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Directory profile for Dr. Ali Pakniyat

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Contact
  • 3010 South Engineering Research Center
  • Phone (205) 348-4979
  • Email
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Dr. Ali Pakniyat

Assistant Professor

Contact

  • 3010 South Engineering Research Center
  • phone (205) 348-4979
  • Email

Research Areas

Education

  • B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Shiraz University, 2008.
  • M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, 2010.
  • Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, McGill University, 2016

Ali Pakniyat is an Assistant Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alabama. He received the B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Shiraz University, the M.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University. After holding a Lecturer position at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department of McGill University, and two postdoctoral positions in the department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech, he joined the University of Alabama in 2021 where he is now an Assistant Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering.

His research interests include deterministic and stochastic optimal control, nonlinear and hybrid systems, analytical mechanics and chaos, with applications in automotive industry, sensors and actuators, and robotics.

Affiliated Areas
Mechanical Engineering

Selected Publications

  • B. Boulet, M. S. R. Mousavi, H. V. Alizadeh, and A. Pakniyat, “Seamless Transmission Systems and Methods for Electric Vehicles,” Jul. 11 2017, US Patent US 9,702,438 B2.
  • A. Pakniyat and P. E. Caines, “On the Hybrid Minimum Principle: The Hamiltonian and Adjoint Boundary Conditions,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 66, no. 3, pp. 1246–1253, 2021.
  • A. Pakniyat and P. E. Caines, “On the Relation between the Minimum Principle and Dynamic Programming for Classical and Hybrid Control Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 62, no. 9, pp. 4347–4362, 2017.
  • A. Pakniyat and P. E. Caines, “Hybrid Optimal Control of an Electric Vehicle with a Dual-Planetary Transmission,” Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems, vol. 25, pp. 263–282, 2017.
  • M. S. R. Mousavi, A. Pakniyat, T. Wang, and B. Boulet, “Seamless Dual Brake Transmission For Electric Vehicles: Design, Control and Experiment,” Mechanism and Machine Theory, vol. 94, pp. 96–118, 2015.

Awards and Honors

  • MEDA (McGill Engineering Doctoral Award)
  • Graduate Excellence Award in Engineering
  • Canadian Marconi Graduate Award
  • GERAD (Groupe d’Études et de Recherche en Analyse des Décisions) Doctoral Fellowship

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