On Nov. 8 MARCO PAVONE, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics, was awarded the 2017 Franco Strazzabosco Award for Engineers from the Italian Scientists and Scholars of North America Foundation (ISSNAF). Pavone, who is also director of the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at Stanford, was recognized for his work on “algorithmic foundations for real-time and dependable spacecraft motion planning.”  

Research from Pavone’s lab focuses on the control of autonomous robotic systems, including autonomous spacecraft, self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, large-scale robotic networks and rovers for exploring other objects in our solar system.