Maria Elena Valcher  received the Master Degree (cum laude) in Electronic Engineering in July 1991 from the University of Padova (Italy) and the Ph.D. Degree in Systems Engineering in October 1995 from the same university. From November 1994 till October 1998 she was Assistant Professor in the Automatic Control area at the Department of Electronics and Computer Science of the University of Padova. From November 1998 to October 2001 she was Associate Professor of System Theory at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Lecce (Italy).

From November 2001 to December 2004 she was Associate Professor of System Theory at the Engineering Faculty of the University of  Padova.

She is Full Professor of Control Theory at the University of Padova since January 2005.

Research

She is author/co-author of about 90 papers appeared on international journals, about 112 conference papers and 18 book chapters. Her research interests include Boolean control networks, social networks, multi-agent systems and consensus problems, data-driven methods to design unknown input observers. In the past, she also worked on switched systems, multidimensional systems theory, polynomial matrix theory, behavior theory, convolutional coding, fault detection and observer design, delay-differential systems.

Lectures

She was a Plenary Speaker at the workshop Positive Systems Theory and Applications (POSTA) 2009, Valencia (Spagna), September 2-4, 2009,  SemiPlenary Speaker at the 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2010), Atlanta (Georgia), December 15-17, 2010, Keynote Speaker at the 2015 Chinese Conference on Decision and Control, Qingdao (China), May 23-25, 2015 and a Plenary Lecturer at the 2015 Joint Chinese Control Conference-SICE Annual Conference, Hangzhou (China), July 28-30, 2015. She was a Plenary Speaker at the 21st International Conference on Methods and Models in Automation and Robotics 2016 (MMAR 2016), Międzyzdroje, Poland, 29 August 29-September 1, 2016, and at the 5th International Symposium on Positive Systems, September 14-16, 2016. She was a plenary speaker of the 23rd International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing, ICSTCC 2019, 9-11 October 2019, Sinaia, Romania. She was a plenary speaker at the 25th International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS 2022), 12-16 September 2022, Bayreuth, Germany. She was a Plenary Speaker of the CoDIT 2023 conference, 3-6 July 2023, Rome, Italy.

She was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Control Systems society for four years (2011-2014).

She organised (with Anders Rantzer) a tutorial session at CDC 2018 (Miami, FL) entitled "Positive Systems and Large Scale Control" alla conferenza CDC 2018. She organised (with Carmen Del Vecchio, Luigi Glielmo and Amol Yerudkar) a workshop during the 2021 European Control Conference (Naples, Italy) entitled "Modeling and Control of Boolean Dynamical Systems". She organised (with Daizhan Cheng and Kuize Zhang) a workshop during the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2023) (Singapore) entitled “Semi-tensor product of matrices and its applications”.

Conference Organization

She has been involved in the Organizing Committees and in the Program Committees of several IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS)-sponsored conferences:

- Program Committee Member of the 38th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Phoenix 1999

- Registration Chair of the 43rd IEEE CDC, Bahamas 2004

- Editor of the Joint 44th IEEE CDC- European Control Conference (ECC), Sevilla (Spain), 2005

- Publicity Chair for Europe of the 1st Multi-Conference on Systems and Control, Singapore 2007

- Program Committee Member of the 46th IEEE CDC, New Orleans 2007

- Editor of the 47th IEEE CDC, Cancun (Mexico), 2008

1. -Editor of the Joint 50th IEEE CDC- ECC, Orlando, Florida, 2011
   

2. -Program Chair of the 51st IEEE CDC, Maui, Hawaii, 2012
   

3. -Program Committee Member of the IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control MSC 2014, Nice, France, 2014
   

4. -Program Committee Member of the IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control MSC 2015, Sydney, Australia, 2015.
   

5. -Program Committee Member of the IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control MSC 2016, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2016.
   

6. -Program Committee Member of the IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA2018), Copenhagen, Denmark, August 21-24, 2018. 
   

