Brief Biography
Andreas Kugi is Scientific Director of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria's largest Research and Technology Organisation (RTO), and Full Professor for Complex Dynamical Systems at TU Wien.
His research focuses on systems and control engineering, automation, robotics, and AI-enabled autonomous systems. Throughout his career, he has pursued the integration of fundamental scientific research with industrial innovation, making significant contributions to the transfer of advanced control, automation, and artificial intelligence methods into industrial practice. He has led numerous collaborative research projects with more than 40 national and international industrial partners across manufacturing, mobility, energy systems, process industries, and robotics.
Before becoming Scientific Director of AIT in 2023, Andreas Kugi served as Head of the Center for Vision, Automation & Control at AIT (2017–2023), Head of the Automation and Control Institute (ACIN) at TU Wien (2007–2023), and Head of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Model-Based Process Control in the Steel Industry (2014–2021). Earlier, he held a Full Professorship at Saarland University, Germany, and received offers for professorships at Technische Universität Dresden and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
Andreas Kugi has authored more than 480 peer-reviewed scientific publications, is the inventor or co-inventor of more than 175 patents in 52 patent families, has supervised 59 completed PhD students, and has delivered numerous plenary and semi-plenary lectures at leading international conferences. His research has received numerous international distinctions, including the IFAC Mechatronic Systems Outstanding Investigator Award, the Goldene Stefan-Ehrenmedaille (the highest honour of the Austrian Electrotechnical Association, OVE), the Kardinal Innitzer Recognition Award for Natural Sciences, and numerous Best Paper Awards.
He served as Editor-in-Chief (2010–2017) and is now Honorary Editor of the IFAC journal Control Engineering Practice, serves on the Advisory Board of the IFAC journal Mechatronics, and has held numerous international leadership positions within IFAC and the German Research Foundation (DFG). Andreas Kugi is a Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), and the Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.
