Krstic awarded IEEE Bode Lecture Prize

Miroslav Krstic, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego, has been selected as the 2023 recipient of the Bode Lecture Prize, the highest award given by the IEEE Control Systems Society. 

The Bode Lecture Prize recognizes distinguished contributions to control systems science or engineering, and the broader impacts of the contribution towards the benefit of society at large. Krstic will deliver a plenary lecture at the 2023 Conference on Decision and Control in Singapore.

Krstic serves as senior associate vice chancellor for research for UC San Diego, and holds the Daniel L. Alspach Endowed Chair in Dynamic Systems and Control. He opened up a whole new area of research in control theory by reviving what are known as extremum seeking algorithms. Krstic’s advances made it possible to better conduct chemical analysis of rocks on the Mars rover Curiosity. They also have helped achieve a 200-fold increase in area density in the microchips that run smartphones, resulting in a multi-billion dollar impact for the semiconductor photolithography industry.

He has made transformational contributions to partial differential equations control, nonlinear delay systems, extremum seeking, adaptive control, stochastic nonlinear stabilization, and their industrial applications – including everything from stabilizing stop-and-go motion in congested traffic to estimating the state of health of batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones. 

“Henrik Bode was the founding thinker of control systems as a field that straddles technology and theory,” said Krstic. “The Bode Lecture should inspire the community about the future of the field. No one has achieved this as memorably as Peter Kokotovic in 1991, with his “Joy of Feedback” lecture. He showcased my first result in that lecture, helped launch my career, and this is what makes my own Bode Lecture task for 2023 not only daunting but also special.” 

Krstic has received several lifetime achievement recognitions. In 2022, he was named the inaugural recipient of two awards: the biennial A.V. “Bal” Balakrishnan Research Award for Scientific Excellence in Research in the Mathematics of Systems and the triennial Ruth Curtain Award for Distributed Parameter Systems from the International Federation for Automatic Control. In 2021, he received the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award; in 2019, the Reid Prize from the Society for Industrial Mathematics and the Nonlinear Control Systems Award from the International Federation for Automatic Control; and in 2017 the Oldenburger Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. 

Krstic also is Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the International Federation of Automatic Control, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the UK’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, as well as associate fellow of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Wood high-rise tops off at UC San Diego shake table — tests planned for early next year

The tallest building ever to be tested on an earthquake simulator topped off at 10 stories high at UC San Diego's shake table when construction crews and a giant crane flew the last wood panel to the top of the structure on Dec. 6, 2022.

The building is made from cross-laminated timber, or CLT, a material that allows for faster construction and is also sustainable. The goal of the Tallwood project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is to determine how well CLT mid- to high-rise buildings would fare during an earthquake. It is led by the Colorado School of Mines with a team of researchers from universities around the world. You can learn more about the project at the Tallwood website, in this story by the San Diego Union-Tribune and in this podcast episode. 

The building is set to be tested some time early next year, and will undergo several simulated earthquakes, including the equivalent of the 6.7 Northridge earthquake that shook Southern California in 1994.

The Tallwood project is the first large-scale building to be tested on UC San Diego's shake table, one of the two largest in the world, since the table underwent a major $16.9 million upgrade funded by the NSF.  It went from being able to move in one direction – east-west – to three directions – east-west, north-south, up and down, as well as roll, pitch and yaw, three motions in the x, y and z axes performed by airplanes in flight and commonly seen in earthquake motions. The upgrade to one vertical and two horizontal motions and three rotations–known technically as six degrees of freedom–will allow the facility to test structures with an unprecedented degree of accuracy when compared to real earthquake ground motions.

The shake table, opened in 2004, has tested more than 30 structures in that time, and has already made a significant impact. Tests here have resulted in changes to building codes for everything from hospitals, to tall buildings, to roads and bridges.

Find out more about the shake table's impact in this KPBSstory.