From Discrete Event Systems to Discreet Event Systems

On the occasion of being named N. Harris McClamroch Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Prof. Lafortune will give a brief talk followed by a reception.

Stéphane Lafortune is an international leader in discrete event systems (DES). His research in DES includes include multiple problem domains: modeling, diagnosis, control, optimization, and applications to computer and software systems.

Recently, his research has been focused on cyber-physical and networked systems, cybersecurity, and privacy. Applications include software systems, automated manufacturing systems, communication networks, document processing systems, process control systems, and transportation systems.

Lafortune is a Fellow of the IEEE (1999) and of the International Federation of Automatic Control (2017). He received the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in 1990 and the Axelby Outstanding Paper Award from the Control Systems Society of the IEEE in 1994 (for a paper co-authored with S.-L. Chung and F. Lin) and in 2001 (for a paper co-authored with G. Barrett).

He co-authored, with Christos Cassandras, the textbook Introduction to Discrete Event Systems (2nd Edition, Springer, 2008). He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Discrete Event Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications since 2015.

Lafortune obtained his degrees from ‰cole Polytechnique de Montréal (B.Eng), McGill University (M.Eng), and the University of California at Berkeley (PhD), all in electrical engineering. He joined Michigan in 1986.