UTA professor wins Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, Liaoning China Friendship Award, named Thompson Reuters Highly Cited Scholar
Frank Lewis, Moncrief-O'Donnell Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute and professor in UTA’s Department of Electrical Engineering, has added to his many achievements two new awards, the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award and the Liaoning China Friendship Award.
“The Albert Nelson Marquis Award introduces me into the Marquis’ Who’s Who Lifetime Achievers, which is a great honor as the Marquis Who’s Who has been the standard for biographical data on leaders in multiple fields since 1899,” Lewis said.
The Liaoning China Friendship Award is the People’s Republic of China’s highest award for foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to the country's economic and social progress. Lewis said this award reflects twelve years of friendship with China, which has resulted in many Chinese students coming to UTA paid for by the Chinese Scholarship Council.
Lewis was also named a Thompson Reuters Highly Cited Scholar, with 44,800 citations in Google, half of them over the past five years.
“Dr. Lewis has had a distinguished career and has been influential across a range of research disciplines, and these new awards reflect the breadth and depth of his scholarship,” said Peter E. Crouch, dean of the UTA College of Engineering. “His role in promoting strong relationships with Chinese institutions has also been critical for UTA’s international projection.”
Lewis’ advanced controls and sensors group focuses on controls design for robotic, aerospace and autonomous systems and has garnered 80 competitive research grants worth more than $9 million since 1990. Recent funding has come from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center, the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
His key contribution has been to add additional self-learning mechanisms to neural network controllers for dynamical systems, such as aircraft and robot systems, by making it possible to design and tune the neural adaptive controllers based on the patterns of use of different modes in the system. This tuning process provides greater reliability and stability for neural adaptive control.
Lewis is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the International Federation of Automatic Control and the U.K. Institute of Measurement and Control.
He joined UTA’s College of Engineering in 1990 as the Moncrief-O’Donnell Chair of Electrical Engineering after earning advanced degrees from Rice University and Georgia Institute of Technology. Since then, he has become a recognized international authority on intelligent feedback control systems and presents workshops and courses worldwide.
He has published more than 300 journal papers and more than 400 refereed conference papers and authored 22 books. Among the many additional awards he has received are the Fulbright Research Award, the Neural Network Society’s Gabor Award, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Intelligent Systems Award, and the U.K. Instrumentation and Control Honeywell Field Engineering Medal.
Lewis also is an acclaimed professor who has won numerous awards for outstanding contributions and innovations in teaching, including the University of Texas System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, membership in the UTA Academy of Distinguished Teachers and the University’s Graduate Dean’s Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring Award. He has supervised more than 50 doctoral students, including three National Science Foundation CAREER Awardees and one Homeland Security Career Awardee.
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