My current research interests focus on four topics: smart structures control, control of semiconductor manufacturing processes, walking machines, and theoretical studies in advanced nonlinear control. In the area of smrt structures control there is much excitement on the potentia use of material such as piezo-electric, electrostrictive, magnetostrictive materials, shape memory alloys etc. Unarguably, these material will be used in the future for advanced control concepts in aircraft, rotorcraft, submarines, adaptive optics etc. both as sensors as well as actuators. However, unlike conventional forms of actuators and sensors, these material display some unusual behaviors, which forces designers to work within hard saturation limits, account for hysteresis and deal with complex system modeling and identification issues. Our effort is directed at furthering the understanding of control concepts applicable, and developing theory, methodology and software to deal with these problems, and experimentaly validate such methodology. In the area of semiconductor manufacturing processes, an accurate model contains a system of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations which are quite comples to handle. Our effort focuses on simplifying and approximating this system with finite dimensional systems and develop identification and control methodology applicable in this context. Walking Machines project is aimed facilitating both graduate research and undergraduate education. Graduate students under the guidance of five faculty members work on advanced control design, mechanism design, and hardware design aspects applicable to walking machines. Simultaneously, undergraduate students, working within the scope of a regular design course, work on the detailed design and fabrication of a hexapod. Our remaining topic of interest, advanced nonlinear control systems, pose many challenging theoretical problems. Examples can be found in robotics and other motion control systems, aircraft, spacecraft, chemical engineering etc. Among those os interest to us are, stabilization of highly nonlinear systems (derivation of normal forms applicable) and differential control of identical systems.