Member of the Future Mobility Grand Challenge Research Committee
Yuanbo Nie is a Lecturer in Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield. He holds an MSc in Aerospace Engineering from Delft University of Technology, an MSc in Advanced Computational Methods from Imperial College London, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics from Imperial College London, awarded in 2021.
Yuanbo’s previous roles include working at the Institute of System Dynamics and Control at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) between 2012 and 2013, and serving as a post-doctoral research associate at the Rolls-Royce Control, Monitoring and Systems Engineering University Technology Centre from 2021 to 2022.
His research focuses on developing efficient and reliable numerical methods for solving dynamic optimization problems, applying these methods to nonlinear model predictive control, and exploring their applications in aerospace engineering.
Daniel Auger
Member of the Future Mobility Grand Challenge Research Committee
Daniel Auger is Professor of Electrification, Modelling and Control at Cranfield University, where he is a member of the Advanced Vehicle Engineering Centre. He completed his MEng(Hons) and his PhD at the University of Cambridge. Before taking up an academic appointment, he worked for BAE Systems and MathWorks Consulting Services.
His research focuses on applications of control in vehicle applications and energy storage. He has published extensively on modelling and management for lightweight lithium-sulfur batteries and is the principal developer of the LISTOOLS battery modelling software. He is a Past Chair of the IEEE UK & Ireland Control System Society Chapter. He is a Chartered Engineer and an IET Fellow.
Wasif Naeem
Member of the Future Mobility Grand Challenge Research Committee
Wasif Naeem BEng, MSc, PhD is a Reader (Associate Professor) in the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at QUB and is also a member of the Centres for Intelligent Autonomous Manufacturing Systems and Energy, Power and Intelligent Control. His doctoral and postdoctoral research were both part of EPSRC-funded academia-industry collaborative projects to develop autonomous marine vehicles.
He is currently leading collision avoidance research for a fully electric, hydrofoiling ferry as part of a £35M project led by Artemis Technologies (2020 – 2025). He was also the Principal Investigator from QUB on an £1.3M InnovateUK-funded Rolls Royce led MAXCMAS research grant (2015 – 2017) developing path planning and collision avoidance strategies for marine vehicles. From 2020 – 2023, He was the coordinator of an EU-funded Erasmus+ project (€390k) on development of training programmes in the area of Industry 4.0 related smart manufacturing.
Dr Naeem’s research interests span optimal control, system identification, process control and systems engineering. He has authored over 105 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers and 3 book chapters. Two journal papers in the area of guidance of unmanned marine vehicles were awarded the Michael Richey Medal and IMarEST Denny Medal respectively by the Royal Institute of Navigation and Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology (IMarEST). Two of his conference presentations in marine navigation were awarded the IMarEST ‘Most Innovative Research’ and best poster paper awards. Dr Naeem has successfully supervised over 12 PhD students in the general area of robotics. He is a member of the prestigious EPSRC College, a member of IFAC Technical Committee on Marine Systems and an Executive Committee member of the UK Automatic Control Council. He also regularly sits on expert review and prioritisation panels invited by the Research Council of Norway and been on Programme/Steering Committees and Associate Editor of a number of other international conferences. He has been instrumental in bringing three international conferences to Belfast including the International Control Conference (Control2016) as the Local Organising Chair, 29th International Irish Signals and Systems Conference (ISSC2018) as the General Chair and the IFAC International Conference on Intelligent Control and Automation Sciences (ICONS2019) as the Co-Chair.
Allahyar Montazeri
Co-Chair of the Future Mobility Grand Challenge Research Committee
Allahyar Montazeri is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Engineering at Lancaster University. Before this, he was appointed as Assistant Professor in Control and Electronics Engineering with the Engineering Department at Lancaster University. Between 2010 and 2011, he joined the Fraunhofer Institute, Germany as a research fellow, and then carried on his research with Fraunhofer IDMT and Control Engineering Group at Ilmenau University, Germany during the years 2011 to 2013.
He has been a visiting research scholar with the Control Engineering Group at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and the Chemical Engineering Group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway. Dr Montazeri is the recipient of the European Research Consortium on Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) and Humboldt Research awards in 2010 and 2011, respectively. He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and serves on IFAC Technical Committees ’Adaptive and Learning Systems’ and ’Modelling, Identification, and Signal Processing’.
He is currently the Associate Editor of the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Science Progress, and an editorial board member of Automation MDPI and Computational Intelligence in Electrical Engineering. He has been an international program committee member of several IEEE affiliated conferences and has organized various invited sessions and special issues for journals such as Electronics MDPI and IFAC MIM 2019 and 2022 conferences. His research is funded by different councils and industries in the UK such as the Engineering and Physical Research Council (EPSRC), Sellafield Ltd, National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), and Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
His research interests cover a wide range of areas on control theory and digital signal processing. Particularly he is interested in Adaptive Signal Processing and Control, Nonlinear Robust Control, Linear and Nonlinear System Identification, Estimation Theory, and Machine Learning techniques for optimization with applications in Robotics and Autonomous Systems as well as Active Noise and Vibration Control Systems.
Eric C Kerrigan
Chair of the Future Mobility Grand Challenge Research Committee
Eric Kerrigan is Professor of Control and Optimization at Imperial College London, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Department of Aeronautics. He completed his BSc(Eng) at the University of Cape Town and earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge.
His research focuses on developing theory and methods for model predictive control (MPC) to systematically address nonlinearities and uncertainties. His expertise lies in designing efficient numerical methods for real-time MPC, motivated by applications in aerospace, renewable energy, and information systems. He recently served as a Senior Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology and is currently an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.
