Naira Hovakimyan

Naira Hovakimyan received her MS degree in Theoretical Mechanics and Applied Mathematics in 1988 from Yerevan State University in Armenia. She got her Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics in 1992, in Moscow, from the Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences, majoring in optimal control and differential games.

Before joining the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2008, Naira Hovakimyan has spent time as a research scientist at Stuttgart University in Germany, at INRIA in France, at Georgia Institute of Technology, and she was on faculty of Aerospace and Ocean engineering of Virginia Tech during 2003-2008. She is currently W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. In 2015, she was named as inaugural director for Intelligent Robotics Laboratory of CSL at UIUC. She has co-authored two books, ten book chapters, six patents, and more than 350 journal and conference papers.

Her research interests are in control and optimization, autonomous systems, machine learning, cybersecurity, neural networks, game theory and their applications in aerospace, robotics, mechanical, agricultural, electrical, petroleum, biomedical engineering and elderly care.

She is the 2011 recipient of AIAA Mechanics and Control of Flight awardand the 2015 recipient of SWE Achievement Award. In 2014 she was awarded the Humboldt prize for her lifetime achievements and was recognized as Hans Fischer senior fellow of Technical University of Munich. She is a fellow and life member of AIAA, a Senior Member of IEEE, and a member of SIAM, AMS, SWE, ASME and ISDG. Naira is co-founder and Chief Scientist of IntelinAir.

She is named 2017 Commencement Speaker of the American University of Armenia. She has been listed among 50 Global Armenians in the world by Mediamax and is a member of the FAST (The Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology) advisory board.