Professor Igor Mezić, a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Santa Barbara, California, and a member of the International Science Council of the University of Rijeka, was elevated to the rank of Fellow, the highest grade of membership that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) confers upon its members in acknowledgment of their extraordinary record of accomplishments in one of the IEEE’s fields of interest. Mezić was honored by the IEEE for his “contributions to modeling and control using Koopman operator techniques.”
The Koopman operator theory is a sophisticated mathematical approach of using data-driven analysis of nonlinear flows to understand and forecast dynamical systems.“This is a wonderful honor,” said Mezić, who is also a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). “I was nominated for my contributions in dynamical system theory. The systems and control area of IEEE is an extremely strong scientific and mathematical community, so I am especially proud that they deemed my work worth of elevation to a Fellow.”
Mezić started applying the mathematical framework in an effort to model complex systems as part of his Ph.D. dissertation, which is when he discovered the first algorithms that enabled the modeling dynamical processes directly from acquired data. Since then, he, his students, and collaborators have continued to develop the algorithms and expand their applications, pioneering the use of Koopman operator theory in dynamical systems. The methodology is used today in numerous areas that include fluid mechanics, network security, energy efficiency in buildings, artificial intelligence, power-grid dynamics, and COVID-19 epidemiology.
“All of those fields can have a tremendous impact on improving the human condition,” said Mezić, who is also director of UCSB’s Center for Energy Efficient Design and head of the Buildings and Design Solutions Group at the COE’s Institute for Energy Efficiency. “Ultimately, the realization of that improvement using our work would be the biggest prize.”
Professor Mezić is one of four professors at the UC Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering who have been recognized by their peers at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest technical professional organization. Umesh Mishra, the Donald W. Whittier Distinguished Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department, received one of the IEEE’s most prestigious honors, the 2022 Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal, while Professors James Buckwalter and Timothy Sherwood were elevated to the rank of Fellow.