Petros A. Ioannou is a Cypriot American Electrical Engineer who made important contributions in Robust Adaptive Control, Vehicle and Traffic Flow Control, and Intelligent Transportation Systems.
After graduation from the Technical School of Nicosia and completion of his compulsory military service he moved to London, England in 1973 to attend University College London.
in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in the area of Robust Adaptive Control [1][2][3] under the supervision of doctoral advisor Petar V. Kokotovic.
In 2024 he became the Director of the Center for Responsible AI in Decision Making in Finance (CREDIF).
[4] On February 9, 2022, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for his contributions to robust adaptive control and intelligent transportation systems for improved traffic flow and driver safety.
[6] Ioannou’s multidisciplinary research focusses on solving problems related to automatic control with applications in the areas of vehicles, intelligent transportation systems, aircraft, computer disks servo control, noise and vibration cancellation and other applications.
He has been working on advanced vehicle concepts that involved drive by wire, steer by wire and later on cruise control and intelligent cruise control systems in collaboration with major automotive companies in the US.
Intelligent cruise control systems also known as Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) [8][9] systems allow automatic vehicle following with collision avoidance capabilities for safety and driver comfort in addition to positive environmental impact.
[9] Ioannou’s research also involves the design of control systems for vibration control with applications to laser pointing devices, mechanical systems, noise cancellation devices [10] and disk drive servo control[11] and camera image stabilization.
His research in the area of transportation involves traffic flow modeling and control as well as freight optimum routing and port automation.
[12] The development of a traffic simulation of the road network that feeds into Los Angeles International Airport allows the evaluation of different technologies and concepts that influence the traffic around the terminals.