Ricardo Sanfelice, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Ike Nassi, adjunct professor of computer science and engineering, have been elected Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), “the world's largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology.”
The IEEE Fellow distinction is a prestigious honor given to IEEE members for outstanding accomplishments in the fields of electrical and electronics engineering and computer science. Sanfelice and Nassi join 14 other Baskin School of Engineering faculty who were previously elected as IEEE Fellows.
Sanfelice was recognized “for contributions to hybrid feedback control systems.” His research interests span the fields of nonlinear, hybrid, and cyber-physical systems with applications to aerospace, power systems, biology, and robotics.
He’s the recipient of many awards, including the Test-of-Time Award, ACM Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control Conference; Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Control and Systems Theory Prize; National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award; and the Air Force Young Investigator Research Award. He published two textbooks on hybrid systems: Hybrid Dynamical Systems: Modeling, Stability, and Robustness (2012) and Hybrid Feedback Control (2021). He was named a senior member of IEEE in 2013.
Sanfelice earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara. He joined the Baskin Engineering faculty in 2014 and has served as director for the UCSC Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center (CPSRC) since 2017. The CPSRC fosters applied computational research to support applications in power grids, agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and health.
Nassi was recognized “for leadership in parallel and distributed systems and adaptive systems.” His research areas include high performance computing, computer systems architecture, programming languages, virtualization, computer networks and operating systems, and databases and distributed systems. Nassi has 31 patents to his name and is first author on 29 scientific publications. He also holds two Certificates of Appreciation from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Nassi is the founder of the software company TidalScale, Inc., which employs many UCSC engineering alumni. He is also a co-founder and trustee of the Computer History Museum (CHM). Located in Silicon Valley, CHM offers public events, exhibits, and professional workshops and lectures that provide insights into how we can use technology to shape a better future. Nassi has also held several key leadership positions in industry, including senior vice president at Apple and chief scientist at SAP.
On campus, Nassi is affiliated with the UCSC Storage Systems Research Center (SSRC); Language, Systems, and Data Lab; and the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS). He earned his B.S. in mathematics and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He joined the Baskin Engineering faculty in 2011.
For the complete list of Baskin Engineering faculty involved in prestigious, professional organizations, visit the Faculty Fellows and Academy Members page.
