Biography
Dr. Kimon P. Valavanis is John Evans Professor and Chair of the ECE Department, D. F. Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Denver, and Director of the Unmanned Systems Research Institute. He has graduated 35 PhD students and more than 100 M.Sc. students. He has attracted and has helped attracting more than $50 M in research funds from Federal and State agencies, industry and the private sector. His research interests span Unmanned Systems, Distributed Intelligence Systems, Robotics and Automation. He has published close to 400 book chapters, technical journal/transaction, referred conference papers, invited papers and technical reports. He has authored/co-authored/edited 18 books, including: On Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems into the National Airspace System: Issues, Challenges, Operational Restrictions, Certification, and Recommendations, 2nd Edition, Springer, 2012; Linear and Nonlinear Control of Small Scale Unmanned Rotorcraft, Springer, 2012 (translated into Chinese); Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Springer, 2015, also translated into Chinese – a 2nd Edition will be published by Springer in 2017; Foundations of Circulation Control Based Small-Scale Unmanned Aircraft: A Comprehensive Methodology from Concept to Design and Experimental Testing, to be published in 2017. Dr. Valavanis is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, Springer. He founded/launched the International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, which he runs annually. He was Distinguished Speaker in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, he is Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the U.K Institute of Measurement and Control, Senior Member of IEEE and Fulbright Scholar.