Neural Systems for Control

Omid Omidvar is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Computer Science at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. He is also a technical director of SPPARC center; a supercomputing facility funded by NSF. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1967 and has done extensive work in applications of Neural Networks in Optical Character Recognition and Finger Print for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Dr. Omidvar has been a consultant to many of the world's most important corporations including IBM, Sun, Gumann, and has completed a five year project for the District of Columbia NASA Consortium in design and performance evaluation of neurocontrollers. Dr. Omidvar is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Artificial Neural Networks, has been an editor of Progress in Neural Network Series since 1990, and has published a large number of journal and conference publications. In addition to teaching, Dr. Omidvar is also currently working as a computer scientist in the Image Recognition Group, Advanced System Division, at NIST.David Elliott learned automatic theory control as an applied mathematician at the Naval Ocean Systems Center and received his Ph.D. in Engineering from UCLA. His dissertation was the first to apply a differential geometric approach to stochastic nonlinear systems. Dr. Elliott helped to found the unique and well-known Department of Systems Science and Mathematics at Washington University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. Since 1992, he has been associated with the University of Maryland where he continues to advise doctoral students and perform research in nonlinear systems. His current research is supported by NeuroDyne, Inc., a company which develops new methods of system control and identification for government and industry. He has served as Associate Editor for the Control Society Newsletter, SIAM Review, Mathematical Systems Theor, and System and Control Letters, and is Associate Editor at Large for IEEE Transactions on automatic control. His research has recently been honored by advancement to Fellow of IEEE.