Bhattacharyya elected a Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences

Dr. S.P.Bhattacharyya, professor in The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, was elected a Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (Academia Brasileira de Ciências [ABC]) on December 16, 2011.

Bhattacharyya, the Robert M. Kennedy Professor of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M was elected for "distinguished contributions in engineering and significant contributions to engineering in Brazil."

The ABC was founded in 1916 with the objective of promoting Science in Brazil. It currently has 643 members and elects new members annually including up to five Foreign Members. The criteria for election are distinguished contributions in a field of Science or Engineering and significant contributions to Science or Engineering in Brazil. The award will be conferred on May 8, 2012 in Rio de Janeiro at the Annual Meeting of the ABC.

Bhattacharyya joined the electrical & computer engineering faculty in 1980. His research focus is control theory and his current research is directed at developing new and general model-free, measurement based approaches to the analysis, synthesis and design of real world systems where models are often incomplete, unreliable or simply unavailable. Bhattacharyya also established the first graduate program in control engineering in Brazil in the 1970s and many of his students are leaders in Brazilian academia. His honors include election to IEEE Fellow in 1989 and to IFAC Fellow in 2011.