J. Karl Hedrick
1945 – 2017
Class of 2015-16
University of California, Berkeley
National Academy of Engineering
Karl Hedrick is best known for the development of nonlinear control theory and its applications to transportation,including automated highway systems, power train controls,embedded software design,formation flight of autonomous vehicles,and active suspension systems.
Hedrick also has made important contributions to nonlinear estimation and control.
Hedrick received his bachelor’s degree in engineering mechanics at the University of Michigan in 1966. He earned his master’s and his doctoral degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at Stanford University in 1970 and 1971, respectively.
From 1974 to 1988, Hedrick was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he directed the Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory. He has served as chair of the mechanical engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley (1999–2004) and as director of the university’s Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways Research Center (1997–2003), which conducts research in advanced vehicle control systems, advanced traffic management and information systems, and technology leading to an automated highway system.
Currently, he is holder of the James Marshall Wells Academic Chair and professor of mechanical engineering at Berkeley, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in automatic control theory. He also is the director of Berkeley’s Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory as well as a codirector of the Hyundai Center of Excellence in Active Safety and Autonomous Systems.
Hedrick is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Society of Automotive Engineers, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. As a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Hedrick is past chair of the Dynamic Systems and Control Division and its Honors Committee.
Other honors include the Outstanding Paper Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1998; the American Automatic Control Council’s O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award, 2003; the ASME Division of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control’s Outstanding Investigator Award, 2002; and the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control Best Paper award in 1983 and 2001. Hedrick received ASME’s 2006 Rufus Oldenburger Medal, which recognizes significant contributions and outstanding achievements in the field of automatic control. He delivered the ASME Nyquist Lecture in 2009.
He has written two books and published more than 140 peer-reviewed archival publications.
As a TIAS Faculty Fellow, Hedrick will collaborate with faculty–researchers and graduate students from the departments of mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering in the Dwight Look College of Engineering and with researchers in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.
Students
Saminehalsadat Moosavi – 2015-16