Naira Hovakimyan, a CSL professor and Schaller Faculty Scholar in MechSE, recently received the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Award. This highly competitive German award is granted to outstanding international researchers for their scientific achievements with the prospect of more cutting-edge discoveries in their academic career.
Written by Julia Cation, MechSE
Naira Hovakimyan, a CSL professor and Schaller Faculty Scholar in MechSE, recently received the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Award. This highly competitive German award is granted to outstanding international researchers for their scientific achievements with the prospect of more cutting-edge discoveries in their academic career.
Naira Hovakimyan
Naira Hovakimyan
The award provides Hovakimyan funding for a long-term research project in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich in Germany. The new research cooperation aims at improving state-of-the-art in-flight control system design and related topics.
Hovakimyan will be on sabbatical in Germany for up to six months and will work on transitioning control methods from her research group to various Technical University of Munich industrial projects.
The Humboldt Foundation promotes academic cooperation between scientists and scholars from Germany and abroad. It acts as an intermediary organization for German foreign cultural and educational policy, promoting international dialogue and academic exchange.
Hovakimyan, who joined the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering in 2008, has been collaborating for several years with the NASA Langley Research Center on adaptive control problems. In 2011, her L1 Adaptive Flight Control System successfully guided a NASA AirSTAR test vehicle through a series of potentially dangerous flight situations. She and former student Chengyu Cao have written a book, published by SIAM, on the topic of L1 adaptive control theory. In CSL, Hovakimyan's research area is in decision and control.
In 2011, Hovakimyan was named a University Scholar by the University of Illinois in recognition of her teaching and research accomplishments. She also received the 2011 AIAA Mechanics and Control of Flight Award and has been invited as a keynote or plenary speaker for several international conferences.