UTSA engineering professor Mo Jamshidi addresses European Union conference

In Belgium, Professor Mo Jamshidi (right) with Jose Cotta, director general of the European Commission Systems and Control Division

By Christi Fish
Public Affairs Specialist

(Oct. 28, 2009)--Internationally recognized engineering professor Mo Jamshidi, holder of the UTSA Lutcher Brown Endowed Chair of Electrical Engineering, served as keynote speaker at a European Union World Program Consultation on system of systems engineering Oct. 6 in Brussels, Belgium.

System of systems engineering (SoSE) combines simple systems to form "super systems" that are capable of completing tasks more complex than the sum of their smaller components. The discipline has applications in the defense, energy, environmental and health-care industries.

Jamshidi addressed 50 scientists at the headquarters of the European Commission of the European Union on the second day of a two-day conference focusing on the monitoring and control of large-scale systems. The European Commission, which serves 27 European nations, is the European equivalent of the U.S. National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology. The commission's annual budget is approximately 52 billion Euros ($76 billion).

With a career spanning more than four decades, Jamshidi is known internationally as a leader in system of systems engineering. He has conducted research for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. He worked on the first generation of adaptive optics for the Hubble Telescope, the engineering of nuclear breeder reactors, the Mars Pathfinder Project and the applications of robotics for energy efficiency. His current research, conducted in UTSA's Autonomous Control Engineering (ACE) laboratory, focuses on the applications of system of systems engineering to land, sea and air robots, and solar-wind energy systems.

In addition to his academic duties at UTSA, Jamshidi is organizing a network of system of systems engineers in the United States. Already, he has received commitments from partners at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Old Dominion University, Stevens Institute of Technology, George Mason University, Naval Postgraduate School, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, International Council on Systems Engineering and UTSA. The European Commission plans to create a similar network of engineers in Europe.