Spyros Tzafestas

Professor Emeritus   Division of Signals, Control and Robotics

Brief Biography

Spyros G. Tzafestas was born in Corfu, Greece on December 3, 1939 He earned a B.Sc. in Physics (1963) and a P.G. Diploma in Communications (1964) from Athens University. Subsequent postgraduate studies in the U.K merited the D.I.C in Electrical Engineering, the M. Sc. (Eng.) in Control from London University in 1967, and the Ph.D. in Systems and Control from Southampton University (U. K). in March 1969. He returned to ‘Demokritos’ Research Center in 1969 as a research leader in Computer Control and Automation of the C.S. Department. From October 1973 to March 1985 he served as a Professor of Control Systems, in the E. Eng. Dept. of the Univ. of Patras, Greece. He then gained a position in Control and Robotics at the School of E.& C. Eng. (SECE) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) where he served as Director of the Intelligent Robotics and Automation Laboratory up to his retirement on August 31, 2006, and from 1999 to 2009 as Director of the NTUA Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS). He is the recipient of a D.Sc.(Southampton University) and two honorary doctorates in engineering (TU Munich, Germany, and EC Lille, France). Over the years he worked in D. P.S., M.V. and M.D. Systems, Robotic systems, and AI, KB and CI control techniques. He is a LIFE FELLOW of IEEE and a FELLOW of IET (IEE). He was the founding editor of the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems (1988-2006), and he is the Chief Editor of the Springer ISCA book Series. He has edited 30 research books, 20 Conference Proceedings, and 26 journal special issues. He has organized and/or chaired many international conferences (IEEE CDC, EUCA, etc.) and coordinated many national and European projects in IT, CIM, Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Control. He is the author of eight international books and seven Greek books, His biography is included in more than 20 international biographical volumes. Currently, Dr. Tzafestas continues his scientific work at NTUA as a Professor Emeritus-Senior Research Associate of SECE.

Research Interests

  • Adaptive, robust, knowledge-based, neural, fuzzy, and intelligent control.
  • Fixed place and mobile robot control and path/task planning.
  • Ethics, social impacts, and philosophy of information, communication and robotics/automation.

Publications

 Publications Link