P.R. Kumar

P. R. Kumar obtained his B. Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering (Electronics) from I.I.T. Madras in 1973, and the M.S. and D.Sc. degrees in Systems Science and Mathematics from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1975 and 1977, respectively.

From 1977-84 he was a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. From 1985-2011 he was at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he was Franklin W. Woeltge Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory, Research professor in the Information Trust Institute, and Affiliate Professor of the Department of Computer Science. He is now located at Texas A&M University, where he is currently Professor and College of Engineering Chair in Computer Engineering.

He has worked on problems in game theory, adaptive control,  stochastic systems, simulated annealing, neural networks, machine  learning, queueing networks, manufacturing systems, scheduling, and  wafer fabrication plants. His current research interests are in wireless networks, sensor networks, and networked embedded control  systems.

He has received the Donald P. Eckman Award of the American Automatic Control Council, the IEEE Field Award in Control Systems, and the Fred W. Ellersick Prize of the IEEE Communications Society. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and member of the US National Academy of  Engineering. He was awarded an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa) by the Swiss Federal Institute of  Technology (Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule), Zurich in 2008.