1. Industry Perspectives on Controls in Autonomous Systems (Organized by the Automotive and Transportation Systems TC)
Speakers: Jack Weast (Intel), Hoseinali Borhan (Cummins, Inc.), Claus Danielson (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Kevin Zaseck (Toyota Research Institute), Nicholas Kohut (Zoox, Inc.)
11:40 am – 1:10 pm on Wednesday, October 9
Autonomous systems, particularly ground vehicles, now occupy a significant portion of the engineering industry’s resources. Previously confined to the automotive industry, autonomous vehicles and robots are now at the forefront of automotive companies, tech companies, and startups. The original DARPA challenge began the race to develop autonomous vehicles, which still occupies a great deal of company attention, but many new topics have branched forth from this original pursuit, from rigorous safety process development to control of heavy duty trucks to reflection on the blurring of lines between of industry and academic research in these rapidly-growing areas of automation. It is of great value for those in the academic community to learn about the work and perspective from their industry colleagues in terms of how open research questions are being tackled in a product and for-profit setting. This special industry session brings together a group of five speakers with strong academic training in controls who now work in industry at a variety of different types of companies to share their experiences at DSCC 2019.
2. Proposal Writing Tips for Young Investigators
Speaker: Irina Dolinskaya (NSF)
1:15 pm -3:15 pm, Wednesday, October 9
The presentation will present guidelines and helpful tips from NSF program managers for junior faculty and newer PIs. This session will include both a mini-proposal writing workshop as well as time for Q&A with the program managers.
3. NSF CAREER Award Panel
Speakers: Matteo Aureli, Chris Vermillion, Xu Chen
12:10 pm – 1:10 pm, Thursday, October 10
This event is geared towards junior faculty members who are interested in pursuing the NSF CAREER award. Graduate students and postdocs are also welcome. A panel formed by previous NSF CAREER awardees will share their experiences and tips on proposal preparation. The event will begin with a moderated panel discussion followed by time for questions and answers.
4. Federal Funding Opportunities
Speakers: Irina Dolinskaya (NSF), Jordan Berg (NSF), Robert Landers (NSF)
3:30 pm – 5:30 pm, Thursday, October 10
The goal of this special session is to provide an update on funding opportunities of interest to the dynamic systems and control community. Program managers from the National Science Foundation will present existing and upcoming opportunities and new cross-cutting initiatives. A question-and-answer session will follow the presentations.