Biography

Antonella Ferrara was born in Genova, Italy. 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 at the University of Genova (1992-1998). In 1998 she became Associate Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Pavia. Since January 2005 she is Full Professor of Automatic Control in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering 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 Race Engineering. She gave several Plenary lectures and Semi-plenaries in conferences. She gave lectures in International Ph.D. Schools. She was Visiting Professor at TU Graz, and Invited Lecturer at Harvard University, University of Minnesota, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Stuttgart, TU 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 robotics, automotive control, power systems, and vehicular traffic control. She was PI and member of several research units in national and European research projects. In particular, she was PI in the European Projects PROTECTOR (Preventive safety for un-protected road user) 2000-2003, and ITEAM (Interdisciplinary Training Network in Multi-Actuated Ground Vehicles, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action) 2016-2019. She was also involved in HYCON2 (FP7-ICT-2009-5) contributing to the design and realization of the road traffic management showcase in Grenoble, France. She was scientific leader of several research projects funded or co-funded by companies. She has authored/co-authored more than 400 scientific papers, with 132 international journal papers and 3 books. Moreover, she contributed with 27 invited chapters to edited books. She was Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, and IEEE Control Systems Magazine. Since 2017, she has been Subject Editor of the International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control and is Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles. 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 Program Vice-Chair of the European Control Conference ECC14 held in Strasbourg, France, Program Vice-Chair of the 22nd IEEE Mediterranean Conference on Control & Automation Med14 held in Palermo, Italy, Program Co-Chair of the IEEE IES International Conference on Mechatronics (ICM) 2019, held in Ilmenau, German, and Program Co-Chair of the 8-th IEEE International Conference on Connected Vehicles and Expo (ICCVE) held in Graz, Austria. She was Editor of the IFAC Symposium on Control in Transportation Systems CTS 2018 held in Savona, Italy, and Publication Chair for IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2019 held in Nice, France. She is Chair of the conference editorial board of the European Control Association (EUCA). She is Fellow of IEEE, member of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS), IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS), Women in Engineering, IEEE Technical Committee on Variable Structure and Sliding Mode Control, IEEE Technical Committee on Automotive Control, IEEE Technical Committee on Smart Cities and IFAC Technical Committee on Transportation Systems. She was “appointed member” of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2012), Chair of the Women in Control Committee of the IEEE Control Systems Society (July 2013-December 2016), member of the Advisory Board of that committee, “elected member” of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2016-2018), and 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. She was a Member of the European Control Association (EUCA) Council (2015-2019). Since June 2018 she has been Series Editor of the book series “Advances in Industrial Control” (Springer). She is in the Italian database https://100esperte.it including women experts in STEM and other sciences. She is one of the Experts appointed by the Italian Ministry of Research to prepare the National Research Plan 2021-2027 for the research area “Sustainable Mobility”.