In Memoriam
William E. Schmitendorf
Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
UC Irvine
1941-2019
Professor William E. Schmitendorf, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, passed away on May 15, 2019, after a long illness.
He was a highly respected scholar, teacher, and academic leader. He made seminal contributions to the field of control theory. This includes, but is not limited to, profound contributions in differential games, robust control, optimal control, and applications to seismic response control. His career spanned over forty productive years, first at Northwestern University, from 1967 to 1988, and later at UCI, from 1988 to 2010.
Professor Schmitendorf was a caring teacher and mentor and a strong academic leader. He served as the Chair of Applied Mathematics at Northwestern and the Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCI, where he also served for nearly a decade as the Associate Dean for academic affairs.
He will be remembered, and missed, for his wry sense of humor, his joy of all things baseball, and his insight during college basketball post-season bracket selection. Most of all, he will be missed for his profound decency, friendship, and integrity.
George Leitmann, Professor Emeritus
Engineering Science, UC Berkeley
B. Ross Barmish, Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Faryar Jabbari, Professor
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, UC Irvine
He was a highly respected scholar, teacher, and academic leader. He made seminal contributions to the field of control theory. This includes, but is not limited to, profound contributions in differential games, robust control, optimal control, and applications to seismic response control. His career spanned over forty productive years, first at Northwestern University, from 1967 to 1988, and later at UCI, from 1988 to 2010.
Professor Schmitendorf was a caring teacher and mentor and a strong academic leader. He served as the Chair of Applied Mathematics at Northwestern and the Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCI, where he also served for nearly a decade as the Associate Dean for academic affairs.
He will be remembered, and missed, for his wry sense of humor, his joy of all things baseball, and his insight during college basketball post-season bracket selection. Most of all, he will be missed for his profound decency, friendship, and integrity.
George Leitmann, Professor Emeritus
Engineering Science, UC Berkeley
B. Ross Barmish, Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Faryar Jabbari, Professor
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, UC Irvine
