Brief Biography
I was born in Botosani, a small town in Romania renown for giving one of the greatest Romanian poets, Mihai Eminescu. My childhood was spent in this land of rolling hills and meadows that is Moldavia.
Inspired by a family of teachers, I was attracted to the abstract world of math and engineering. I received the Diploma of Inginer degree in ECE (Automatic Control & Computers) from Gh. Asachi University Iasi, Romania in 1989. My thesis was on adaptive control algorithms and numerical implementation for D.C. electric motors, under the supervision of Professor Mihail Voicu. I worked for three years as a researcher at the Institute for Information Sciences (Romanian Academy) in the area of neural networks and fuzzy systems in control and identification.
In 1992 I won a scholarship for pursuing Ph.D. studies at Queen's University in Kingston, and I left for Canada. I obtained my Ph.D.degree in 1996, with the thesis "Nonlinear H-infinity (L2) Control with Applications", under the supervision of Professor Frederick W. Fairman. I spent a year as an NSERC Post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Aerospace Research (National Research Council) in Ottawa. Between 1998 and 2002 I worked in the optical communication industry, at the frontier between systems control, signal processing and optical communications networks.
In August 2002 I joined University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor in the ECE Department, Systems Control and Photonics groups.