Vladimir J. Lumelsky
Vladimir Jacob Lumelsky is an American scientist and engineer in the fields of robotics, machine intelligence, and sensing, and the author of a book on topological principles in robot motion strategies, "Sensing, Intelligence, Motion: How Robots and Humans Move in an Unstructured World". His professional career spans work in industry, government, and academia, in two countries, Russia and USA. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Sensors Journal, 2001-2003, senior editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, and President of the IEEE Sensors Council, 2012-2013, which represents 25 societies of IEEE. He is editor of Sensing Book Series at Wiley-IEEE Press. In 1999-2001 he was Program Director for Robotics at NSF (National Science Foundation) and NSF Representative at USA Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. In 2002-2013 he led Robotics Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Center developing robotics systems for Mars exploration.
Vladimir Lumelsky received his PhD in applied mathematics in 1970 at the Institute of Control Problems of Russian National Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, and till 1975 worked at the same institute as junior researcher and later senior research fellow. In 1975 he had emigrated to the United States, where he worked first as researcher in Ford Motor Co. Scientific Laboratories, 1976-1980, and General Electric Research Center, 1981-1985. He then moved to academia, taking positions of professor at Yale University, 1985-1990, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991-2003, and University of Maryland-College Park (an adjunct professor, 2004-13). His research in those institutions was focused on robotics and machine intelligence, and included joint professorships at electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, and mathematics. He has been also visiting professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, and Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He is IEEE Life Fellow.