In memory of Prof. Miroslav Šimandl

Prof. Šimandl unexpectedly passed away in Pilsen on Monday, March 23, 2015, after short serious illness at the age of sixty one.

Born on January 6, 1954, in Ledce, Czechoslovakia, he received his M.Sc. (Dipl. Ing.) degree in Control Engineering in 1978 and Ph.D. (C.Sc.) degree in Technical Cybernetics in 1984, both from the Institute of Technology in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. In the period 1978–1992, he held various research and teaching positions at the Institute of Technology in Pilsen. In the period 1993–2001, he was an associate professor, and since 2002 he held the position of professor at the Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic. Since 2011, he was the vice-rector for research and development at the University of West Bohemia and head of the research team “Identification and Decision Making under Uncertainty” at the European Centre of Excellence NTIS at the University of West Bohemia. Throughout his academic career, prof. Šimandl focused his research on areas of state estimation, system identification, optimal and adaptive control, and fault detection. He published over 150 scientific journal and conference papers. The journal papers were published in leading journals such as Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Information Fusion, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. The conference papers were presented at prestigious international congresses, symposia, and conferences organized e.g., by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), or by the International Society of Information Fusion (ISIF). With the IFAC, he served as the co-chair of the International Program Committee (IPC) of the 16th IFAC World Congress in Prague, 2005, and was a member of two technical committees “Modelling, Identification, and Signal Processing” and “Economic and Business Systems”. He was also member of the editorial board of the journal “International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science”. At the university, he led several courses on system identification, fault detection, and adaptive control, was the author of three textbooks, and was the advisor of 12 Ph.D. students who successfully defended the dissertation theses. In 2015, he received the Werner von Siemens Excellence Award for Basic Research for his contribution to the area of “Novel Approaches and Methods of Nonlinear State Estimation and Optimal Decision under Uncertainty”.

Prof. Šimandl was a university lecturer and scientist who was very much liked and highly regarded by his students and colleagues. He was a man of great personal culture, very friendly, exceptionally patient, and full of optimism. Miroslav will be sadly missed by all who knew him. Rest in peace!