Bonnie Ferri has been named the recipient of the 2022 John R. Ragazzini Education Award from the American Automatic Control Council (AACC). The prestigious award is presented annually to one individual in recognition of their contributions to automatic control education in any form. AACC includes the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) as member organizations.

Ferri is Georgia Tech’s vice provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education and a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). AACC recognized Ferri for her, “contributions through research in engineering education, organization of control education conference sessions and workshops, development of open online courses, textbook and book chapters, and thought leadership in higher education.” She was recently presented with the award at the American Control Conference in Atlanta.

“I’ve always been passionate about student-centered learning,” said Ferri. “I love being able to couple my systems expertise with the science of learning to design educational innovations that meet the needs of students in impactful ways. I am greatly honored to have received this award.”

Ferri was Georgia Tech’s first female Ph.D. graduate in electrical engineering and ECE’s first female faculty member. She has been a professor in the School since 1988 and served as its  associate chair for Undergraduate Affairs and associate chair for Graduate Affairs.

Having earned both the prestigious IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award and Regents’ Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, she is a celebrated innovator who pioneered mobile hands-on learning and inexpensive portable experiments in ECE courses.

Ferri has also been active with the IEEE Control Systems Society and served two terms on its board of governors. She was the program chair for the 1998 American Control Conference and was the general chair for this year’s conference in June. 

Ferri received a B.S degree in Electrical Engineering from Notre Dame and an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton. She then worked for Honeywell for two years prior to returning to school to earn her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech.

Magnus Egerstedt, the former Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE and current dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, was the John R. Ragazzini Education Award winner in 2015.