Maria Elena Valcher

Maria Elena Valcher is a Professor at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy. She is an IEEE Fellow (since 2012), IFAC Fellow (since 2023), Socio Effettivo of Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (since 2017, previously Socio Corrispondente 2008-2017), and Socio Effettivo of Accademia Galieliana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova (since 2022, previously Socio Corrispondente 2017-2022). She currently serves as Administrator of the Istituto Veneto and holds leadership positions including EUCA President (2024-2025) and IEEE Control Systems Society Past President.

Her research focuses on control systems, systems theory, optimization, Boolean control networks, multi-agent systems, and consensus problems. She has made significant contributions in distributed control, data-driven methods, and network optimization, with recent work exploring applications in opinion dynamics and social networks.

Recent publications demonstrate a strong emphasis on data-driven approaches to control systems, particularly in distributed state estimation, unknown-input observer design, and multi-agent coordination. Her work shows consistent development in theoretical frameworks for networked systems with practical applications.

Awards and Honors:

• IEEE Fellow (2012)
• IFAC Fellow (2023)
• Socio Effettivo, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (2017-present)
• Socio Effettivo, Accademia Galieliana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova (2022-present)

She teaches 'Controlli Automatici' (Bachelor in Information Engineering) and 'Systems Theory' (Master in Control Systems Engineering) during the 2024/2025 academic year. She has chaired major conferences including the 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2022) and serves as Program Chair for ICSTCC 2025.