Professor at St Petersburg University awarded the Paper Prize Award 2023 by Elsevier

Prizes for the best publications in the journals of the International Federation of Automatic Control are awarded every three years as part of the IFAC World Congresses. The paper entitled ‘A historical perspective of adaptive control and learning’ was published in the journal Annual Reviews in Control (Volume No 52) in 2021. It stands as the most cited publication within the federation, with an impressive impact factor of 10.69.

The paper was prepared with the support ofthe current grant from St Petersburg University, ID 84912397.

The study reflects the historical perspective of the field of adaptive management over the past seven decades and demonstrates the active interaction of research on adaptive and learning systems. Its authors are Alexander Fradkov, Professor in the Department of Theoretical Cybernetics at St Petersburg University, and Anuradha M Annaswamy, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They presented a chronology of key events during this extended period, formulations of the problems that researchers concentrated on, and crucial solutions. The article highlights the main outcomes related to the stability and reliability of adaptive systems and training in unknown parameters. Moreover, it provides a succinct overview of various applications of adaptive control that were reported in publications during this period.

This prestigious award has been bestowed upon a Russian scholar for the second time since its establishment. The award for the best publication in Annual Reviews in Control was first presented in 2020. Anton Proskurnikov, a graduate of the Department of Theoretical Cybernetics at St Petersburg University, co-authored the article ’A tutorial on modelling and analysis of dynamic social networks, Part I‘ (Volume No 43, 2017).

Alexander Fradkov, Professor at St Petersburg University, is the author and co-author of over 400 publications in journals and conference proceedings, holds ten patents, and has written 16 monographs and textbooks. Since 1990, he has been leading the Laboratory of Control of Complex Systems at the Institute for Problems in Mechanical Engineering of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His research interests encompass: nonlinear and adaptive control in physical and technical systems; control of oscillatory and chaotic systems; mathematical modelling with applications to mechanical systems; and cybernetic physics.

In 2023, Alexander Fradkov made it to the international ranking on the academic platform Research.com in the field of ‘Electronics and Electrical Engineering’, securing the third place among Russian researchers.