Murat Arcak

Associate Professor

Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering Dept.

Jonsson Engineering Center

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

110 8th Street

Troy, New York 12180-3590

Tel: (518) 276-6535 Fax: (518) 276-6261

E - Mail: arcakm at rpi.edu

Brief Biography:

BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, 1996.

MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1997.

PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000 (advisor: Petar Kokotovic).

Joined Rensselaer in 2001.

National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2003.

Donald P. Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council, 2006.

SIAG/CST Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2007.

Research Interests:

Large-Scale Network Analysis and Design. We exploit the structure in complex biological and engineering networks, and characterize essential properties of the components, such as passivity and time-scales, that influence the aggregate network dynamics.

Cooperative Motion Control. To develop decentralized motion coordination algorithms, we take advantage of passivity properties inherent in complex and heterogeneous agent dynamics. The passivity approach further offers flexibility for robust and adaptive redesigns.

Robust Nonlinear Control Design. We develop design tools that recover stability and performance in the presence of static and dynamic model uncertainty. When full state information is unavailable, we augment these designs with observers tailored to classes of nonlinearities.

Controllers and Observers for Fuel Cell Systems. We design feedback and estimation algorithms that account for uncertainties and nonlinearities arising from wide variations in electrical load, kinetic coefficients, humidity, and reformate gas composition.

Publications and Preprints