Dr. Simaan
left the
BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH
Marwan A. Simaan is the
Florida 21st Century Chair and Distinguished Professor in the School
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Central
Florida in Orlando, FL. Prior to joining
UCF in 2008 he was the Bell of PA/Bell Atlantic Professor of Electrical
Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests are
highly interdisciplinary in nature and cover a broad spectrum of topics in
control, optimization, signal processing, telecommunication, and AI and
knowledge-based applications. In the past 35 years, he has worked on a
wide range of research projects with researchers from a variety of disciplines
including biomedical, mechanical, materials, and manufacturing engineers as
well as physicists, mathematicians, geophysicists, computer scientists,
economists, and political scientists. In these areas, he has
edited/co-edited 4 books and more than 60 journal issues and has
authored/co-authored more than 115 archival journal papers and book chapters,
180 papers in conference proceedings, 24 industry technical reports, and 2
patents (one pending). His most recent research has emphasized the use of
a game theoretic approach for the modeling and control of military operations
involving unmanned aerial vehicles. He
is also involved in a project on the modeling and patient-adaptive control of
ventricular assist devices. These biomechanical devises are often used as
a bridge to support patients awaiting heart transplantation.
Dr.
Simaan received the BS degree with distinction from the American University of Beirut in 1968, the MS
degree from the University of
Pittsburgh in 1970, and the PhD degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in
1972 all in Electrical Engineering. He remained at the University of
Illinois until 1974 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering
and Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Coordinated Science Laboratory,
where he did postdoctoral research and taught courses in control systems and
signal processing. After two years working in industry with Shell
Development Company, he joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in
1976.
In
the early 1970s, he was one of the original developers (with J. B. Cruz,
Jr.) of the Stackelberg Strategies in Leader-Follower
dynamic games. These strategies have been extensively applied in modeling
and optimization of two-level hierarchical systems. Such systems occur in
dynamic economic duopoly problems, arms race problems, communication networks,
as well as in the control of autonomous entities in the presence of an
adversarial force. In the late 1970s through the 1990s, his research
interests focused mainly on digital signal processing. He worked (with
Shell Development Company) and consulted (with Gulf Research Labs) on a variety
of research projects in geophysical/seismic data processing which focused on
vertical seismic array data acquisition and processing, blind deconvolution of sensor signals, optimum multi-channel beamforming of seismic arrays, noise wave suppression,
time-delay and travel velocity estimation, modeling of absorption and dispersion
effects of the near surface layers of the Earth, three dimensional array data
processing, and the application of artificial intelligence techniques for the
interpretation of seismic data/images based on texture. He also worked
(with ALCOA Research Labs) on the application of knowledge-based and artificial
intelligence techniques to statistical process control in metal manufacturing
processes.
Dr. Simaan has more
than 35 years of academic, administrative, and industrial
experience. Prior to joining the University of Central Florida, he
served on the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the
University of Pittsburgh from1976 to 2008.
He was also the Bell of PA/Bell Atlantic Professor (1989-2008) and Chair
of the department (1991-98). During his tenure as chair, he led all
of the department’s academic and governance activities and served on all of its
principal committees including faculty and staff recruiting, promotion and
tenure, fundraising, planning, and budgeting. In 1996, he initiated a
Computer Engineering program within the School of Engineering. The program
was developed as a cooperative effort between the Department of Electrical
Engineering and the Department of Computer Science which is housed in the
School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt.
His
industrial experience includes positions with the English-Electric-Leo-Marconi
Computers Ltd. in England (1967), the Bell Laboratories in Columbus, OH (1971),
and Shell Development Company in Houston, TX (1974 through 1975). He also
served as a Technical Consultant in digital signal processing for Gulf Research
and Development Company in Pittsburgh, PA and Houston, TX (1979 - 85) and as a
Technical Consultant in knowledge-based control and signal processing for the
ALCOA Research Labs in Pittsburgh, PA (1985 - 88).
Dr.
Simaan is a Member of NAE: the National
Academy of Engineering (elected in 2000), a Fellow of AAAS: the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (elected in 1999), a Fellow of IEEE: the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (elected in 1988), a Fellow of ASEE: the
American Society of Engineering Education (elected in 2005), a Fellow of EMA; the Electromagnetics
Academy, and an Honorary Member of Phi Eta Sigma: the National Freshmen
Honor Society (elected in 1983). He is also an Active Member of SEG: the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
Dr.
Simaan served on numerous professional committees and boards. These include the IEEE Publications Board
(1985 - 87), the IEEE Fellow Committee (1990 - 93 and 2002 - 04), the IEEE
Prize Papers and Graduate Fellowships Committee (2001 - 04), the AACC (American
Automatic Control Council) Awards Committee (1994 - 99), which he chaired from
1997 to 1999, and the AACC Education Committee (2000 - 04). He has also
served as an EE Program Evaluator for ABET, the Accreditation Board for
Engineering and Technology (1993 - 98 and 2000 - 06). He is currently serving as Secretary and
Member of the Steering Group of the Engineering Section of AAAS. He received three best
paper awards from the IEEE Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Society (for a Transactions paper published in 1985), the Sigma Xi,
Alcoa Chapter (for a paper in Pattern Recognition Journal published in 1988),
and the IEEE Industry Applications Society (for a Transactions paper published
in 1999). At the University of Pittsburgh he received numerous
teaching awards from Eta Kappa Nu and IEEE student chapters and in 1990 he
received the School of Engineering Beitle-Veltri
Memorial Teaching Award. In 1986 he received the School of Engineering
Board of Visitors Faculty Award for excellence in research. In 1995 he
received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Department of Electrical
& Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana,
in 2007 he received the IEEE Education Society Achievement Award,
and in 2008 he received the College of Engineering at the University of
Illinois in Champaign-Urbana Award for Distinguished Service in Engineering.
Dr.
Simaan currently serves or has served on the Editorial Boards of a number of
journals including the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications (JOTA),
the Proceedings of the IEEE, the IEEE Press, the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, the IEEE Transactions on
Circuits and Systems-Part II, the IEEE Systems Journal, the Journal of Circuits, Systems and
Computers, and the Journal on Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering. He
also served as series editor of Advances in Geophysical Data Processing for JAI
Press (1983-1992), Inc. and co-editor of the Journal of Multidimensional
Systems and Signal Processing: Springer (1989-04).
Dr.
Simaan is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.