IEEE, the world’s largest professional membership organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity, has announced that Javad Lavaei, Associate Professor of Berkeley IEOR, has been elevated to Fellow of IEEE. The grade of fellow recognizes distinction in the profession, and fellowship status is limited annually to .1% of voting members. In the IEEE’s announcement, Professor Lavaei was recognized “for contributions to nonlinear optimization in power systems.”

“I am honored to be elevated to IEEE fellow,” Said Javad Lavaei. “IEEE has allowed me to work with incredibly talented professionals who are advancing the theory and practice of systems and control in engineering.”

Lavaei joined Berkeley IEOR as a faculty member in 2015. During his tenure, he has won numerous awards including the NSF Career Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and many more.

As Berkeley IEOR Professor, Lavaei works on various interdisciplinary problems in control theory, optimization theory, power systems, and machine learning. He currently leads a research group of eight PhD students, and teaches classes on nonlinear and discrete optimization, linear programming and network flows, and applied dynamic programming. His work as an advisor has led to numerous best paper awards for his students, many of whom graduate to become faculty members at prestigious universities around the world.

Before UC Berkeley, Lavaei was an Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University from 2012 to 2015. He received an B.Sc. degree in electronics engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2003 and an M.A.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Concordia University in 2007. He obtained his Ph.D. in Control & Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology under the supervision of Profs. John C. Doyle and Richard Murray in 2011, where he was the recipient of the Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize for the best university-wide Ph.D. thesis, entitled “Large-Scale Complex Systems: From Antenna Circuits to Power Grids.” After receiving his Ph.D., Lavaei spent one year as a postdoctoral scholar of Electrical Engineering at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University.

Learn More

Associate Professor Javad Lavaei’s Website

Read about the IEEE Fellow Program here.