carnegie Mellon University Gives Two Awards to Sérgio Pequito

August 2016