Obituary: Roberto Tempo Automatica Editor-in-Chief
On 14 January 2017 Roberto Tempo passed away during a skiing excursion at the Alps near his home town in Northwestern Italy. This was devastating news for all of us who knew him, an avid mountaineer and skier, with these activities however coming only second to his devotion to scholarly and professional activities. While being a prolific researcher who had worked in an incredibly diverse set of topical areas (from analysis and control of uncertain systems to social networks), he had also generously given his time to a diverse set of professional activities (from societal and conference to editorial activities).
At the time of his death Roberto Tempo was the Editor-in-Chief of the IFAC Journal Automatica, a post he had assumed in January 2015. He was affiliated with Automatica since 1992, first as an Associate Editor, then (starting in 1996) as the Editor of the subject area ”System and Control Theory”, and for 11 years prior to 2015 as Deputy Editor-in-Chief.
Roberto Tempo was born in Cuorgné, Italy, in 1956. In 1980 he graduated in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Italy. After a period spent at Politecnico di Torino, he joined the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) at the research institute IEIIT, Torino, where he has been a Director of Research of Systems and Computer Engineering since 1991. He has held visiting and research positions at Tsinghua University and Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Kyoto University, The University of Tokyo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, German Aerospace Research Organization in Oberpfaffenhofen, and Columbia University in New York.
Roberto Tempo’s research activities were mainly focused on the analysis and design of complex networked systems subject to uncertainty, and various related applications within information technology which more recently included the PageRank computation in the Google search engine, distributed localization of wireless sensor networks and opinion dynamics in social networks. On these topics, he published more than 200 research papers in international journals, books and conferences, including a recent paper on belief system dynamics published in Science. He is also a co- author of the book ”Randomized Algorithms for Analysis and Control of Uncertain Systems,” Springer, London, published in two editions in 2005 and 2013.
Roberto Tempo was elected a Fellow of the IEEE for ”Contributions to Robust Identification and Control of Uncertain Systems” and also elected a Fellow of IFAC for ”Contributions to the Analysis and Control of Uncertain Systems, for Pioneering the Probabilistic Approach to Robustness.” He was a recipient of the ”IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Pa- per Award”, of the ”Automatica Outstanding Paper Prize Award”, and of the ”Distinguished Member Award” from the IEEE Control Systems Society. He was elected a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, Institute of Bologna, Italy, Class Engineering Sciences.
In 2010, Roberto Tempo served the IEEE Control Systems Society as President. He was General Co-Chair for the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Florence, Italy, 2013 and Program Chair of the first joint IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, Seville, Spain, 2005. He has served as Editor for Technical Notes and Correspondence of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control in 2005-2009 and a Senior Editor of the same journal in 2011-2014. At the time of his death, he was also an Editor at Large of the Asian Journal of Control and a member of the Advisory Board of Systems & Control: Foundations & Applications, Birkhäuser.
Roberto played a leading role for several years in the Italian National Committe of IFAC, of which he was currently serving as the chair. His vision and wisdom have been instrumental in promoting and defining the proposal for an IFAC Congress in Italy. His unselfish help proved to be a key ingredient for the success of the proposal.
Roberto was a universally respected scholar, colleague, and friend, whose untimely departure from this world was a shock to all of us. The loss of Roberto, of his competence, generosity, attention to everybody’s needs and concerns, and of his unforgettable smile leave a void in the minds and hearts of everyone who have met him. He will be missed on multiple fronts.
Submitted by Tamer Basar (Editor-in-Chief of the IFAC Journal Automatica, 2004-2014, IFAC Publications Committee Chair 2014-2017) and Alberto Isidori (IFAC Advisor, IFAC President 2008-2011).
