George J. Pappas

George J. Pappas is the Joseph Moore Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on advancing the theory and design of next-generation hierarchical and distributed systems, with a particular emphasis on hybrid systems that tightly integrate continuous control with discrete computing logic. Pappas’s group develops rigorous analysis and synthesis tools that enable reliable autonomy across large-scale, interconnected, and safety-critical domains. His work spans distributed algorithms for coordinated motion of multi-robot systems and fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles, safety verification for medical devices and cyber-physical systems, scene-graph–guided planning, and the control-theoretic foundations of AI-enabled autonomy. He also investigates how macroscopic behaviors emerge in biological and networked systems, using mathematical abstractions to explain and predict collective patterns. Pappas’s research combines theory, systems engineering, and real-world validation to build scalable, verifiable autonomy for complex environments, influencing robotics, transportation, healthcare, and biological system modeling.