Vadim Ivanovich Utkin (; 30 October 1937 – 18 September 2022) was a

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and a professor of

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

Mechanical Engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

at the

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

. He is best known for being one of the originators of

Sliding Mode Control In control systems, sliding mode control (SMC) is a nonlinear control method that alters the dynamic system, dynamics of a nonlinear system by applying a discontinuous control signal (or more rigorously, a set-valued control signal) that forces th ...

and Variable Structure Systems, which have become fundamental concepts in the field of

nonlinear control Nonlinear control theory is the area of control theory which deals with systems that are nonlinear system, nonlinear, time-variant system, time-variant, or both. Control theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics that ...

(e.g.

robust control In control theory, robust control is an approach to controller design that explicitly deals with uncertainty. Robust control methods are designed to function properly provided that uncertain parameters or disturbances are found within some (typical ...

Biography

Utkin was born in Moscow, Soviet Union. He was with the Institute of Control Sciences from 1960 to 1994, where he served as its Head of Discontinuous Control Systems Laboratory from 1973 to 1994. He joined the

in 1994 as the Ford Chair of Electromechanical Systems, and was the first professor to hold this distinction until 2002. He was an

IEEE Fellow , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

, and he has been the recipient of awards such as the

Lenin Prize The Lenin Prize (, ) was one of the most prestigious awards of the Soviet Union for accomplishments relating to science, literature, arts, architecture, and technology. It was originally created on June 23, 1925, and awarded until 1934. During ...

and the

Humboldt Prize The Humboldt Research Award (), also known informally as the Humboldt Prize, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of Germany in recognition of ...

. He also holds honorary doctorates from the

University of Sarajevo The University of Sarajevo (Bosnian language, Bosnian, Croatian language, Croatian and Serbian language, Serbian: ''Univerzitet u Sarajevu'' / Sveučilište u Sarajevu / Универзитет у Сарајеву) is a List of universities in Bo ...

and Rovira and Vergil University.

Selected works

* ''Sliding Modes and their Applications in Variable Structure Systems''. Mir, Moscow, 1978. * ''Sliding Modes in Control and Optimization'', Springer Verlag, 1992. * ''Sliding Mode Control in Electro-Mechanical Systems'', Taylor & Frencis. 1st edition 1999, 2nd edition 2009.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Utkin, Vadim 1937 births 2022 deaths Control theorists Fellows of the IEEE Ohio State University faculty Russian emigrants to the United States Scientists from Moscow