Pramod Khargonekar

Dr. Pramod P. Khargonekar was appointed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to serve as Assistant Director for the Directorate of Engineering (ENG) in March 2013. In this position, Khargonekar leads the ENG Directorate with an annual budget of more than $800 million. The ENG Directorate invests in frontier engineering research and education, cultivates an innovation ecosystem, and develops the next-generation of engineers. He is a member of the senior leadership team at NSF and thereby involved in setting priorities and policies at NSF.

Khargonekar received B. Tech. Degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, in 1977, and M.S. degree in mathematics and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florida in 1980 and 1981, respectively. He has held faculty positions at the University of Florida, University of Minnesota, and The University of Michigan. He was Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 1997 to 2001 and also held the position of Claude E. Shannon Professor of Engineering Science at The University of Michigan. From 2001 to 2009, he was Dean of the College of Engineering and is currently Eckis Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida. He also served briefly as Deputy Director of Technology at ARPA-E, U. S. Department of Energy in 2012-13.

Khargonekar’s research and teaching interests are centered on theory and applications of systems and control. His early work was on mathematical control theory, specifically focusing on robust control analysis and design. During the 1990’s, he was involved in a major multidisciplinary project on applications of control and estimation techniques to semiconductor manufacturing. His current research and teaching interests include systems and control theory, machine learning, and applications to smart electric grid and neural engineering. He has authored more than 130 refereed journal publications and 150 conference publications. He has supervised 32 doctoral students. He has been recognized as a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher. He is a recipient of the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the American Automatic Control Council’s Donald Eckman Award, the Japan Society for Promotion of Science fellowships, the IEEE W. R. G. Baker Prize Award, the IEEE CSS George Axelby Best Paper Award, the Hugo Schuck ACC Best Paper Award, and the Distinguished Alumnus and Distinguished Service Awards from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He is a Fellow of IEEE. At the University of Michigan, he received the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship. In the past, he has served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, SIAM Journal of Control, Systems and Control Letters, and International J. of Robust and Nonlinear Control. He has been a member of the IEEE Control Systems Theory and Robust Control technical committees. He has also served as Chair and Member of the American Automatic Control Council’s Donald Eckman Award Committee. He has served as Program Co-Chair of the American Control Conference.