Sam Coogan received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2015, he was a postdoctoral research engineer at Sensys Networks, Inc., and in 2012, he was a research intern at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. Before joining Georgia Tech in 2017, he was an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering department at UCLA from 2015–2017. He received the Eli Jury Award from UC Berkeley EECS in 2016 for "outstanding achievement in the area of systems, communications, control, or signal processing," the Leon O. Chua Award from UC Berkeley EECS in 2014 for "outstanding achievement in an area of nonlinear science," and the best student paper award at the 2015 Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control conference.
- Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2015
- M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 2012
- B.S., Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010
Coogan’s research focuses on the modeling, analysis, and control of hybrid and cyber-physical systems. His work addresses formal methods for system verification and synthesis, aiming to ensure safety and reliability in autonomous systems. He investigates algorithmic techniques to manage complexity in dynamic, networked environments, with an emphasis on system resilience and robustness under uncertainty. His research actively involves multidisciplinary collaborations and student participation.
Coogan’s teaching interests encompass control theory, hybrid and cyber-physical systems, and formal methods for verification and synthesis. He is engaged in instruction at undergraduate and graduate levels, emphasizing foundational principles alongside applications relevant to autonomous and safety-critical systems. His teaching approach integrates theoretical and practical perspectives to prepare students for research and industry challenges in dynamic, networked control systems.
- Donald P. Eckman Award recognizing “an outstanding young engineer in the field of automatic control”, American Automatic Control Council, 2020
- Young Investigator Award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, 2019
- CAREER Award, National Science Foundation, 2018
- Outstanding Paper Award, IEEE Transactions on Control of Networked Systems, 2017
- Georgia Tech Sigma Xi Young Faculty Award, 2022
- ECE Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, 2022
- DBW Choe, SV Sangeetha, S Emanuel, CY Chiu, S Coogan, S Kousik, Ask, Reason, Assist: Decentralized Robot Collaboration via Language and Logic, arXiv:2509.23506, 2025
- N Li, J Ren, H Miller, S Coogan, KM Feigh, Y Zhao, Adaptive Obstacle-Aware Task Assignment and Planning for Heterogeneous Robot Teaming, arXiv:2510.14063, 2025
- A Harapanahalli, S Coogan, A linear differential inclusion for contraction analysis to known trajectories, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2025
- F Bullo, S Coogan, E Dall’Anese, IR Manchester, G Russo, Advances in Contraction Theory for Robust Optimization, Control, and Neural Computation, CDC 2025, 5701–5712, 2025
- L Baird, A Schoer, M Cleaveland, S Coogan, K Leahy, Risk Mitigation for Interval Signal Temporal Logic Monitoring and Synthesis, IEEE Control Systems Letters 9, 2945–2950, 2025