Paulo Tabuada, professor of electrical engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been named the winner of the 2015 Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize by the IEEE Control Systems Society.

The award recognizes researchers under the age of 40 who have made distinguished, cutting-edge contributions to the theory or application of systems and control. The honor was announced today at the 54th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in Osaka, Japan.

Tabuada, 40, is the principal investigator of the Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory at UCLA.

His research interests are in modeling, analysis, control and security of cyber-physical systems. Most of his work has focused on bridging the gap between two scientific disciplines contributing to cyber-physical systems: formal methods and control theory.

Recent projects include correct-by-design control software synthesis to ensure safety in the automotive and robotics domains, and the design of control software that is resilient against cyber and physical attacks on unmanned ground and air vehicles.

The Antonio Ruberti Young Researcher Prize was established in 2005 to honor Ruberti, a leading researcher and lecturer in control at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and later a commissioner of the European Union for science, research and education.

Tabuada joined the UCLA Engineering faculty in 2006. He earned his Ph.D. from the Institute for Systems and Robotics at Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon, Portugal. He is a recipient of the American Automatic Countrol Council’s Donald P. Eckman Award, which recognizes an outstanding engineer under the age of 35 in the field of automatic control.

“I am deeply honored to receive this recognition from my fellow researchers in the control community,” Tabuada said. “The award will serve to inspire me and the researchers in my lab to address the challenges of cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things.”