Paley Promoted to Professor

Department of Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Derek Paley has been promoted to the rank of professor by University of Maryland (UMD) President, Dr. Wallace Loh. The promotion is effective July 1, 2017.

Paley joined UMD faculty in 2007 and currently directs the Collective Dynamics and Control Laboratory where his research focuses on the areas of nonlinear dynamics and control, cooperative control of autonomous vehicles, adaptive sampling with mobile sensor networks, autonomous underwater vehicles and spatial models of biological collectives.

Paley has been recognized by the U.S. Whitehouse with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

In addition, Paley has received a National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award, was named Engineer of the Year in 2015 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) National Capital Section and awarded the Clark School’s 2014 E. Robert Kent Teaching Award for Junior Faculty. He was also invited to present at the National Academy of Engineering’s 2016 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium during the “Extreme Engineering: Extreme Autonomy in Space, Air, and Land” session on “Autonomy Underwater: Ocean Sampling by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles.”

He received the B.S. degree in applied physics from Yale University in 1997, and then worked as an analyst in the defense industry for Metron, Inc. and then as a software engineer in the autonomous underwater vehicle industry for Bluefin Robotics Corp. in Cambridge, Mass. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University.

Published May 11, 2017