Roberto Tempo

Roberto Tempo (April 10, 1956 – January 14, 2017) was an Italian scientist, known for his studies on complex networked systems in information technology.

He graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1980 at Politecnico di Torino, joined the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) at the research institute IEIIT, Torino, serving as a Director of Research of Systems and Computer Engineering since 1991.

He also served in 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 City.

The success of the distributed randomized methods proposed by Roberto Tempo is witnessed by the monograph “Randomized Algorithms for Analysis and Control of Uncertain Systems”, that was published by Springer-Verlag, and that represents a pioneering textbook, lying the foundations of probabilistic methods in the analysis and design of systems affected by deterministic and stochastic uncertainty, and also encompassing statistical learning theory and sequential methods for control.

One of his last research activity was dedicated to opinion dynamics and led to the Science paper “Network Science on Belief System Dynamics Under Logic Constraints”, written in collaboration with Noah E. Friedkin, A. V. Proskurnikov, and S. E. Parsegov.

This seminal paper proposes a mathematical model that describes the relationship and time-varying behavior of belief systems and interpersonal influence.

In continuation of his research in opinion dynamics and distributed randomized techniques, his last submission was “Resilient Randomized Quantized Consensus”, where it introduces randomized updates to tighten the topological condition required for consensus among integer-valued agents.

He served the IEEE Control System Society (CSS) in various forms: he was Vice-President for Conference Activities (2002-2003), President-Elect (2009) and President (2010).

He was also Program Chair of the first joint IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) and European Control Conference (Seville, Spain, 2005) and General Co-Chair for IEEE CDC (Firenze, Italy, 2013).

He also served as member of the IFAC Fellow Selection Committee, 2011-2014 and 2015-2017.

Roberto Tempo was a passionate skier, hiker and climber.

He was national instructor of ski mountaineering of the Italian Alpine Club and a keen climber, climbing 7a difficulties.

His love for the mountains was well known within the control community and to the two passions of his life he had devoted his last President's of the IEEE Control System Society Message, titled "Mountains and Control".

He also was an officer of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) as Chair of the Italian National Member Organization, and Editor in Chief of the IFAC flagship journal Automatica (since 2015).

In 2017 the Institute of Electronics and Information and Telecommunications Engineering of the National Research Council (IEIIT-CNR) of Italy instituted 'PReGio Roberto Tempo'.

PReGio Roberto Tempo is aimed at IEIIT-CNR young researchers with a temporary position and consists of a grant of €3,500.00 to be awarded to the best research published in the last two years in an international peer-reviewed scientific journal.

In 2018 the IEEE instituted the Roberto Tempo Best CDC Paper Award, "to recognize outstanding papers presented at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control".

The prize consists in a cash award of $1,000, and a Galvanic (photo engraved) plaque for each author of the winning paper.

The award is funded by an endowment jointly provided by the Control System Society and Roberto Tempo's family and managed by the IEEE Foundation.

Basis for judging are: Originality, potential impact on any aspect of control theory, technology, or implementation.

The Systems Modeling and Control group of the Institute of Electronics and Information and Telecommunications Engineering of the National Research Council (IEIIT-CNR) of Italy has organized a series of Colloquia to honor Roberto's memory.

The Roberto Tempo Colloquia in Automatica are general seminars held by renowned scientists.

They range over all aspects of systems and control, and on interdisciplinary subjects where control plays a fundamental role.

The first colloquium was held by Bob Barmish on Friday 8 June 2018.

In 2018 the book "Uncertainty in Complex Networked Systems. In Honor of Roberto Tempo" has been published by the Springer International Publishing.

The chapters in this volume celebrate the life and research of Roberto Tempo on complex networked systems, focusing on the analysis and control under uncertainty, and robust designs and presenting applications such as PageRank in Google and opinion dynamics in social networks.