Note to Prospective Students

If you are a student at UCSB or planning to apply for a graduate program at UCSB and would like to work on my group the following applies to you:

1. Please look at my web page (http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~hespanha). There you will find a brief description of the research areas I am interested in. It may be especially useful to look my publications page (http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~hespanha/published.html), which I keep updated with all my recent publications.

2. If you find something that interests you and you have past experience (projects, papers, etc.) on that subject and you are applying for a PhD program, please send me an email. In this email, describe briefly what your interests are and what you have done in the area. If you have papers published, please include an URL from where I can download the papers. Please do not send me large files. You should also include your GRE scores, Grade Point Average, and class ranking.

3. If one of my research topics interests you, but you do not have past experience on the area or you are not applying for a PhD program I encourage you to apply to UCSB, but please do not contact me directly. To make sure that I will see your file, please include my name in your Statement of Purpose and also your particular area of interest.

I receive many emails from prospective students and I do not have time to reply to all of them. I apologize for that.

Positions available

The UCSB IGERT Program in Interactive Digital Multimedia is currently awarding fellowships to a select group of Ph.D. students. The fellowships, which are highly competitive and prestigious, will be awarded based on a student’s accomplishments, research potential, and vision for interdisciplinary research and education in an area related to interactive digital multimedia. Candidates must apply to and be accepted by one of the participating UCSB home departments: Computer Science, Education, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Environmental, Science and Management, Geography, Music, Psychology, Statistics and Applied Probability. Details can be found at http://media.igert.ucsb.edu/

If you have interests in this area and specific projects that you would like to pursue in digital multimedia that relate to my area of research, please mention them in your application. See also this page.

The Control and Dynamical Systems Alliance (CDSA) is developing a shared curriculum at leading research and educational institutions in the US and Brazil in the areas of Control and Dynamical Systems. These areas are well positioned to play a pivotal role over the next several years in shaping a common scientific language across a variety of disciplines, from Mechanical, Aerospace, and Environmental Engineering to BioEngineering, Communications, and Economics. This wide rage of applications makes these disciplines ideally suited for cross-disciplinary fertilization and it fosters applications attractive to a wide scientific audience. A key focus of the activity is in developing new approaches to education and outreach for the dissemination of basic ideas to non-traditional audiences. More details can be found here.

This project is sponsored by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education.

If you have interests in this area and specific projects that you would like to pursue relate to my area of research, please mention them in your application.

Postdoctoral research associate position

Distributed Control of Autonomous Systems

A vacancy exists for a Postdoctoral Research Associate on distributed control of autonomous systems at the University of California at Santa Barbara. This position is part of a federally funded project with partners in industry and other universities.

The candidates are expected to have a strong background on at least two of the following areas, and some familiarity with the rest: optimization, control theory (in particular, stochastic and decentralized control), hybrid systems, information theory, and computer networks.

The successful candidate will have opportunity to establish close interaction with both industry and academia for exciting multidisciplinary research. The position is initially offered for 1 year but it is extendible up to four years. The position is available immediately.

The applicants should contact Prof. Joao Hespanha (hespanha at ece.ucsb.edu) via email and include the following items:

1. curriculum vita;

2. brief description of their most recent research activities;

3. names and email addresses of three references.