Prof. Domitilla Del Vecchio received the 2010 Donald P. Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council, "For contributions to the theory and practice of hybrid dynamical systems and systems biology." Her research interests are in the control of hybrid dynamical systems with imperfect information and in the analysis and design of bio-molecular feedback systems.

In an interview about her work in hybrid systems for the IEEE Control Systems Magazine in 2007, Del Vecchio described a hybrid system as one "with continuous dynamics and discrete decisions. ... A typical example is a multi-robot system, in which continuous variables represent the position and velocity of a robot, while discrete variables regulate the internal communication and coordination protocol among the robots. Traffic systems are also intrinsically hybrid since the drivers can decide to switch the dynamics of their vehicle from the "stop" mode to the "go" mode, and from the "go straight" mode to the "turn left" mode. In each of these modes, however, the vehicle dynamics are continuous."

Domitilla Del Vecchio received the Ph.D. degree in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, and the Laurea in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rome at Tor Vergata in 2005 and 1999, respectively. Since January 2006, she has been an Assistant Professor in the EECS Department, and in the Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics.

In addition to a CAREER award for the project, "A Partial Order Approach to Dynamic Feedback in Multi-agent Decision and Control Systems," she is a recipient of the Crosby Award, University of Michigan (2007), the American Control Conference Best Student Paper Award (2004), and the Bank of Italy Fellowship (2000). Domitilla Del Vecchio has been serving on the Program Committee of the American Control Conference and of the Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control Conference.

The Eckman Award recognizes an outstanding young engineer in the field of automatic control. Prof. Del Vecchio will be presented with the award at the 2010 American Control Conference, July 1, 2010.

Posted: April 12, 2010 by
Catharine June
EECS/ECE Communications Coordinator
cmsj@umich.edu or 734-936-2965