Biographical note

Dr. Franck Cazaurang graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan in 1991 and received a Master degree in Automatic Control and Systems from University of Bordeaux 1 in 1992. From October 1992 to November 1997 he was lecturer in Bordeaux 1 and also a Ph.D. student at Bordeaux 1 University, France. He received the Ph.D. degree in December 1997, and the accreditation to supervise research (HdR) in November 2009. Since October 2010, he is full professor of Automatic control at University Bordeaux 1, Bordeaux, France. His main research interest concerns automatic control, autonomous path planning and path tracking based on robust dynamic inversion and their application to aerospace systems. He has 17 refereed journal papers, 1 chapter in peer reviewed professional book, 35 archival proceedings in professional conferences and 2 patents in the aeronautical domain. Dr. Cazaurang has graduated 7 PhD students and 12 MS students. Since 2003, he is the director of the Master of Engineering program dedicated to engineering and maintenance of Aeronautical and transport systems. This university curriculum is proposed for a five-year study period, which includes an undergraduate and graduate degree program. Each year, around 350 students are enrolled in this university educational program. In 2011, he set up a new e-learning continuing education program dedicated to customer support in aeronautical engineering and maintenance. His teaching activity is focused on automatic flight control for aircraft and UAV and the associated maintenance. These courses are offered to graduate students. Dr. Kelly Cohen is a tenured Professor of Aerospace Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati and Director of MOST-AERO Labs (Morphing and Optimization Systems Technology for Aerospace Laboratory). Teaching areas include fundamental control, modeling and simulation, fuzzy logic, systems engineering, optimal control and analytical dynamics. Research interests include: intelligent systems, feedback control of large scale spatio-temporal dynamic systems, fuzzy logic control of earthquake resilient structures, low order modeling, nonlinear system identification, and control of morphing tensegrity based structural systems. Dr. Cohen is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and Chaired (2013-2015) the AIAA’s Intelligent Systems Technical Committee. Prior to taking up his current position at the University of Cincinnati in 2007, Dr. Cohen conducted research at the Department of Aeronautics/USAF Academy for four years on multi-disciplinary projects. During January 2009 - March 2012, Dr. Cohen was Associate Editor of the Journal of Aerospace Computing, Information, and Communication and is currently on the editorial Board of World Scientific’s publiation titled “Unmanned Systems”. Dr. Cohen has been involved in UAV related research and development continuously since 1990. He has 43 refereed journal papers, has 14 archival proceedings in professional conferences, 7 chapters in peer reviewed professional books, and over 120 professional conference papers and presentations. During the past five years, Dr. Cohen has graduated 4 PhD students and 12 MS students. Currently, he is mentoring 5 PhD students and 6 MS students. Manish Kumar holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering which he earned in 2004 from Duke University where he did his dissertation on Sensor Fusion and Intelligent Control of Autonomous Cooperating Robots. His Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering is also from Duke University where he graduated in 2002 after completing his thesis on Sensor Based Coordination and Control of Multiple Robots. Kumar’s Bachelor of Science is from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, where he graduated in 1998 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.