CV

Curriculum Vitae of
Mathukumalli Vidyasagar
Fellow of The Royal Society
SERB National Science Chair &
Distinguished Professor
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad

Contents

Educational Background
Career Profile
Awards and Honors
Erdös and Einstein Numbers
Brief Biography

For an up to date resume, current as of October 2023, please click here

Educational Background

Degree Institution Year
B.S. (E.E) University of Wisconsin, Madison 1965
M.S. (E.E.) University of Wisconsin, Madison 1967
Ph.D. (E.E.) University of Wisconsin, Madison 1969

Career Profile

Institution Location Position Period
Marquette University Milwaukee, USA Asst. Prof. 1969-70
Concordia University Montreal, Canada Asst. -- Prof. 1970-80
University of Waterloo Waterloo, Canada Professor 1980-89
Centre for AI & Robotics Bangalore, India Director 1989-2000
Tata Consultancy Services Hyderabad, India Executive Vice President 2000-09
University of Texas at Dallas Dallas, USA Chaired Professor 2009 -- 2019
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad Hyderabad, India Distinguished Professor 2015 -- date

Awards and Honors

  • 1976: Prix Georges Montefiore, Association of Belgian Electrical Engineers, for best original research in electrical engineering during the period 1970-75, for the book "Feedback Systems: Input-Output Properties"
  • 1981: E. W. R. Steacie Memorial Prize, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, for being an outstanding young researcher.
  • 1983: Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), "For contributions to the stability theory of linear and nonlinear distributed systems"
  • 1984: Frederick Emmons Terman Award, American Society for Engineering Education, for combining teaching and research excellence.
  • 1987: Best Paper Award, Society of Instrumentation and Control Engineers, Japan.
  • 1992: Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences
  • 1992: Fellow, Indian National Academy of Engineering
  • 1994: Fellow, Indian National Academy of Science
  • 1995: Distinguished Service Citation, College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin
  • 1997: Fellow, Third World Academy of Sciences, Trieste, Italy
  • 1997: Scientist of the Year, Defence Research and Development Organisation, Government of India.
  • 2000: Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize, IEEE Control Systems Society, ``For seminal contributions to systems science and engineering, especially nonlinear, robust and optimal control, robotics, and statistical learning theory''
  • 2002: Best Paper Prize (Methodology) from the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) for the paper entitled ``Randomized algorithms for robust controller synthesis using statistical learning theory.'' This paper was adjudged to be the best "methodology" (theory) paper published in the journal Automatica during the period 1999-2002.
  • 2004: Named as one of "Forty Tech Gurus" in the November 2004 issue of IEEE Spectrum.
  • 2005: Jawaharlal Nehru Centenary Lecture Prize, Indian National Science Academy.
  • 2008: IEEE Control Systems Award, for "Promulgation of control science and engineering and contributions to robust control, robotics and statistical learning theory"
  • 2011: Harry H. Nyquist Lecture Award, American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
  • 2012: Fellow, The Royal Society, United Kingdom.
  • 2012: Fellow, The Institute of Physics, United Kingdom.
  • 2012: Rufus Oldenburger Medal, American Society of Mechanical Engineering, "For his fundamental contributions to robust control theory, specifically L1-optimal control theory for linear control systems; nonlinear control theory, especially input-output stability theory; robotics, including the control of flexible beams; statistical learning theory and machine learning; and computational biology"
  • 2013 John Ragazzini Education Award, American Automatic Control Council, "For outstanding contributions to automatic control education through publication of textbooks and research monographs"
  • 2015: Jawaharlal Nehru Science Fellowship, Government of India
  • 2017: Fellow, International Federation of Automatic Control
  • 2017: Named as 125 "People of Impact" during the 125th anniversary of the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin
  • 2018: Member TAMEST (The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas), open only to Members of the National Academies of Medicine, Engineering, and Sciences, and to Fellows of The Royal Society, based in Texas.
  • 2019 SERB (Science and Engineering Research Board) Distinguished Fellowship.
  • 2020 SERB National Science Chair

Erdös and Einstein Numbers

My Erdös number is two and my Einstein number is three.

The path to Paul Erdös is:

M. Vidyasagar -> M. V. Subbarao (My father) -> Paul Erdös

The path to Albert Einstein is:

M. Vidyasagar -> M. V. Subbarao -> Ernst Straus -> Albert Einstein

The papers in these two chains are given below.

M. Vidyasagar -> M. V. Subbarao

  • M. V. Subbarao and M. Vidyasagar, "On Watson's quintuple product identity", Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., 26, 23-27, September 1970. PDF
  • G. E. Andrews, M. V. Subbarao and M. Vidyasagar, "A family of combinatorial identities", Can. Math. Bull. 15(1), 11-18, January 1972. PDF
M. V. Subbarao -> Paul Erdös
  • P. Erdös and M. V. Subbarao, "On the iterates of some arithmetic functions", Lecture Notes in Mathematics, 251, 119-125, 1972. PDF
  • P. Erdös, G. E. Hardy and M. V. Subbarao, "On th Schnirelmann identity of k-free integers", Indian Journal of Mathematics, 46-55, 1978.
M. V. Subbarao -> Ernst Straus
  • E. G. Straus and M. V. Subbarao, "On exponential divisors", Duke Math. J., 41, 465-471, 1974. PDF
  • E. G. Straus and M. V. Subbarao, "On the representation of franctions as sum and difference of three different simple fractions", Congressus Numerantium, 561-579, 1977. PDF
Ernst Straus -> Albert Einstein
  • A. Einstein and E. G. Straus, "A generalization of the relativistic theory of gravitation II", Annals of Mathematics, 47(4), 731-741, October 1946. pdf
For a web page set up in memory of my father by his long-time employer, the University of Alberta, please see here

Brief Biography

Mathukumalli Vidyasagar was born in Guntur, India on September 29, 1947. He received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in 1965, 1967 and 1969 respectively. Between 1969 and 1989, he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Marquette University, Concordia University, and the University of Waterloo. In 1989 he returned to India as the Director of the newly created Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) in Bangalore. under the Ministry of Defence, Government of India. In 2000 he moved to the Indian private sector as an Executive Vice President of India's largest software company, Tata Consultancy Services. In 2009 he retired from TCS and joined the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas, as a Cecil & Ida Green Chair in Systems Biology Science. In January 2015 he received the Jawaharlal Nehru Science Fellowship and divided his time between UT Dallas and the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. In January 2018 he stopped teaching at UT Dallas and now resides full-time in Hyderabad. Since March 2020, he is a SERB National Science Chair. His current research is in the area of Reinforcement Learning, with emphasis on using stochastic approximation theory. More broadly, he is interested in machine learning, systems and control theory, and their applications. Vidyasagar has received a number of awards in recognition of his research contributions, including Fellowship in The Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, the IEEE Control Systems (Technical Field) Award, the Rufus Oldenburger Medal of ASME, the John R. Ragazzini Education Award from AACC, and others. He is the author of thirteen books and more than 160 papers in peer-reviewed journals.