Associate Professor, Computer Engineering

Baskin School of Engineering
1156 High St
Mail Stop SOE3
Santa Cruz, CA 95064

Phone Number: 831-459-3054

Department: Computer Engineering

Office Location: Engineering 2, Room 337B
Office Hours: Tuesday-Thursday 12-2PM

E-Mail Address:

Web Pages

• Elkaim
• Autonomous Systems Lab
• Slugs UAV Project

Degrees

• Ph.D in Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2002, Stanford University
• MSE in Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1995, Stanford University
• BSE in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, 1990, Princeton University

Biography

I was born in Sousse, Tunisia. I spent a fair bit of my childhood moving around from place to place, as my father was a civil engineer working on infrastructure projects of various sorts around the world. I spent six years in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where I went to high school.

My undergraduate degree is from Princeton University, in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Following Princeton, I went to work for an international oilfield services company: Schlumberger. I spent a year in Algeria, and another in Nigeria before leaving Schlumberger. From there I went to Israel, where I spent a year studying Aeronautics at the Technion in Haifa.

After my return from Israel, I started at Stanford University, in the Aeronautics and Astronautics department. I received both my Masters and Ph.D. from Stanford, where I built an autonomous catamaran for my thesis. The catamaran was based on a modified Prindle-19, with the mast removed and replaced by a freely rotating wingsail. After graduation, I spent a year in Los Angeles consulting on an autonomous ground vehicle project.

I joined the Computer Engineering Faculty at UC Santa Cruz in 2003, with a research focus on autonomous and embedded systems. I started the Autonomous Systems Lab, and have a number of graduate and undergraduate students working with me on a variety of research projects. My favorite (and most popular) class to teach is CMPE118, Introduction to Mechatronics, where teams of students build a robot in 10 weeks. I recently got married, and am now enjoying living with my wife near the ocean in the West Cliff area of Santa Cruz.

Research Areas

Embedded systems; robust software architectures for real-time reactive systems; sensor fusion; guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) system identification; robust and advanced control schemes; feedback control systems; robotics; unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) and cooperative control

Selected Publications

• Personal Publication List
• Archive of Autonomous Systems Lab Publications

Current and Future Classes

Spring 2013

• CMPE 13: Computer Systems and C Programming
• CMPE 13L: Computer Systems and C Programming Laboratory
• CMPE 280C: Seminar on Control

Fall 2013

• CMPE 118: Introduction to Mechatronics
• CMPE 118L: Introduction to Mechatronics Laboratory
• CMPE 218: Mechatronics
• CMPE 218L: Mechatronics
• CMPE 280C: Seminar on Control

Winter 2014

• CMPE 13: Computer Systems and C Programming
• CMPE 13L: Computer Systems and C Programming Laboratory
• CMPE 242: Applied Feedback Control
• CMPE 280C: Seminar on Control

Spring 2014

• CMPE 280C: Seminar on Control

Students & Researchers

• John Patrick Ash (Undergraduate)
• Max Dunne (Graduate)
• David Alexander Goodman (Undergraduate)
• Jeremy Gottlieb (Graduate)
• Bryant Mairs (Graduate)
• Pavlo Milo Manovi (Undergraduate)
• Michael Murray (Graduate)
• Eric Poblenz (Graduate)
• Barbour Pomeroy Smith (Undergraduate)

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