Jeff S. Shamma

Jeff S. Shamma (born c. 1961) is an American control theorist and the Professor and Julian T. Hightower Chair in Systems & Control Systems and Controls at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In August 2014, he joined the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, as a professor of electrical engineering. He is known for his early work in nonlinear and adaptive control, particularly on gain scheduling, robust control, and more recently, distributed systems.

Shamma was born in New York City and raised in Pensacola, Florida. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1983 and a Ph.D. in Systems Science and Engineering from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. His Ph.D. thesis, Analysis and Design of Gain Scheduled Control Systems, was advised by Michael Athans.

After graduating from MIT, Shamma held faculty positions at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, University of Texas, Austin, and University of California, Los Angeles. He also held visiting positions at the California Institute of Technology and MIT. Shamma returned to Georgia Tech to join the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2007, and is currently the Julian T. Hightower Chair in Systems & Control Systems and Controls. He is currently with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology as a professor of electrical engineering.

Shamma is a recipient of the NSF Research Initiation Award and the NSF Young Investigator Award. He received the American Automatic Control Council Donald P. Eckman Award in 1996 (32 years after his Ph.D. advisor Michael Athans received the award in 1964), and was made an IEEE Fellow in 2006.