Byrnes wins prestigious Reid Prize

Christopher I. Byrnes, Ph.D., the Edward H. and Florence G. Skinner Professor in Systems Science and Mathematics and dean of the School of Engineering & Applied Science, has been selected to receive the 2005 W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize.

The award, one of the most prestigious in the field of differential equations and control theory, will be presented to Byrnes at the 2005 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Annual Meeting July 11-15 in New Orleans.

Christopher I. Byrnes
Christopher I. Byrnes

The Reid Prize was established in 1993 to recognize outstanding research in, or other contributions to, the broadly defined areas of differential equations and control theory. The annual prize is awarded either for a single notable achievement or for a collection of such achievements.

Byrnes is receiving the Reid Prize for his fundamental contributions in the areas of pole-placement by output feedback, output regulation for nonlinear systems, and spectral estimation and robust control. He will receive the award and will give the Reid Prize Lecture July 13.

Byrnes has an international reputation in his field — systems science and control. Among his research interests are feedback design in automatic control, nonlinear dynamics and control, and estimation and filtering.

He has applied his research over two decades in aerospace, electrical power systems, signal processing and speech synthesis, among other areas.

Byrnes has served as the engineering school dean since 1991 and oversees approximately 1,100 undergraduate students, 750 graduate students and 85 faculty members. He joined the University faculty as professor of systems and control and chair of the Department of Systems Science and Mathematics in 1989.

In 2001, Byrnes was installed as a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Byrnes has held numerous visiting appointments at worldwide institutions. In 1998, he was honored with an honorary doctor of technology degree from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology, one of the highest engineering honors. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and has won three best-paper awards, the most recent from the IEEE in December 2003.

From 1986-1990, he was adjunct professor at the Royal Institute, and in 1985 and 1991 he was visiting professor at the Kungliska Tekniska Hogskolan in Stockholm, Sweden.