Wise presents inaugural Distinguished Alumnus Seminar

1/21/2019 Julia Stackler

Written by Julia Stackler

Wise and Associate Head for Graduate Programs Taher Saif.
Wise and Associate Head for Graduate Programs Taher Saif.
MechSE alumnus Kevin Wise (BSME ’80, MSME ’82, PhD ME ’87) recently presented the inaugural MechSE Distinguished Alumnus Seminar. 

Wise is a Senior Technical Fellow, Advanced Flight Controls, in the Phantom Works division of The Boeing Company in St. Louis.

In his lecture, “Autonomous Systems and Recent Progress in the Adaptive Control Applications,” he discussed autonomous systems in aerospace, and recent progress in the development and fielding of adaptive control systems. Autonomous systems have secured a unique and expanding role in commercial and defense applications. Aerospace and the oil and gas industries offer some of the greatest control challenges faced by the control community: unstable, non-minimum phase system dynamics, and models that are highly uncertain and expensive to learn/measure. Wise also presented some recent progress in developing and using robust and adaptive control methods for flight and drilling operations. 

Wise is also President and CEO of Innovative Control Technologies, LLC, and is a Chief Advisor at Kelda Drilling Controls in Norway. Since joining Boeing in 1982, he has developed vehicle management systems, flight control systems, and control system design tools and processes for advanced manned and unmanned aircraft and weapon systems. Some recent programs include KC-46 Tanker boom, Dominator UAS, Phantom Eye Hydrogen Powered UAS, QF-16 Full Scale Aerial Target, X-45 J-UCAS, X-36, and JDAM. His research interests include intelligent autonomy and battle management, aircraft dynamics and control, robust adaptive control, optimal control, robustness theory, and intelligent drilling solutions. He has authored more than 100 technical articles and seven book chapters, and has published a textbook titled Robust and Adaptive Control Theory, with Aerospace Examples. He teaches control theory at Washington University in St. Louis. Wise is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of AIAA and IEEE.

Associated with this lecture, Wise will be honored as a 2019 MechSE Distinguished Alumnus at a department banquet in March.


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This story was published January 21, 2019.