Antonella Ferrara
Short Biography
Antonella Ferrara received the M.Sc. degree (Cum Laude and printing honors) in electronic engineering and
the Ph.D. degree in computer science and electronics from the University of Genova, Italy, in 1987 and
1992, respectively. Since 2005, she has been Full Professor of automatic control at the University of Pavia,
Italy, where she is the Head of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, as well as the President of the Research
Standing Committee of the Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering.
Her research activities are mainly in the area of nonlinear control, with a special emphasis on sliding mode
control and application to road traffic, automotive systems, robotics and power systems. She is author and
co-author of more than 450 publications including more than 160 journal papers, 2 monographs and one
edited book.
She was Visiting Professor at Graz University of Technology, visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota,
as well as Invited Lecturer at Harvard University, University of California at Los Angeles, University of
Stuttgart, Technical University of Delft, INRIA Grenoble, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
(KAUST), Hanyang University in Seoul, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Dalian Maritime University,
National Institute of Technology Silchar, IIIT Kharagpur, Murdoch University, École Polytechnique Fédérale
de Lausanne, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Imperial College, University of Cambridge,
University of Exeter, and Maynooth University, among others.
She was/is Principal Investigator in several European, international and national projects and was one of the
eleven experts appointed by the Italian Ministry of Research to write the National Research Plan for the
period 2021-2027 for the research area “Sustainable Mobility”.
She was Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems, of the IEEE Transactions on
Automatic Control, and of the IEEE Control Systems Magazine. She was Subject Editor of the International
Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control. She was Associate Editor and Senior Editor of the IEEE
Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles. Since 2018 she has been Associated Editor of Automatica, and, since
January 2022, Senior Editor of IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems.
She served as a member of the EUCA Council and, since ECC 2019, she has been the EUCA Conference
Editorial Board Chair. She will serve as one of the IPC Chairs (together with Maurice Heemels) for the 24th
IFAC Word Congress to be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 2029.
She was “appointed member” of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2012. She
was Chair of the Women in Control Committee of the IEEE Control Systems Society (July 2013-December
2016). She was “elected member” of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society for the
triennium 2016-2018. She was member of the IEEE Control System Society Outreach Task Force (2017-
2019) and was the Chair of the Task Force in 2020. She is a member of the ExCom of the IEEE Control
System Society with the role of Director of Operations (2023-2026 term). In 2015-2019, she was a Member
of the European Control Association (EUCA) Council.
She is Vice Chair for industry of IFAC Technical Committee (TC) 2.3 for the triennium 2024-2026 and
member of the IFAC Industry Board. She is a member of the IFAC Conference Board (starting from July
2023). She is a member of the IFAC TC on Nonlinear Control Systems, IFAC TC on Transportation Systems,
IFAC TC on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, IEEE TC on Automotive Control, IEEE TC on Smart Cities, and
IEEE TC on Variable Structure Systems. Among several awards, she was a co-recipient of the 2020 IEEE
Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award.
She is IEEE Fellow and IFAC Fellow.
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