Mengchu Zhou
Mengchu Zhou (; born 31 October 1963) is a Chinese Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Helen and John C. Hartmann Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and at Macau University of Science and Technology. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a Fellow of the Chinese Association of Automation (CAA). Zhou is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the  IEEE/Wiley Book Series on Systems Science and Engineering and the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica. In 2015, he received the Norbert Wiener Award for "fundamental contributions to the area of Petri net theory and applications to discrete event systems," from the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society which also awarded him the Franklin V. Taylor Memorial Award for Best Paper award in 2010. In 2000, Zhou received the Humboldt Research Award for US Senior Scientists, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. In 1994, he received the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Computer-Integrated Manufacturing UNIVERSITY -LEAD Award (Leadership and Excellence in the Application and Development of integrated manufacturing). The number of his publications receiving 200 or more citations is 24 according to Google Scholar. He is one of the world's Highly Cited Researchers in Web of Science and has a total of more than 34,000 citations with an h- index of 89. Education. Zhou earned his Ph.D. in Computer & Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 1990. He completed his M. S. in Automatic Control, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, 1986 following the completion of his B. S. in Control Engineering, Nanjing University  of Science & Technology, Nanjing, China, 1983. Career. In 2000, Zhou joined the faculty of New Jersey Institute of Technology where in 2013, Zhou became a Distinguished Professor at The Helen and John C. Hartmann Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. There, he serves as researcher of Petri Nets and their applications, Director of the M.S. Program in Power and Energy Systems, Director of the M.S. Program in Computer Engineering, Director of Discrete Event Systems Laboratory, Director of CRRC-ZIC Laboratory for Rail System Network and Information Technologies, and Area Coordinator of Intelligent Systems . Previous to his career as professor, Zhou worked at Beijing Institute of Computer Applications, where he was an assistant engineer responsible for the development of CAD/CAM for vehicles. Significant contributions. Petri nets are a modeling tool playing the same role in event- driven systems as the differential/difference equations in continuous dynamic systems. As the size and complexity of automated systems increase, ad hoc methods lose their effectiveness, and a strong need arises for systematic methods of analysis and design. Zhou's work is about such methods - including their modeling, analysis, and synthesis of various automated systems. In 1991 , Zhou provided the theoretical basis for Petri net synthesis methods that model systems with shared resources. He formulated two new resource- sharing concepts: parallel mutual exclusion (PME) and sequential mutual exclusion (SME). PME models a resource shared by distinct independent processes. SME is a sequential composition of PMEs, modeling a resource shared by sequentially related processes. Zhou derived the conditions under which a net containing such structures will not have a total system shut down (deadlock). His approach enabled flexible design of systems that met constraints, and optimized performance. The synthesized models could be converted to supervisory controllers for automated  systems. To simplify the optimal control design for any given automated system, his work invented the elementary and dependent siphons of Petri nets - important structural objects for characterizing deadlocks. He also invented several deadlock control methods for automated systems. Their use reduced the structural complexity of supervisory controllers - - they became linear with respect to system size. For certain systems, optimal controllers were developed with polynomially complex algorithms, thereby allowing for the first time, on- line deployment of optimal control methods. Thousands of researchers and engineers use his methods in various applications for automated system design, analysis, and control. Factories which  use Zhou’s methods are thereby able to both prevent deadlock and simultaneously operate at maximum productivity - a rare combination in complex automated systems. Zhou was among the pioneers of Petri net- based methods for semiconductor manufacturing, in particular, robotic cells called cluster tools, widely used in today’s semiconductor wafer fabrication plants. His survey- type papers popularized and greatly increased acceptance of Petri nets in system designs and applications (e.g., work published in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Magaz ine). Several of  his patents have been licensed to dozens of industrial firms and put into industrial use, generating significant economic outcomes. Helping substantially improve the productivity of manufacturing semiconductor wafers and chips, this has a direct impact on lowering manufacturing costs and significantly increasing bottom line profitability in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Zhou has made contributions to the advancement of Petri net theory and their applications in automated systems. He has published over 400 papers in IEEE Transactions and Journals (majority being regular papers) and over 100 in other journals. He has authored/coathored 12 patents, 12 books, 29 book chapters and  over 300 conference- proceeding papers. He is the world’s most cited researcher on Petri nets, and one of the overall leading researchers in automated manufacturing systems (Scopus). Web of Science ranked Zhou in 2012 as the number one most highly cited scholar in engineering worldwide and has listed him as a "highly cited scholar" in engineering since then. His recognition includes four Fellow designations - by IEEE for contributions to Petri nets and their applications; by AAAS for distinguished contributions to Petri nets, discrete event systems, and their applications to manufacturing, transportation, workflow, disassembly, web services, and software design; by  the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) for seminal contributions to the theory of Petri nets and their application in manufacturing, transportation, and web services; and by Chinese Association of Automation for contributions to the field of automation.