Tamer Başar named Interim Director of Beckman Institute

ECE Professor Tamer Başar has been named the interim director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois. The Beckman Institute is an interdisciplinary research institute devoted to basic research in the physical sciences, computation, engineering, biology, behavior, and cognition.

Başar holds a Swanlund Endowed Chair, the highest endowed title bestowed upon faculty at the University of Illinois. He is a researcher in the Coordinated Science Lab, is affiliated with Illinois' Information Trust Institute, and is a professor in the Center for Advanced Study.

Başar, who joined Illinois in 1981, has pioneered the game-theoretic approach to robust estimation, identification, and control, which has also had significant impact in other fields, such as economics. He has made fundamental contributions to the theory of noncooperative dynamic games, particularly with regard to the interplay between information acquisition and processing, and dynamic Nash equilibria. Among his current research interests are modeling and control of communication networks, control over heterogeneous networks, resource management and pricing in networks, security issues in computer networks, and robust distributed decision-making under uncertainty.

He holds a B.S.E.E. degree from Robert College (Istanbul) and M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in engineering and applied science from Yale University. Before joining Illinois, he held positions at Harvard University, Marmara Research Institute (Gebze, Turkey), and Bogaziçi University (Istanbul).

He has authored or co-authored nearly 500 publications and book chapters. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the European Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of IEEE and International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). He is a past president of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) and founding president of the International Society of Dynamic Games. Currently he is editor-in-chief of Automatica, editor-in-chief of IEEE Expert Now, series editor of "Systems & Control: Foundations and Applications," and managing editor of Annals of ISDG.

Among his recognitions, Başar has received the triennial Giorgio Quazza Medal of IFAC, the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award of the American Automatic Control Council, Hendrick W. Bode Lecture Prize of IEEE CSS, triennial Outstanding Service Award of IFAC, and the Medal of Science of Turkey. At Illinois, he has received the Tau Beta Pi Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award from the College of Engineering.

For more information about Professor Başar, please visit his homepage at http://decision.csl.illinois.edu/~tbasar/.