Jeff Shamma

Jeff Shamma is the Department Head and Professor of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering (ISE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, holding the Jerry S. Dobrovolny Chair. He is also courtesy Professor in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Science and Engineering. Formerly, he held the Julian T. Hightower Chair at Georgia Institute of Technology and faculty positions at KAUST.

Dr. Shamma earned his PhD in Systems Science and Engineering from MIT (1988) and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech (1983). He is a Fellow of IEEE and IFAC, recipient of the IFAC High Impact Paper Award, AACC Donald P. Eckman Award, and NSF Young Investigator Award.

His research spans Decision and Control, Game Theory, and Multi-Agent Systems, focusing on human-machine networks, distributed autonomy, and adaptive robotic systems. Recent work examines crowd dynamics, risk-sensitive control, and feedback linearization for constrained optimization.

Jeff has served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems (2020–2024) and held editorial roles in journals like Annual Reviews in Control and IEEE Transactions on Robotics. His 15 most recent publications (2024–2025) analyze learning dynamics, multi-agent optimization, and UAV-crawler systems, reflecting trends in autonomous systems, game-theoretic modeling, and industrial inspection technologies.

Scientific distinctions include:

• Fellow of IEEE and IFAC
• IFAC High Impact Paper Award (2020)
• AACC Donald P. Eckman Award (1996)
• NSF Young Investigator Award (1992)
• Mohammed Dahleh Distinguished Lecture Award (2013)

Dr. Shamma advises current PhD students Hassan Abdelraouf, Aya Hamed, and Nawaf Otaibi, with former advisees including Sarah Toonsi (2025) and Fat-hy Rajab (2025). His lab integrates theoretical research with applied projects like FalconScan, a UAV-crawler system for industrial inspection, and develops magnetic legs for curved surface UAV landing.