SEECS Colloquium

Using a simple explanation of the Free Lunch Theorem, we explain limits to performance optiminzation, HOT design, system complexity, and network security.

Yu-Chi Ho received his S.B. and S.M. degrees in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. Except for three years of full time industrial work he has been on the Harvard faculty. Since 1969 he has been Gordon McKay Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics. In 1988, he was appointed to the T. Jefferson Coolidge Chair in Applied Mathematics and Gordon McKay Professor of Systems Engineering at Harvard and as visiting professor to the Cockrell Family Regent's Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin . He has published over 120 articles and four books, one of which (co-authored with A.E. Bryson, Jr.) has been translated into both Russian and Chinese and made the list of Citation Classics as one of the most referenced works on the subject of optimal control. He is on the editorial boards of several international journals and is the editor-in-chief of the international Journal on Discrete Event Dynamic Systems. He is the recipient of various fellowships and awards including the Guggenheim (1970), the IEEE Field Award for Control Engineering and Science (1989), the Chiang Technology Achievement Award (1993), The American Automatic Control Council Bellman Control Heritage Award (1999), and the ASME Rufus Oldenburger Award (1999). He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Distinguished Member of the Control Systems Society, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In addition to services on various governmental and industrial panels, and professional society administrative bodies, he was the President of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society in 1988 and co-founder of Network Dynamics, Inc., a software firm specializing in industrial automation.

His research interests ranges from differential games, information structure, multi-person decision analysis, to incentive control, and since 1983, exclusively in discrete event dynamic systems, ordinal optimization, perturbation analysis, and manufacturing automation.