AI and Data Archives - ACE - Automatic Control Engineering Network

Hector Figueiredo

Member of the AI and Data Grand Challenge Research Committee

Hector Figueiredo is a Chartered Engineer and Capability Lead at QinetiQ specialising in Autonomous Systems. He leads research teams in diverse autonomy related technologies being developed both in-house and externally which includes application of Systems Engineering principles to underpin research, development and exploitation. Commendations for his work have been received from DSTL, QinetiQ Innovation award and whilst at BAE Systems: Chairman’s Awards for Innovation, Silver and Bronze awards.

Relevant Technical expertise includes Autonomous systems, Crewed-Uncrewed teaming, Human autonomy teaming, aircraft design and performance.

At QinetiQ he has recently been the Task Lead on a Human Autonomy Teaming for Adaptive Systems project and previously, Solution architect and Technical oversight on the Crewed – Uncrewed Teaming project. A key research area is the evaluation and assurance of Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) enable autonomy functionality for next generation uncrewed systems. Hector also sits on the Trusted Autonomous Systems Steering Group, several academic Steering Groups developing ML/AI enabled autonomy technologies and is leading the QinetiQ project on assurance of ML/AI systems.

Rory Adams

Member of the AI and Data Grand Challenge Research Committee

Dr Rory Adams leads the UK Customer Success Engineering team at MathWorks, where he partners with academics enabling them to achieve success their research and teaching goals, by taking advantage of the full capabilities of MATLAB and Simulink.

Rory has extensive experience, as a former Application Engineer and Consultant at MathWorks, helping commercial customers solve their complex engineering challenges, and adopting model-based design practices to better deliver complex systems. He brings a wealth of expertise and a deep understanding of industry and academic needs to his current role.

Seán McLoone

Member of the AI and Data Grand Challenge Research Committee

Seán McLoone is Professor of Applied Computational Intelligence in the Energy, Power and Intelligent Control (EPIC) Research Centre within the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests are in computational intelligence techniques, machine learning and data analytics with applications in advanced manufacturing, robotics and power systems. His research has a strong application focus, with many projects undertaken in collaboration with industry in areas such as process monitoring, control, optimisation, time series prediction, and in-line sensor characterization.

At a professional level, Prof. McLoone is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering Technology (IET), and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He is a member of the IFAC Technical Committees on Computational Intelligence in Control (TC3.2), and Modelling, Identification and Signal Processing (TC1.1) and has previously served as Member of the Accreditation Board of Engineers Ireland and as a non-executive Director on the Board of Directors of Irish Manufacturing Research Ltd. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the ‘Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control’ and as a member of the Editorial Board of ‘Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence’.

Nabil Aouf

Chair of the AI and Data Grand Challenge Research Committee

Prof Nabil Aouf obtained his PhD from McGill University in 2002, specializing in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He currently holds the prestigious position of Professor of Autonomous Systems and Machine Intelligence at City University of London. Dr. Aouf is also the esteemed Director of the Autonomy of Systems Centre (ASC) and the Co-Director of the London Space Institute (LSI) at City University of London. He leads the Robotics, Autonomy and Machine Intelligence (RAMI) group and has established robust collaborations with leading industries and research organizations renowned for their expertise in autonomous systems and space research. With a remarkable portfolio of over 220 rigorously peer-reviewed journal and conference publications, Prof. Nabil Aouf’s scholarly influence is profound. In addition to his academic accolades, he serves as an Associate Editor for 4 esteemed journals, including holding a senior editorial position in the IEEE Transactions of Intelligent Vehicles.
Research Interests
Theory and application of Robotics and Autonomous Systems (Ground, Air and Space) Intelligence, and in particular:
• Perception (P) of Autonomous Vehicles through AI, Computer Vision, and Image processing
(Machine Learning and Deep Learning)
• Guidance (G) (Path Planning), Navigation (N) (Localization), and Robust Control (C)
Systems
• Decision-making through the planning and re-planning of Autonomous Systems Tasks
• eXplAInability (XAI) of Deep Learning based PGNC solutions for Autonomous Systems
• Real-time and embedded Machine Intelligence solutions.
• Adversarial Learning and Mitigation for AI-based Autonomous Systems
• Virtual/Augmented Reality based Human-Machine-Interaction

Publications

James Whidborne

Member of the AI and Data Grand Challenge Research Committee

James Whidborne is Professor of Control Engineering in the Centre for Aeronautics at Cranfield University where he is Head of the Dynamics Simulation and Control Group. He has over 30 years of experience in the field of control systems, prior to joining Cranfield University in 2004 he was a lecturer at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kings College London. He received his BA in engineering from the Cambridge University, and MSc and PhD in systems and control from the University of Manchester.

His research interests are in the theory and application of advanced control, in particular problems relating to flight control, flight guidance, fluid flow control and servo-aeroelasticity.

He has published over 250 refereed research papers, has authored three books and i9s the inventor on four patents. He served six years as Vice-Chair of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Technical Committee on Control Design and was a Member of the IFAC Industry Committee. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, Control Engineering Practice and the IMechE Journal of Systems and Control. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Morgan Jones

Member of the AI and Data Grand Challenge Research Committee

Morgan Jones is a Lecturer in Machine Learning and Control Theory at the University of Sheffield. He earned his PhD from Arizona State University, USA, in 2021 and Mmath in Mathematics from The University of Oxford, England in 2016.

Morgan’s research focuses on the intersection of machine learning and control theory with an interest in approximating Lyapunov functions from trajectory data, surface reconstruction from point cloud data, system identification and reinforcement learning.

Zehor Belkhatir

ECR Committee Member

Dr Zehor Belkhatir is a Lecturer in the School of Electronics and Computer Science and Programme Leader for BEng/MEng Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southampton (UoS). She is also a member of the Institute of Life Sciences at UoS.

Zehor received her joint MEng. and M.Sc. Degrees from National Polytechnic School of Algiers in Automatics and Control Systems Engineering. Then, she carried on her doctoral studies at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) where she received her PhD degree in Electrical Engineering. Zehor held the position of Lecturer in Control Engineering at the University of Leicester and De Montfort University, and before that she was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York, USA.

Zehor’s research interests encompass work across the fields of applied mathematics, control systems theory, and data analysis. She is particularly interested in developing control, estimation and computational data analytics techniques with a particular emphasis in applying them to biomedical/biological systems and automotive/robotic systems. She is a member of the Technology Conferences Editorial Board (TCEB) and the European Control Association (EUCA) Conference Editorial Board.

Kostas Margellos

Co-Chair of the AI and Data Grand Challenge Research Committee

Kostas Margellos (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Diploma degree in electrical engineering from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in 2008, and the Ph.D. degree in control engineering from ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, in 2012. He spent 2013, 2014, and 2015 as a Postdoctoral Researcher with ETH Zurich, UC Berkeley, and Politecnico di Milano, respectively. In 2016, he joined the Control Group, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He is also a Fellow in AI and Machine Learning at Reuben College and a Lecturer at Worcester College.

He is currently an Associate Editor in Automatica and in the IEEE Control Systems Letters, and is part of the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society and EUCA. In 2024 he was general co-chair of the Learning for Dynamics & Control Conference (L4DC 2024).

His research interests include data-driven and distributed optimization and control of complex uncertain systems, with applications to energy and transportation problems in smart cities.