Michael Triantafyllou, Michael Athans; Real Time Estimation of the Heaving and Pitching Motions of a Ship, Using a Kalman Filter, Proceedings of MTS/IEEE OCEANS'81 Conference, pp. 1090 - 1095, September 1981.
Michael Athans (S'58-M'61-SM'69-F'73) was born in Drama, Greece, on May 3, 1937. He attended the University of California at Berkeley from 1955 to 1961 where he received the B.S.E.E. degree in 1958, the M.S.E.E. degree in 1959, and the Ph.D. degree in control in 1961.From 1961 to 1964 he was employed as a member of the technical staff at the M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA. Since 1964 he has been a faculty member in the M.I.T. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department where he currently holds the rank of Professor of Systems Science and Engineering and Director of the M.I.T. Laboratory of Information and Decision Systems (formerly the Electronic Systems Laboratory). He is co-founder of ALPHATECH, Inc., Burlington, MA., where he holds the rank of Chief Scientific Consultant and Chairman of the Board of Directors. He has also consulted for several other industrial organizations and government panels.
He is the co-author of Optimal Control (McGraw-Hill, 1966), Systems, Networks, and Computation: Basic Concepts (McGraw-Hill, 1972); and Systems, Networks, and Computation: Multivariable Methods (McGraw-Hill, 1974). In 1974 he developed 65 color TV lectures on Modern Control Theory and accompanying study guides; these are distributed by the Center for Advanced Engineering Study, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA. In addition, he has authored or co-authored over 250 technical papers and reports. His research contributions span the areas of system, control, and estimation theory and its applications to the fields of defense, aerospace, transportation, power, manufacturing, economic and command, control, and communications systems.
In 1964 he was the first recipient of the American Automatic Control Council's Donald P. Eckman award for outstanding contributions to the field of automatic control. In 1969 he was the first recipient of the F.E. Terman award of the American Society for Engineering Education as the outstanding young electrical engineering educator. In 1980 he received the Education Award of the American Automatic Control Council for his outstanding contributions and distinguished leadership in automatic control education. In 1973 he was elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and in 1977 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served on numerous committees of IFAC, AACC, and IEEE: he was president of the IEEE Control Systems Society from 1972 to 1974.
Dr. Athans is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Eta Kappa Nu, and Sigma Xi. He was associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, is co-editor of the Journal of Dynamic Economics and Control, and is associate editor of Automatica.