Calin Belta

Calin Belta is a Research Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University, where he holds the Tegan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowship. He is the Director of the BU Robotics Lab and is also affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Division of Systems Engineering at Boston University. His research focuses on dynamics and control theory, with particular emphasis on hybrid and cyber-physical systems, formal synthesis and verification, and robotics. He received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He is an IEEE Fellow.

Professor Belta’s interests are in control and systems theory, with a focus on phenomena that occur when continuous dynamics, described by systems of differential equations, are combined with discrete dynamics, modeled as automata or state transition graphs. Such systems are called hybrid, and examples range from man-made systems such as mobile robots, to naturally occurring systems such as biochemical networks. His approach to the analysis and control of such systems combine concepts and tools from control theory, theory of computation, and formal verification. The current application areas in his Hybrid and Networked Systems (HyNeSs) Lab are networked mobile robotics, swarming, gene networks, and genome scale metabolic analysis.