He specializes in the areas of discrete event and hybrid systems, multi-agent systems, cooperative control and optimization, and computer simulation, with applications to cyber-physical systems, manufacturing systems, intelligent transportation, and smart cities. He has published extensively in these areas, including seven books. Among many professional activities, he was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and President of the IEEE Control Systems Society. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the IFAC and a recipient of several awards, including the 2011 IEEE Control Systems Technology Award, the CSS Distinguished Member Award, the 1999 Harold Chestnut Prize, 2011 and 2014 prizes for the IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge competition and the 2014 BU Engineering Distinguished Scholar Award.