Asok Ray

Dr. Ray's original work has opened three new areas of multi-disciplinary science & technology that bear significant practical importance to engineering applications in both defense and commercial sectors. First, the field of Life Extending Control pioneered by Dr. Ray demonstrates the power of Information Science & Technology (IST)-based cross-disciplinary research among decision & control science, computer science, electromechanical science, thermal science, and material science. His research has addressed real-time performance optimization, life extension, self-healing control of aerospace and electromechanical systems by modeling the physics of material characteristics under environmental dynamics perceived through a network of embedded sensors. Consequently, life extending control is considered essential for safe, reliable and economical operation of aging aircraft by NASA and DoD, and of complex electromechanical systems like the Smart Ship by the U.S. Navy. The second research area spawns from Dr. Ray's contributions to the field of Fault Detection, Identification, and Reconfiguration (FDIR) and Sensor Calibration via adaptive filtering. These innovative theoretical concepts were experimentally validated on various platforms including the MIT nuclear reactor, MITR-II. Westinghouse Electric has developed a signal validation software that is currently used in commercial nuclear reactors. Following Dr. Ray's original work, NASA Glenn Research Center is implementing the concept of anomaly detection in gas turbine engines based on the principles of Symbolic Dynamics and Nonlinear Systems Theory. The third area of research is Dr. Ray's earlier work on Integrated Communications and Control. This is another contribution that has also found wide acceptance from the international research community including Lund Institute in Sweden, Seoul National University in Korea; and and Allied Signal Corporation. The U.S. Army is pursuing this research area through a recent Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant to Boston University, Harvard University, University of Maryland and University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

The above three concepts, established by Dr. Ray, have led to the development of a new technology for remote diagnosis and prognosis of air, water, and land platforms. In 2001, Dr. Ray was awarded a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant by the Army Research Office to conduct theoretical and experimental research on pervasive failures in complex dynamical systems. Dr. Ray was also one of the grantees in the DARPA Information Exploitation Office (IXO) program on Command & Control - Mixed Initiative Control of Automa-Teams (MICA). These technologies have been transferred to industry through several SBIR and STTR projects. Currently, Dr. Ray is one of the thrust leaders in the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the Army Research Office to conduct theoretical and experimental research on Modeling and Control of Sensor Networks for Information Fusion with Applications to Urban Warfare. Dr. Ray is also one of the grantees in the PLUS-INP Program of the U.S. Navy for Antisubmarine Warfare (ASW) and Mine ConterMeasure (MCM). In addition, Dr. Ray is the Principal Investigator for two NASA research projects on Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) of commercial and military aircraft.

Dr. Ray has implemented the technology of real-time anomaly detection for intelligent life extending control and health monitoring in advanced gas turbine engines at NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA. Earlier, DARPA, EPRI and Penn State have jointly developed testbeds to demonstrate the technical and economical feasibility for remote health monitoring of machinery over the National Information Infrastructure (NII).

In addition to his contributions as an Engineer/Scientist, Dr. Ray has excelled as an educator and a mentor in his professional career of about thirty years. Dr. Ray has consistently worked to enhance the standard of interdisciplinary graduate education in Aerospace, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering. Specifically, Dr. Ray has been a strong advocate for the role of modern mathematics and information sciences in engineering education. At Penn State, Dr. Ray has supervised about forty doctoral dissertations and over sixty master theses or projects. His former students are currently holding or have held academic positions in U.S. and foreign universities, and research positions in organizations like Argonne Research Laboratory, Boeing High Technology Center, General Electric Global Research Center, General Motors Research Laboratories, IBM Watson Research Center, Naval Research Laboratory, and United Technology Research Center.

The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, December 2002 to present
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, July 1990 to December 2002
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, July 1985 to June 1990
Member of Graduate Faculty in the Electrical Engineering Department
Member of Faculty in the Inter-College Graduate Degree Program in Materials
Chair, College Committee on Development of Control Engineering Research and Curricula

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
(Concurrent Appointment with The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory)
Visiting Scientist, January 1980 to June 1985

Northeastern University, Boston, MA
Part-time Faculty in the Graduate School of Electrical Engineering, September 1980 to June 1985

Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, September 1978 to January 1980

        GTE Strategic Systems, Westborough, MA
Manager, Computer Network Systems Analysis & Design Department, February 1984 to June 1985
    This management position reported to the Director of the Systems Engineering Division within GTE Strategic
    Systems. The major responsibility was to manage a department of eighteen technical personnel (two Ph.D.,
    nine M.S., and 7 B.S.) with an annual budget of over two million dollars. This department provided
    analytical support to other departments within its own and other divisions. The technical work involved
    conceptual design and analysis of wide area and local area computer communication network systems
    for the Department of Defense. In particular, new network architectures were developed for a large
    worldwide data communications network, and a test bed was established for verification, validation,
    and integration of protocols for both local and wide area networks. The annual expenditure for internal
    research efforts in the department was over half a million dollars. In this research project, an expert system
    was formulated and coded, and was then validated on the test bed for distributed network management
    and control from a global perspective.

          The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, MA
   (Concurrent Appointment with Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Senior Research Scientist, January 1983 to February 1984
Researh Scientist, January 1980 to December 1982
    The major responsibilities were to identify new research areas, lead the efforts in the preparation of research
    proposals, and provide guidance to other researchers in the fields of control and diagnosis, signal processing,
    and communication networks. Served as the Principal Investigator and a key technical contributor for
    several research projects in the following areas:
        - Failure diagnosis, guidance, and control of aircraft and spacecraft
      - Development of a network architecture for highly maneuverable tactical arcraft;
      - Conceptual dsign of intelligent control systems for autonomous undersea vehicles;
        - Intelligent control of discrete-event processes with applications to telecommunications and manufacturing

           The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA
Member of Technical Staff, July 1975 to August 1978
    Responsible for research and development in the following areas:
        - Analysis, synthesis, and implementation of aerospace communication and control systems;
      - Analysis, synthesis, and implementation of guidance & control systems for unmanned vehicles;
        - Analysis and synthesis of hierarchically structured control laws for distributed processes;
        - Simulation and performance analysis of local area networks

Stone and Webster Engineering Corporation, Boston, MA
Control Engineer and Graduate Research Fellow, July 1972 to July 1975
     Conducted doctoral research in Systems Science under joint supervision of a university faculty and a senior
     scientist at Stone and Webster. The research was concentrated in the concptual development of modeling,
     simulation, and control techniques for both continuously-varying and discrete-event dynamical systems with
   applications to electric power generation systems and chemical & processing plants.