Gary Balas has passed away

It is hard to describe the deep sorrow we feel for the loss of Gary Balas, Member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Member of the Hungarian Engineering Academy. He left us on November 12 at his age of 54.

Gary was known internationally for his human values and for his outstanding contributions to control theory and its applications to aerospace. He inspired this community with personal enthusiasm, theoretical achievements and by developing fantastic software tools to attack challenging applications.Gary had an active and long standing collaboration with Hungarian researchers. He was the latest representative of the first US – Hungarian scientific collaboration that started more than 25 years ago between the University of Minnesota and the Budapest University of Technology and later the Computer and Automation Research Institute. There was an exchange among faculties, research fellows, Hungarian MSc and PhD students graduated at UoM with support and scholarships.

The aerospace and flight control research group of Computer and Automation Research Institute was founded by the help of Gary and his ongoing support resulted in its successful integration into the European and US (ONR, NASA, NSF) research community.

His values and contributions will always be appreciated. May He rest in peace !