Fall 2023 GRASP Seminar: Vladimir Kucera, Czech Technical University, “Czech Technical University in Prague”

Vladimír Kučera (Life Fellow, IEEE) was born in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1943. He received the graduate (Hons.) degree in electrical engineering from Czech Technical University, Prague, in 1966, and the CSc. and DrSc. degrees in control engineering from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague, in 1970 and 1979, respectively.,During 1967–2017 he was a Researcher and from 1990 to 1998 the Director, with the Institute of Information Theory and Automation, one of the research institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. He is currently an Emeritus Scientist of the Academy of Sciences. Since 1996, he has been a Professor of Control Engineering, Czech Technical University, Prague. He served the university as the Head of Control Engineering Department, Dean of Electrical Engineering, and Director of the Masaryk Institute of Advanced Studies. He is currently a Distinguished Researcher and Vice Director of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics. He has held many visiting positions at prestigious European, American, Asian, and Australian universities. His research interests include linear systems and control theory. His well-known result is the parameterization of all controllers that stabilize a given system, known as the Youla-Kučera parameterization. Recently, he has resolved a long-standing open problem of linear control theory, the decoupling by static-state feedback.,Prof. Kučera is a Life Advisor, Fellow, and a former President of IFAC. He was the recipient of many awards including the Prize of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1972, the National Prize of the Czech Republic in 1989, and the Automatica Prize Paper Award in 1990. He is an Honorary Professor of the Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, and has received honorary doctorates from Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France and Université Henri Poincaré, Nancy, France. He was awarded Chevalier dans l’ordre des palmes académiques, a national order of France for distinguished academics.