Brief Bio of Soon-Jo Chung

Bren Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems
Department of Computing + Mathematical Sciences (CMS)
California Institute of Technology

JPL Senior Research Scientist
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
California Institute of Technology

Curriculum Vitae (CV)
LinkedIn Page

Note to Prospective Students: I admit students from the CDS (CMS) PhD program.

Soon-Jo Chung is Bren (Named Professorship) Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems in the California Institute of Technology.  Prof. Chung is also a Senior Research Scientist of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Prof. Chung received the S.M. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Sc.D. degree in Estimation and Control with a minor in Optics from MIT in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He received the B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from KAIST in 1998 (school class rank 1/120). From 2009 to 2016, Prof. Chung was an associate professor and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prof. Chung was a Member of the Guidance & Control Analysis Group in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a JPL Summer Faculty Research Fellow and Faculty Affiliate working on distributed small satellites during the summers of 2010-2014.

Professor Chung's research focuses on distributed spacecraft systems, space autonomous systems, and aerospace robotics, and in particular, on the theory and application of control, estimation, learning-based control and planning, and navigation of autonomous space and air vehicles.

He is the recipient of the UIUC Engineering Dean's Award for Excellence in Research, the Arnold Beckman Faculty Fellowship of the U of Illinois Center for Advanced Study, the AFOSR Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, the NSF CAREER award, a 2020 Honorable Mention for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Best Paper Award, three best conference paper awards (2015 AIAA GNC, 2009 AIAA Infotech, 2008 IEEE EIT), and five best student paper awards. He also received multiple teaching awards including the UIUC List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent and the instructor/advisor for the 1st place winning team of the AIAA International Student Conference and the AIAA Undergraduate Team Space Design Competition. The work and robots of Prof. Chung’s and his colleagues have received extensive media coverage. The robotic bat, called Bat Bot, was placed in a special exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Hamburg along with the work of virtuosos like Albrecht Dürer and Alexander von Humboldt.

Prof. Chung is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, and the Guest Editor of a Special Section on Aerial Swarm Robotics published in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics. He is an Associate Fellow of AIAA.