2010 Conference Acknowledgments
Dr. John T. Wen
Co-Chair
Director, Center for Automation Technologies and Systems (CATS)
Professor, Dept. of Electrical, Computer, & Systems Eng. and Dept. of Mechanical,
Aerospace, & Nuclear Eng. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
John T. Wen received his B.Eng. from McGill University in 1979, M.S. from University of Illinois in 1981, and Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1985, all in Electrical Engineering. From 1981-1982, he was a system engineer at Fisher Controls where he developed a plant-wide coordination control system for pulp and paper plants. From 1985-1988, he was a member of technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he developed new modeling and control algorithms for large space structures and space robots. Since 1988, he has been with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering. He was appointed in 2005 as the Director of a New York State sponsored interdisciplinary research center, Center for Automation Technologies and Systems (CATS). He also served as the Interim Director of the NSF Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center which from June-Dec, 2009. Dr. Wen was an ASEE/NASA Summer Faculty Fellow in 1993, and a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Senior Visiting Scientist in 1997. He was an Oversea Assessor for the Chinese Academy of Sciences 2004-2009. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal on Optomechatronics and Robotica. Dr. Wen's research interest lies in the general area of modeling and control of dynamical systems with applications to motion control, robot manipulation, opto-mechatronics, thermal management, and active flow control. He has over 200 refereed publications and seven patents. Dr. Wen is a Fellow of IEEE.