Jorge Cortes

Associate Professor, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Systems and control, sensor networks, engineering mathematics, and geometric mechanics

Professor Cortés' research interests are on distributed coordination algorithms, autonomous robotic networks, mathematical control theory, geometric mechanics and geometric integration. The recent emergence of low-cost, highly-autonomous vehicles with control, communication, sensing, and computing capabilities has paved the way for the deployment of robotic sensor networks in a wide range of applications. Controlled motion coordination of these networks will have far-reaching implications in the monitoring of natural phenomena and the enhancement of human capabilities in hazardous and unknown environments. Motivated by these scenarios, Professor Cortes' research program is developing systematic methodologies to control autonomous, reliable, and efficient mobile networks.

Capsule Bio:
Jorge Cortés joined the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCSD in 2007 as an assistant professor. He received the Licenciatura degree in mathematics from the Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, in 1997, and a Ph.D. in engineering mathematics from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 2001. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Systems, Signals, and Control Department, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands (from January to June 2002), and at the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (from August 2002 to September 2004). From 2004 to 2007, he was an assistant professor with the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received a NSF CAREER award in 2006. He is the author of the book Geometric, Control and Numerical Aspects of Nonholonomic Systems (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2002) and the recipient of the 2006 Spanish Society of Applied Mathematics Young Researcher Prize. He is currently an associate editor for the European Journal of Control and the IEEE-CSS Conference Editorial Board.