Professor Malcolm C. Smith

Faculty Member

Email: mcs 'at' eng dot cam dot ac dot uk
Department of Engineering, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ

Note: I am no longer accepting new graduate student applications

Biography

Malcolm Smith received the B.A. (M.A.) degree in mathematics, the M.Phil in control engineering and operational research and the Ph.D. degree in control Engineering from the University of Cambridge, England. He was subsequently a Research Fellow at the German Aerospace Center, DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, a Visiting Assistant Professor and Research Fellow with the Department of Electrical Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Ohio State University, Columbus, USA. He is now Professor of Control Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College.

Awards and Honours

1992 - G.S. Axelby outstanding paper award: "Optimal robustness in the gap metric", IEEE TAC, 35(6), 1990 (with T.T. Georgiou)
1999 - G.S. Axelby outstanding paper award: "Robustness analysis of nonlinear feedback systems: An input-output approach", IEEE TAC, 42(9), 1997 (with T.T. Georgiou)
2002 - Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (FIEEE)
2009 - Sir Harold Hartley Medal (Institute of Measurement and Control)
2010 - Fellow of the Institute of Measurement and Control (FInstMC)
2012 - Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (FIMA)
2012 - Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng)
2015 - John Jarrett Davis Prize: “Passive suspensions for ride quality improvement of two-axle railway vehicles”, Proc. IMechE, Part F 229(3), (with J.Z. Jiang, A.Z. Matamoros-Sanchez, A. Zolotas, R.M. Goodall)
2020 - IEEE Control Systems Technology Award 2020 (with Will Hoult and Panos Brezas) “for the development of the McLaren 720S semi-active suspension control system”
2021 - IMechE Donald Julius Groen Prize, “for outstanding contributions to the control of mechanical networks and systems and for the invention and application of the inerter”
2022 - Fellow of IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control)
2025 - IEEE Control Systems Award "for contributions to robust control, network synthesis, and applications to mechanical systems”

Current Research Interests

Robust control, passivity based control, circuit synthesis, mechanical networks, mathematical systems theory, estimation and automotive applications.

Publications

Selected Papers of M.C.Smith

Estimation

Simultaneous Input and State Estimation for Systems With Arbitrary Inherent Delay, by G. Gakis and M.C. Smith, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 71, no. 5, pp. 3090-3104, 2026
A limit Kalman filter and smoother for systems with unknown inputs, by G. Gakis and M.C. Smith, International Journal of Control, Volume 97, Number 10, Pages 532-542, 2024
A deterministic least squares approach for simultaneous input and state estimation, by G. Gakis and M.C. Smith, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Volume 68, Number 8, Pages 4602-4617, 2022.

The Inerter

Synthesis of Mechanical Networks: The Inerter, by M.C. Smith. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Volume 47, Number 10, Pages 1648-1662, October 2002 PDF
The Inerter Concept and Its Application, Plenary Lecture, Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE) Annual Conference, Fukui, Japan, 4 August 2003
Performance Benefits in Passive Vehicle Suspensions Employing Inerters, by M.C. Smith and F.-C. Wang. Vehicle System Dynamics, Volume 42, Number 4, Pages 235-257, 2004
Positive real synthesis using matrix inequalities for mechanical networks: application to vehicle suspension, by C. Papageorgiou and M.C. Smith. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, Volume 14, Number 3, Pages 423-435, May 2006
Passive Network Synthesis Revisited, Semi-Plenary Lecture, 17th International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS), Kyoto, Japan, July 24-28, 2006
Experimental Testing and Analysis of Inerter Devices, by C. Papageorgiou, N.E. Houghton and M.C. Smith. Transactions of ASME, Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, vol. 131, pp. 011001-1-11, 2009
The missing mechanical circuit element, by M.Z.Q. Chen, C. Papageorgiou, F. Scheibe, F-C. Wang and M.C. Smith. IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine,9(1), pp. 10-26, 2009
Passive Suspensions Incorporating Inerters for Railway Vehicles, by J.Z. Jiang, A.Z. Matamoros-Sanchez, R.M. Goodall and M.C. Smith. Vehicle System Dynamics, 50, Supplement, pp. 263-276, 2012
Control for Formula One!, by M.C. Smith. IEEE Control Systems Society report on Impact of Control, Part 2: Success Stories in Control
The Inerter: A Retrospective, Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems, Volume 3, Pages 361-391, 2020. online

Circuit Synthesis

Regular Positive-Real Functions and Five-Element Network Synthesis for Electrical and Mechanical Networks, by J.Z. Jiang and M.C. Smith. IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, vol. 56, pp. 1275-1290, 2011
On the theorem of Reichert, by J.Z. Jiang and M.C. Smith. Systems and Control Letters, vol. 61, pp. 1124-1131, 2012
Series-Parallel Six-Element Synthesis of Biquadratic Impedances, by J.Z. Jiang and M.C. Smith. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I, vol. 59, 2543-2554, 2012
Algebraic criteria for circuit realisations, by T.H. Hughes and M.C. Smith, Mathematical System Theory - Festschrift in Honor of Uwe Helmke on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, Knut Hueper and Jochen Trumpf (eds.), CreateSpace, 2013, ISBN 978-1470044008, pp. 211-228 PDF
On the minimality and uniqueness of the Bott–Duffin realization procedure, by T.H. Hughes and M.C. Smith. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Volume 59, Number 7, Pages 1858-1873, 2014.
Passive Network Synthesis: an approach to classification, by A. Morelli and M.C. Smith. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Advances in Design and Control, DC33. 2019.

Vehicle Suspensions

Analytical solutions for optimal ride comfort and tyre grip for passive vehicle suspensions, by F. Scheibe and M.C. Smith. Vehicle System Dynamics, 47, 1229-1252, 2009
Linear Quadratic Optimal and Risk-Sensitive Control for Vehicle Active Suspensions, by P. Brezas and M.C. Smith. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 2013, online

Power Dissipation

Power dissipation in automotive suspensions, by M.C. Smith and S.J. Swift. Vehicle System Dynamics, vol. 49, 59-74, 2011
Power Absorption Invariance for Brownian Spring Forcing, by J.M.C. Clark and M.C. Smith. 51st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Maui, Hawaii, Dec.10-13, pp. 4396-4399, 2012

Control Group

Cambridge University Department of Engineering