NTU Prof. Li-Chen Fu Awarded IFAC Fellow

In July 2017, Prof. Li-Chen Fu (傅立成) of the NTU College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science was awarded the Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), and headed for France to receive the award on July 8. He is the first and the only scholar in Taiwan to have been elected an IFAC Fellow.

IFAC was founded in Paris in 1957 with the aim to promote control engineering technology and its application to various systems. As an established and influential international organization, IFAC consists of general, developing, and industrial country members. Due to the membership of China, Taiwan currently involves in IFAC activities as an affiliate.

IFAC and the Control System Society (CSS) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) are the two major control engineering organizations worldwide. IEEE CSS has nearly 100,000 members, and IFAC comprises as many as 68 country members and tens of thousands of individual members. IEEE CSS is centered in the United States, whereas IFAC is centered in Europe, associating control engineering developments worldwide through country members. Different from IEEE CSS, which elects fellows and holds a congress annually, IFAC convenes a World Congress every three years, during which the new fellows are elected and announced. The IFAC World Congress, having nearly 4,000 attendees, is the largest and most prestigious academic conference on control engineering.

The IFAC World Congress of 2017 was held in Toulouse, France. At the congress, Prof. Fu was elected the IFAC Fellow of 2014–2017 for his long-term and notable contribution to adaptive and nonlinear control theory and its application to robotic control technology. Every three years, 20–30 IFAC Fellows are selected from outstanding engineering experts and scholars worldwide. Only about 180 of the tens of thousands of IFAC members have been elected fellows since the establishment of IFAC, and all the elected fellows are world-renowned scholars. Currently, only dozens of Asia-based scholars have been awarded IFAC Fellow by this West-centered international organization. In this context, Prof. Fu’s election as an IFAC Fellow, particularly when Taiwan is prohibited from joining IFAC as a country member, is an exceptional and significant achievement.

Prof. Fu has been dedicated to the development of control engineering and smart robotics, and is currently committed to studying robots and artificial smart control as well. He was elected IEEE Fellow in 2004, and served as IEEE CSS Distinguished Lecturer during 2013–2015. Currently, Prof. Fu is Editor-in-Chief of Asian Journal of Control and Vice President of IEEE CSS for 2017–2018. Prof. Fu has received international recognition and multiple awards for the research contribution and achievements he made at NTU. The recognition by IFAC and Prof. Fu’s election as the only IFAC Fellow in Taiwan indicate that NTU’s research capacity is comparable to that of top research institutes worldwide.

List of IFAC Fellows: https://www.ifac-control.org/awards/ifac-fellows