Control research and development in India: A conversation with Mathukumalli Vidyasagar

Dr. Vidyasagar´s presentation will discuss the highly uneven development of various subjects in India, and how control theory in India is not developing quite so well as it is being developed by Indians outside India (mostly in the U.S.), and ask why. International companies and other institutions that have established centers for controls in India will be noted. The presentation will also cover the state of development and interest in various application areas - process, aerospace, biomedical, automotive, even quantitative finance. Dr. Vidyasagar will also offer some guidance for control scientists and engineers (both Indian origin and not) who may be contemplating moving to India, both for academic and industrial positions. Although the focus of the session is on India, similarities and contrasts with other emerging regions and countries will also be a topic of discussion. Dr. Vidyasagar is the ideal person to engage the ACC audience in a session on India. He is internationally renowned within the controls community for his research contributions in the field, in areas such as adaptive and robust control, robotics, and statistical learning theory. Dr. Vidyasagar started his academic career in North America and moved to India in 1989 as Director of the Center for AI and Robotics, a position he held until 2000 when he was appointed Executive Vice President and head of the Advanced Technology Centre for Tata Consultancy Services. Dr. Vidyasagar is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and the Third World Academy of Sciences. His other honors include the Frederick Emmons Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, the IEEE CSS Bode Prize Lecture Award, the best paper award from the Society of Instrumentation and Control Engineers (Japan), the best “Methodology” paper prize for Automatica for 1999–2002, and inclusion as one of “Forty Tech Gurus” in- IEEE Spectrum in November 2004.