Female Historical Influencers in Automatic Control – Part 3

This project will build on previous Activity Fund awards, the result of which is four portraits of influential women in control, available online. A set of additional portraits will be produced in this "Part 3" effort.

Organizer:

Prof. Margret Bauer, HAW Hamburg, Germany

Sponsoring IFAC Body:

TC 9.4 - Control Education

Description:

Women are generally a minority in control. Role models are key when attracting diverse groups. The funding provided by the IFAC activity fund (Round 1 and 2) have resulted in four portraits that have been produced professionally and for which the material is now available online.

The results were published at the last IFAC World Congress.

In the meantime, we have conducted interviews with and gathered material on a further six control engineers:

  • Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, IFAC Fellow since 2014 and recipient of the IFAC Control Education Life-Time Achievement Award 2022.
    Ruth Curtain (1941-2018), author of three textbooks, IEEE CSS Fellow and recipient of the W.T. and Idalia Reid Prize for her outstanding research in differential equations and control theory.
  • Anuradha Annaswamy, IFAC Fellow and IEEE CSS Distinguished Member, recipient of the Donald Groen Julius Prize.
  • Maria di Benedetto, IFAC Fellow for the contributions to nonlinear and hybrid system theory.
  • Francoise Lamnabhi-Lagarrigue, IFAC Fellow and several recognitions in France, including as Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honour.
  • Sofya Kovalevskaya (1850-1891) as a pioneer in partial differential equations and mechanics. She studied mathematics and physics with Helmholtz, Kirchhoff and Bunsen in Heidelberg, Germany and was an editor of Acta Mathematica. She won the Prix Bordin of the French Academy of Sciences.

We would like to employ the same professional to produce the material in the same format as the previous portraits. As a next step, the project team plans to collect material on younger women in control and
provide context on women working in the area of control.