Dr. Manfred Morari is a preeminent scholar and leader in control systems engineering whose career has profoundly shaped modern control theory and its industrial applications. He currently serves as a Practice Professor in the Electrical and Systems Engineering Department at the University of Pennsylvania, bringing decades of expertise to his teaching and research. Prior to his position at Penn, Dr. Morari held distinguished appointments at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, establishing himself as a global authority in control systems. Born in Graz, Austria in 1951, he earned his Diploma in chemical engineering from ETH Zurich before completing his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Minnesota in 1977, which launched his pioneering research trajectory in control theory.
Dr. Morari's groundbreaking research has revolutionized control engineering through his development of Model Predictive Control, Internal Model Control (IMC), and robust control methodologies that have become foundational approaches across academic and industrial applications worldwide. His seminal work on the analysis and design of control systems for switched dynamical systems, or hybrid systems, has provided essential theoretical frameworks for addressing complex challenges in automotive systems, power electronics, and biomedical engineering. The analysis techniques and software developed by his research group are implemented by universities and industry globally, demonstrating the practical impact and scalability of his theoretical contributions. His influential publications on robust process control and high-purity distillation have solved critical challenges in chemical process industries, while his work on active vibration control and automation in anesthesia has opened new frontiers in precision engineering and healthcare applications.
Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Morari has received numerous prestigious honors including the IEEE Control Systems Award in 2005 and the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award in 2011, recognizing his transformative contributions to the field. Elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 1993, he is consistently recognized as one of the most highly cited researchers in engineering, reflecting the enduring significance of his scholarly work. Dr. Morari has mentored generations of control engineers and systems theorists, many of whom now lead research groups and hold prominent positions across academia and industry, extending his intellectual legacy globally. His current research continues to advance optimization-centric approaches to human-robot interaction and complex control problems, ensuring his ongoing influence as the field intersects with emerging technologies in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.
