| 1 | Name: | Dr. Vladimir Kučera | |
| Institution: | Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University; Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic | ||
| Year Elected: | 2023 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 103. Engineering | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1943 | ||
Vladimír Kučera was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1943. He received the graduate degree summa cum laude in electrical engineering from Czech Technical University, Prague, in 1966 and the CSc. and DrSc. research degrees in engineering cybernetics from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague, in 1970 and 1979, respectively. During 1967-2017 he was a Research Scientist at the Institute of Information Theory and Automation, one of the research institutes of the Academy of Sciences in Prague. He held various research and managerial positions, including Vice-Director (1986-1990) and Director (1990-1998) of the Institute. Since 2018, he has been a Scientist Emeritus at the Academy of Sciences. Starting in 1992, he taught graduate courses at the Czech Technical University in Prague and was appointed Professor of Engineering Cybernetics in 1996. During 1999-2000, he assumed the position of Head of the Control Engineering Department; in 2000 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering for the period 2000-2006; and during 2007-2015, he was the Director of the Masaryk Institute of Advanced Studies. In 2015, he was appointed Distinguished Researcher and Vice-Director of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, the newly established research institute at the Czech Technical University in Prague. Kučera held visiting positions at the National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada in 1970-1971; the University of Florida, Gainesville, the USA in 1977; Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique, Nantes, France in 1981-1982; Australian National University, Canberra, Australia in 1984; Uppsala Universitet, Sweden in 1989; Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Mexico City in 1991; ETH Zürich, Switzerland in 1992; the University of Newcastle, Australia in 1993; Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 1995 as well as many short visiting appointments. He was a Nippon Steel Professor at the Chair of Intelligent Control at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, in 1994. The research interests of Kučera include the theory of systems and automatic control. He contributed to the theory of matrix Riccati equations by classifying the set of all nonnegative definite steady-state solutions, showing that the set is a distributive lattice, and establishing necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such solutions in terms of stabilizability and detectability; these results are fundamental for the design of linear-quadratic optimal control systems. He pioneered the use of polynomial diophantine equations in the synthesis of control systems; the polynomial equation approach found followers worldwide and inspired the development of efficient computational algorithms for polynomials and polynomial matrices. The best-known result of Kučera is the parameterization of all controllers that stabilize a given system, known as the Youla-Kučera parameterization. It was obtained independently and at about the same time by Dante C. Youla and Kučera. The parameterization formula is due to Kučera, whereas the use of the parameter in H2 optimal control is due to Youla. The parameterization result launched an entirely new area of research with applications in optimal and robust control. Recently, Kučera has resolved a long-standing open problem of control theory, the decoupling of linear systems by static-state feedback. He discovered the canonical form and the complete invariant of stable linear systems with respect to the group of stability-preserving system transformations and demonstrated the use of this result in control system design. During his research career, he had the pleasure of working with more than 80 researchers from 20 countries worldwide. Kučera is the author of four books: Algebraic Theory of Discrete Linear Control (in Czech) (Academia, Prague 1978), Discrete Linear Control: The Polynomial Equation Approach (Wiley, Chichester 1979), Analysis and Design of Discrete Linear Control Systems (Prentice-Hall, London 1991), and Polynomial Methods for Control Systems Design, edited with M. J. Grimble (Springer, London 1996). In addition, he published over 400 research papers. Kučera serves on the editorial boards of Int. J. Robust and Nonlinear Control, and Bull. Polish Acad. Sciences. He was Editor-in-Chief of Kybernetika (1990-1998), an Associate Editor of Automatica (1987-1996), and a member of the editorial boards of Syst. Control Letters (1987-1994), Int. J. Control (1990-1999), Int. J. Systems Science (1986-1999), and J. Math. Systems, Estimation and Control (1991-1998). He is a Life Advisor and Fellow (he was President 2002-2005) of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), Life Fellow of IEEE (the first Fellow ever in the Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia in 1996), and was a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society Board of Governors (1996-1998). He is a founding member and Fellow of the Engineering Academy of the Czech Republic (he was Vice-President from 1999 to 2006) and past Chairman of the Czech Committee for Automatic Control (1993-2002). Kučera was the recipient of many prizes including the Prize of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1973, the Kybernetika Best Paper Award in 1976, the National Prize of the Czech Republic in 1989 for his contributions to the theory and practice of automatic control, the Automatica Prize Paper Award in 1990 for the paper Fundamental Theorem of State Feedback for Singular Systems, Hlávka Foundation Prize in 1992, Outstanding Service Award from IFAC in 1996, Medal of the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic in 2000, Felber Gold Medal of the Czech Technical University in Prague, and in 2006 he was appointed Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Académiques, a national order of France for distinguished academics. He is an Honorary Professor at the Northeastern University, Shenyang, China (1996) and received Doctor honoris causa degrees from Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse (2003), and Université Henri Poincaré, Nancy (2005). He is the 2021 laureate of the National Prize Česká hlava (Czech Mind), the most prestigious Czech award for science and research that scientists in the Czech Republic can achieve. | |||