7. -co-General Chair, with Andrea Serrani, of the 2022 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) (Cancun, Mexico, December 6-10, 2022).
   

8. -IPC Advisor of  the IFAC 2023 World Congress (Yokohama, Japan, July 9-14, 2023).
   

9. -Workshop Chair of the European Control Conference ECC 2023, (Bucharest, Romania, July 13-16, 2023).
   

10. -Program Chair of the ICSTCC 2023 Conference, (Timisoara, Romania, October 11-13, 2023).
    

11. -Program Chair of the ICSTCC 2024 Conference, (Sinaia, Romania, October 10-12, 2024).
    

Other conference related activities:

- Organizing Committee Member of the Conference "The Mathematical theory of Networks and Systems" MTNS'98, Padova (Italy), 1998; Program Committee Members of the Conferences "The Mathematical theory of Networks and Systems" MTNS'02, Notre Dame, 2002; MTNS'10, Budapest (Hungary), 2010; MTNS 2012, Sydney (Australia), 2012; MTNS 2022, Bayreuth (Germany).

1. -Program Committee Member of the Workshop on Positive Systems "Posta 2003", Roma (Italy), 2003; "Posta 2006", Grenoble (France), 2006; "Posta 2009", Valencia (Spain), 2009; “Posta 2012”, Maynooth (Ireland), 2012; “Posta 2016”, Roma (Italy), 2016; “Posta 2018”, Hangzhou (India), 2018.
   

2. -Tutorial Session Chair of the 2019 European Control Conference, Napoli, Italy, 2019.
   

- Program Committee Member of the Conference "Safeprocess 2006", Bejing (China), 2006.

- Program Committee Member of the Workshop on Multidimensional Systems "NDS 2007", Aveiro (Portugal), 2007.

- Program Committee Member of the IEEE MMAR 2009 Conference, Miedzyzdroje (Poland), 2009; IEEE MMAR 2010 Conference, Miedzyzdroje (Poland), 2010.

- Program Committee Member of the 18th IEEE Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED 2010), Marrakeck (Marocco), 2010; (MED 2011), Corfu' (Greece), 2011.

- International Program Committee Member of the 8th European Workshop on Advanced Control and Diagnosis (ACD 2010) Ferrara (Italy), 2010

1. -Registration Chair of the 2011 IFAC World Conference, Milano (Italy), 2011.
   

2. -Program Committee Member of SIDRA 2011, Pisa, 7-9 September 2011.
   

3. -Vice Program Chair of the International Conference on Control and Systems 2012, Marrakech, Marocco, 2012.
   

4. -Program Committee Member of the 2015 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Madras (Chennai), 2015; 2016 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Madras (Chennai), Hyderabad, India, 2016; 2017 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Guwahati (Assam), Hyderabad, India, 2017; 2018 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Kanpur, India, 2018; 2019 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Delhi, India, 2019; 2020 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Bombay, December 16-18, 2020; 2021 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Bombay, December 20-22, 2021; 2022 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Madras, December 14-16, 2022; 2023 Indian Control Conference (ICC), Visalhapatnam, December 18-20, 2023.
   

5. -Program Committee Member of the International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing (ICSTCC) 2018, Sinaia, Romania, October 2018; International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing (ICSTCC) 2021, Iasi, Romania, October 2021; International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing (ICSTCC) 2022, Sinaia, Romania, October 2022.
   

6. - Program Committee Member of  SIAM Conference on Control and Its Applications (CT19), Chengdu, China, June 19 - 21, 2019.
   

7. -Program Committee Member of  CoDIT'19, April 20-23, 2019 Paris, France; CoDIT 2020, Prague, Czech Republic, June 29 - July 2, 2020; CoDIT 2022, Instanbul, Turkey, May 17-20; CoDIT 2023, July 3-6, Rome, Italy; CoDIT 2024, July 1-4, La Valletta, Malta.
   

8. -Advisory Council Member of the 15th International Conference on Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS 2015), BEXCO, Busan, Korea.
   

