Antonella Ferrara
Short Biography
Antonella Ferrara was born in Genova, Italy. As a student at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of
Genova, she got the "IEEE North Italy Section Electrical Engineering Student Award" in 1986. She received
the Laurea Degree in Electronic Engineering (cum Laude) in 1987 and the Ph.D. in Computer Science and
Electronics in 1992 from the University of Genova. She was Assistant Professor in the Department of
Communication, Computer and System Sciences of the University of Genova (1992-1998). In November
1998 she became Associate Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Pavia. Since January 2005
she is Full Professor of Automatic Control, first in the Department of Computer Engineering and Systems
Science of the University of Pavia (2005-2011), and then in the newborn Department of Electrical, Computer
and Biomedical Engineering (ECBE) of the same university.
She teaches “Process Control and Robotics” and “Advanced Automation and Control” (both in English) in
the Master Degree Programs in Computer Engineering and Industrial Automation Engineering. She also
teaches “Control of Vehicle Dynamics” (in English) in the Post-Bachelor Program on Design and
Development of Vehicle Dynamics. She was invited to give several Plenary lectures and Semi-plenaries. She
is frequently invited to give lectures in International Schools for Ph.D. students. She was Visiting Professor
at Graz University of Technology, and Invited Lecturer at Harvard University, University of Minnesota,
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Stuttgart, Technical University of Delft,
INRIA Grenoble, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Jeddah, Hanyang
University, Seoul, and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Her research activities are mainly in the area of advanced automatic control of complex systems, with
application to mechanical systems, robotics, automotive control, power systems control, process control, and
vehicular traffic control. She was a coordinator and member of several research units in national and
European research projects. She was scientific leader of several research projects funded or co-funded by
companies.
She has authored or co-authored more than 400 scientific papers, with 132 international journal papers and 3
scientific books. Moreover, she contributed with 27 invited chapters to edited books. From 2000 to 2004 she
was Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. From 2007 to 2012 she was
Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. Since January 2014, she has been
Associate Editor of the IEEE Control Systems Magazine. Since 2017, she has been Subject Editor of the
International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control. Since 2018 she has been Associated Editor of
Automatica. She was and currently is member of the International Program Committee of several
international conferences and events. She was also Program Co-Chair, Program Vice-Chair and Publication
Chair. She is Chair of the conference editorial board of the European Control Association (EUCA).
Antonella Ferrara is Fellow of IEEE. She is member of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS), of the IEEE
Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS), member of Women in Engineering, member of the IEEE
Technical Committee on Variable Structure and Sliding Mode Control, member of the IEEE Technical
Committee on Automotive Control, member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Smart Cities and member
of the IFAC Technical Committee on Transportation Systems. She was “appointed member” of the Board of
Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society for year 2012. She was Chair of the Women in Control
Committee of the IEEE Control Systems Society (July 2013-December 2016) and, at present, she is member
of the Advisory Board of that committee. She was “elected member” of the Board of Governors of the IEEE
Control Systems Society for the the triennium 2016-2018. She was member of the IEEE Control System
Society Outreach Task Force (2017-2019). Since January 2020 she has been Chair of the IEEE Control
System Society Outreach Task Force. In 2015-2019 she was a Member of the European Control Association
(EUCA) Council. Since June 2018 she has been Series Editor of the book series “Advances in Industrial
Control” published by Springer.
Since June 2019 she has been part of the Italian database https://100esperte.it including women experts in
STEM and other sciences.
In 2019 she has been called, with the role of Expert, to join the Technical Table on Sustainable Mobility of
the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research (MIUR). She is now one of the Experts appointed
by the Italian Ministry of Research to issue the National Research Plan for the period 2021-2027 for the
research area “Sustainable Mobility”.
email:
Phone: ++39 (0)382 985362
Fax: ++39 (0)382 985373 (Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale e dell'Informazione)
Teaching:
Process Control and Robotics (in English, 12 CFU, 92 hours,)
Process Control (in English, 6 CFU, in English,46 hoursn)
Robot Control (in English, 6 CFU, in English, 46 hours)
Advanced Automation and Control (part on Nonlinear Control, in English, 24 hours)
Control of Vehicle Dynamics (Post-Bachelor Program on Race Engineering, in English, 10 hours)
Teaching section for students