Best Session Presentation Award

Nagini Devarakonda, was awarded the `Best Session Presentation Award' at the recent 2010 American Control Conference held June 30-July 2 in Baltimore, Maryland.  Her paper titled, "Engineering Perspective of Ecological Sign Stability and its Application in Control Design," was adjudged a semi-finalist.  Only five finalists were selected in the Best Student Paper Award competition at the conference. 

Coauthored with her advisor, Professor R.K. Yedavalli, the paper is an engineering perspective of ecological sign stability and its application in control design for engineering systems.  The main aim of the research is to understand the underlying features of natural systems like Eco/Bio systems, which tend to be highly robust under perturbations, and then apply these principles to build a robust engineering system. Toward this goal, some fundamental qualitative features of ecological sign stability are reviewed and transformed into a set of mathematical results in matrix theory with quantitative information, which is usually encountered in engineering sciences.   The proposed algorithm takes full advantage of the concepts of ecological sign stability that results in a highly robust engineering system. This method is applied to satellite attitude control and aircraft flight control problems.

Devarakonda is pursuing her PhD in aerospace engineering.   Our congratulations go out to her and her advisor Professor Yedavalli.