Antonella Ferrara

Short Biography

Antonella Ferrara 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”.

Extended CV (pdf)

email:
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