Panagiotis Tsiotras
Dr. Tsiotras holds the David & Andrew Lewis Endowed Chair in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is also associate director at the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. His current research interests include nonlinear and optimal control and their connections with AI, planning, and decision-making, emphasizing autonomous ground, aerial, and space vehicles applications. He has published more than 350 journal and conference articles in these areas. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, Dr. Tsiotras was an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia. He has also held visiting appointments with the MIT, JPL, INRIA, Rocquencourt, the Laboratoire de Automatique de Grenoble, and the Ecole des Mines de Paris (Mines ParisTech). Dr. Tsiotras is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the IEEE Technical Excellence Award in Aerospace Controls, the Outstanding Aerospace Engineer Award from Purdue, the Sigma Xi President and Visitor's Award for Excellence in Research, as well as numerous other fellowships and scholarships. He is currently the chief editor of the Frontiers in Robotics & AI, in the area of space robotics, and an associate editor for the Dynamic Games and Applications journal. In the past, he has served as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, the IEEE Control Systems Magazine, and the Journal of Dynamical and Control Systems. He is a Fellow of the AIAA, IEEE, and AAS.
Professor Tsiotras’ teaching focuses on core aerospace engineering courses spanning dynamics, control systems, and astronautics at both undergraduate and graduate levels. His instruction emphasizes the fundamental principles of nonlinear system analysis and guidance for aerospace vehicles, aiming to develop strong analytical and problem-solving skills. Graduate teaching also includes advanced topics in optimal control and estimation theory, reflecting a comprehensive approach to aerospace systems engineering and control.
Professor Tsiotras’ research centers on control theory and its application to aerospace dynamics, particularly nonlinear control, estimation, and optimization for spacecraft and aerial vehicles. His work includes development of robust guidance and navigation algorithms, modeling of complex dynamic systems, and the study of control techniques for systems with constraints and uncertainties. His research actively integrates mathematical rigor with practical challenges in aerospace system design and operation.
Lab/Collaborations:
- Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE)
- Dynamics and Control Systems Laboratory (DCSL)
- Decision and Control Laboratory (DCL)
- Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM)
Disciplines:
- Flight Mechanics & Controls
AE Multidisciplinary Research Areas:
- Robotics, Autonomy, and Human Interactions
- Space Exploration & Earth Monitoring
- Vertical Lift and Urban Air Mobility
- Dipl.Eng., Mechanical Engineering, 1986, National Technical University of Athens
- M.S., Aerospace Engineering, 1987 Virginia Tech
- M.S., Mathematics, 1992,Purdue University
- Ph.D., Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1993, Purdue University;
Fellow of the AIAA; Fellow of IEEE; Fellow of AAS; NSF Career Award; IEEE Technical Excellence Award in Aerospace Controls; Phi Kappa Phi, Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Gamma Tau honor societies.
- IG Velentzas, JD Florez Castillo, N Bruckner, M Dor, P Tsiotras, SISIFOS: Specialized Illumination SImulator for Orbiting Spacecraft, AIAA SCITECH 2026 Forum, 2597, 2026
- G Wu, P Tsiotras, A Lindquist, Distribution Steering for Discrete-Time Uncertain Ensemble Systems, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2026
- Y Guan, D Maity, P Tsiotras, Strategic Concealment of Environment Representations in Competitive Games, IEEE Control Systems Letters 9, 2609-2614, 2025
- E Psomiadis, D. Maity, P. Tsiotras, Multi-agent Task-Driven Exploration via Intelligent Map Compression and Sharing, in Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems, Eds: A. Nilles, Ki. H. Petersen, T. L. Lam, A. Prorok, M. Rubenstein, and M. Otte, Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics Series, Vol. 34, Springer, 2026.
- G Rapakoulias, A-R Pedram, P. Tsiotras, Steering Large Agent Populations using Mean-Field Schrodinger Bridges with Gaussian Mixture Models, IEEE Control System Letters, Vol. 9, pp. 1760-1765, 2025