9. -International Advisory Committee member of the 2016 IEEE First International Conference on Control, Measurement and Instrumentation (CMI 2016), Kolkata, India.
   

10. -International Advisory Committee Member of the 2016 International Automatic Control Conference (CACS 2016),  2016, Taichung, Taiwan.
    

11. -Organizer of the International Workshop in the Occasion of the 70th Birthday of Giovanni Marchesini "Mathematical Systems Theory: Where Are We?", 2006.
    

12. -Co-organizer of the Control Day 2013, Padova, 20 September 2013.
    

Editorial Activities

She was in the Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (Jan. 1999- Dec. 2002), of Systems & Control Letters (2004-2010), of Automatica (June 2006-Dec. 2013) (for this role she got the Certificate of Outstanding Service when she stepped down), SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (Jan. 2012-Dec. 2014), and she is currently in the Editorial Boards of Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing (2004-),  of the European Journal of Control (Jan. 2013-) and of IEEE Access (Jan. 2014-Dec. 2019).

She is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Control Systems Letters, since January 2017.

She was Outstanding Reviewer of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control in 1999 and 2002; Outstanding Reviewer of  Automatica for the period July 2001-July 2002; she received the Certificate of Excellence as a reviewer from Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems in 2017.

IEEE CSS Related Activities and Recognitions

She has been an active member of the IEEE CSS:

- Appointed Member of the IEEE CSS Board of Governors: 2003

- Elected Member of the IEEE CSS Board of Governors: 2004-2006 and 2010-2012

- IEEE CSS Vice President Membership Activities: 2006-2007

1. -IEEE CSS Vice President Conference Activities: 2008-2010
   

2. -IEEE CSS President-Elect: 2014
   

3. -IEEE CSS President: 2015.
   

4. -IEEE CSS Junior Past President (serving in the ExCom): 2016.
   

She has received the 2011 IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Member Award.

She is Senior Member of the IEEE since 2003 and Fellow of the IEEE since January 2012.

She was a member of the 2012, 2013 and 2014 Control Systems Award committee; member of the CDC 2013 Best Student Paper Award; member of the 1st CSS Video-Clip Context evaluating committee (2014); member of the 2016 IEEE Fellow Evaluation Committee; member of the 2016 IEEE TAB Ad Hoc Committee on Women and Underrepresented Groups; member of the IEEE TAB Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (2017-2020); Member at Large of the IEEE PSPB (2019-2021); member of the 2021 IEEE PSPB N&A committee; member of IEEE Periodicals Committee (2021-2022); member of the 2019, 2020, 2021 IEEE James H. Mulligan Educational Medal committee; member of the 2020, 2021, 2022 IEEE Medal of Honor committee; member of the Roberto Tempo Best Paper Award Committee (2021-2022).

IFAC related Activities and Recognitions

Member of the IFAC Technical Board (2017-2020; 2021-2023: responsible for minor IFAC awards). Chair of the Major Awards Search Committee (2023-2026).

Member of the IFAC 2014 Best Interactive Paper Award.

Member of the Best Paper Award of the IFAC Journal Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems (2014-2017) and (2017-2020); member of the IFAC Quazza Medal Selection Committee (2020-2023).

IFAC Fellow (2020-2023).

EUCA related Activities

Italian Representative at EUCA Board (2018-2023).

EUCA Vice President (2022-2023).

EUCA President (2024)

Other Activities and Recognitions

Member of the Award Committee for the 2015 CCDC "Zhang Si-Ying Outstanding Youth Paper Award"

Since 2017 she is a Socio Effettivo (she was Socio Corrispondente from 2008 to 2017) of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti di Venezia (which stems from the Reale Istituto Nazionale, set up by Napoleon at the start of the 19th century). She is currently (since 2021) the Administrator of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti di Venezia and of VIC (Venezia Iniziative Culturali).

She is “Socio Effettivo” of the Accademia Galieliana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova since 2022 (previously “Socio Corrispondente” since 2017). She was a member of the 2019 “Premio Galileo” committee.