About Prof. Pao

Lucy Y. Pao received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. She was a Hughes Aircraft Company Master's Fellow and a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow.

From 1983-1993, Dr. Pao spent periods of time working at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (Silver Spring, Maryland), Pacific Gas & Electric Company (San Francisco, California), Hughes Aircraft Company (El Segundo, California), AT&T Bell Laboratories (Holmdel, New Jersey), and The MITRE Corporation (Bedford, Massachusetts). From 1993-1995, she was an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Since 1995, she has been with the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she was the Richard and Joy Dorf Professor (2009-2014) and is now a Palmer Endowed Chair Professor in the Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering Department. She has spent sabbaticals at Harvard University (2001-2002), University of California Berkeley (2008), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (2009), Boston University (2016), the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study (2016-2017, 2023), the ForWind Center for Wind Energy Research (2016-2017, 2023), and Eindhoven University of Technology (2024).  Her research interests are in control systems (with applications to flexible structures, wind turbines, wind farms, power converters, tape systems, disk drives, atomic force microscopy, near-field scanning optical microscopy and lithography); multisensor fusion (with applications to uninhabited autonomous vehicles, satellites, and automotive active safety systems); and haptic and multi-modal visual/haptic/audio interfaces (with applications to scientific visualization and spatial communication).

Dr. Pao is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Early Faculty CAREER Award (1996-2001) and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (1997-2000). She was also a winner of the 1996 IFAC World Congress Young Author Prize, and she was the co-author and advisor on the paper that received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2001 American Control Conference as well as on a paper that was a Best Student Paper Award Finalist at the 2009 American Control Conference. She was an invited participant of the National Academy of Engineering's 1997 Frontiers of Engineering Symposium and 2000 German-American Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. Other selected awards include a 2003 Subaru Teaching Excellence Award, the Best Commercial Potential Award at the 2004 International Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environments and Teleoperator Systems, and the Best Paper Award at the 2005 World Haptics Conference.  She also received the 2012 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award, the 2015 SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization Best Paper Prize, and the 2024 IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award.  She was a 2015 Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Awards Finalist and 2020 IFAC Triennial World Congress Application Paper Prize Finalist.  She is a Fellow of the IEEE (2012), a Fellow of IFAC (2013), and a Corresponding Member Abroad of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2021).  She received the 2017 Scientific Award from the European Academy of Wind Energy and the 2017 Control Engineering Practice Award from the American Automatic Control Council.

She was a plenary speaker at the 2006 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, the 2011 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, the 2012 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, the 2013 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, the 2016 American Control Conference, the 2017 Congreso Nacional de Control Automático, the 2019 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, the 2020 IFAC Triennial World Congress, the 2022 joint North America Wind Energy Academy Symposium and International Conference on Future Technologies in Wind Energy, and the 2025 Joint IFAC Symposia on Mechatronic Systems & Robotics.  She was a keynote speaker at the 1998 and 2000 Japan/USA/Vietnam Workshops on Research and Education in Systems, Computation, and Control Engineering, the 2008 IFAC World Congress, the 2012 Chinese Control and Decision Conference, the 2013 Society of Instrument & Control Engineers Annual Conference, and the 2021 IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications.  She received the 2019 ASME Nyquist Lecturer Award and has been an IFAC Pawel J. Nowacki Distinguished Lecturer (2020-2026).

Dr. Pao served on the Program Committees for the 1995, 1997, 2000, and 2001 American Control Conferences, the 2000 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, the 2006 International Conference on Information Fusion, the 2016 Indian Control Conference, the 2016 IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems, and the 2017 IFAC World Congress. She was on the Organizing Committees for the Pioneering International Symposium on Motion and Vibration Control in Mechatronics held in 1999 in Tokyo, Japan and the 1999 International Symposium on Motion and Vibration Control in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Dr. Pao also served on the International Program Committees for the 2000 Japan/USA/Vietnam Workshop on Research and Education in Systems, Computation, and Control Engineering and for the 2002 IFAC Conference on Mechatronic Systems. Prof. Pao has been an Associate Editor (1995-1997) on the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS). She was also the Editor (1995-2001) for the American Automatic Control Council Newsletter.  She is the Chair of the International Program Committee for the 2032 IFAC Triennial World Congress.

Dr. Pao has served on the IEEE CSS Board of Governors (BoG) (2003, 2005-2007, 2011-2013, and 2015), Vice Chair for Invited Sessions for the 2003 American Control Conference, Program Chair for the 2004 American Control Conference, and a member of the IFAC Committee on the Past, Present, and Future of Control Education. She has been an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems (2003-2010), a member of the IFAC Young Author Prize Selection Committee (2006-2008 and Chair during 2008-2011), a primary member of the ASME Dynamics System and Control Division Mechatronics Technical Committee, the Founding Scientific Director (2007-2011) of the Center for Research and Education in Wind (CREW), a member (2010-2011) of the US Defense Science Study Group, General Chair for the 2013 American Control Conference, and an IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer (2008-2014). She was a member of the IFAC Fellow Selection Committee (2014-2017), the IEEE CSS Fellow Nominations Chair (2016-2019), the IFAC Executive Board (2017-2020), and the IFAC Technical Board (2020-2023).  

She is a fellow (2009- ) of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) and was a recipient of the 2022 CU Boulder campus-wide Outstanding Postdoc Mentor of the Year Award and the 2024 CU Boulder campus-wide Outstanding Mentor Award for Faculty Mentoring.  She also received the 2022 and 2023 ECEE Department Holland Faculty Awards for Outstanding Mentorship.