Irena Lasiecka

Irena Lasiecka (; born February 4, 1948) is a Polish-American mathematician, a Distinguished University Professor of mathematics and chair of the mathematics department at the University of Memphis. She is also co-editor-in-chief of two academic journals, Applied Mathematics & Optimization and Evolution Equations & Control Theory.

Lasiecka earned her Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of Warsaw under the supervision of Andrzej Wierzbicki. In 2014, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to control theory of partial differential equations, mentorship, and service to professional societies."

Her specific areas of study are partial differential equations and related control theory, non-Linear PDEs, the optimization theory, calculus of variations, and boundary stabilization.

Early life and education Irena Lasiecka was born and raised in Poland, where she received her initial background in mathematics. She studied math for many years at the University of Warsaw, where she earned her Master of Science degree in applied mathematics in 1972. A few years later, she received her PhD from the same university in the same field of study.

Teaching After receiving her PhD, Lasiecka started to transfer her knowledge of Applied Mathematics to others in addition to more personal studying and research. Her first teaching job was at the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1975, and she later ventured to the United States a few years later, teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has been teaching in the US ever since. The following is a chart listing the institutions in which Lasiecka has been a teaching faculty member of.

Control theory Control Theory is one of Irena Lasiecka's chief areas of study. She begins her book, Mathematical Control Theory of Coupled PDEs, with a description of what Control Theory is. She states, " The classical viewpoint taken in the study of differential equations consisted of the (passive) analysis of the evolution properties displayed by a specific equation, or a class of equations, in response to given data. Control theory, however, injects an active mode of synthesis in the study of differential equations: it seeks to influence their dynamical evolution by selecting and synthesizing suitable data (input functions or control functions) from within a preassigned class, to achieve a predetermined desired outcome or performance."

In simpler terms, control theory is the ability to influence change in a system, something that changes over time. In order to better understand this concept, it is useful to know a few key phrases. A state is a representation of what the system is currently doing, dynamics is how the state changes, reference is what we want the system to do, an output is the measurements of the system, an input is a control signal, and feedback is the mapping from outputs to inputs. This can be applied to many facets of real-life, especially in various engineering fields that concentrate on the control of changes in their field. A good example of control theory applied to the real world is something as simple as a thermostat. The output in this system is temperature, and the control is turning the dial on or off, or to a higher or lower temperature.

Lasiecka uses this theory to further understand partial differential equations. She attempts to answer the questions of how to take advantage of a model in order to improve the system's performance. This idea is paired her desire to understand mathematical solutions of the problems of well-posedness and regularity, stabilization and stability, and optimal control for finite or infinite horizon problems and existence and uniqueness of associated Riccati equations. In Mathematical Control Theory of Coupled PDEs, Lasiecka studies this concept through waves and hyperbolic models. This book was written in order to "help engineers and professionals involved in materials science and aerospace engineering to solve fundamental theoretical control problems. Applied mathematicians and theoretical engineers with an interest in the mathematical quantitative analysis will find this text useful." Listed by StateStats.org in top 26 Women Professors in Virginia, May 9, 2013 Plenary Speaker at ETAMM 2018 [Emerging Trends in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics], Cracow, June 18, 2018. Awarded by the AACC-IFAC American Automatic Control Council the 2019 Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award with the citation { for contribution to boundary control theory of distributed parameter systems } In October 2022, Lasiecka was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Publications (books) Differential and Algebraic Riccati Equations with Applications to Boundary/Point Control Problems: Continuous Theory and Approximation Theory (with R. Triggiani), Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes 164, 1991, 160p. Research monograph, Deterministic Control Theory for Infinite Dimensional Systems, vols. I and II (with R. Triggiani) Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Research monograph, Stabilization and Controllability of Nonlinear Control Systems Governed by Partial Differential Equations (with R. Triggiani) in preparation under a contract from Kluwer Academic Publishers. NSF-CMBS Lecture Notes: Mathematical Control Theory of Coupled PDE's, SIAM, 2002. Functional Analytic Methods for Evolution Equations (co-authored with G. Da Prato, A. Lunardi, L. Weis, R. Schnaubelt), Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Mathematics, 2004. Tangential Boundary Stabilization of Navier-Stokes Equations (with V. Barbu and R. Triggiani), Memoirs of AMS, vol. 181, 2005. Long-Time Behavior of Second-Order Equations with Nonlinear Damping (with I. Chueshov), Memoirs of AMS, Vol. 195, 2008. Von Karman Evolutions (with I. Chueshov), Monograph Series, Springer Verlag, 2010. SISSA Lecture Notes: Well-Posedness and Long-Time Behavior of Second-Order Evolutions with Critical Exponents, AMS Publishing, to appear. Irena has written and edited numerous research journals and articles in addition to the above books.