Hamza El-Kebir

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate, driven by a passion for combining formal control theory and rigorous mathematical modeling with practical robotics to address pressing challenges in medicine and surgery. My work focuses on endowing surgical robots with novel, verifiably safe, and situation/outcome-aware autonomy. I specialize in developing robust adaptive control for complex, infinite-dimensional systems (PDEs), online guaranteed reachability and viability analysis for safety-critical systems, and high-precision mechano-optical control for intraoperative robotic imaging, manipulation, and biophysical tissue characterization.

• Mavis Future Faculty Fellow, 08/22–05/23
• Graduate Teaching Assistant, 4 semesters (Advanced Computer Control)
• Undergraduate Research Mentor, Spring 2024

• H. El-Kebir, A. Pirosmanishvili, M. Ornik, "Online Guaranteed Reachable Set Approximation for Systems with Changed Dynamics and Control Authority," IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2024.
• H. El-Kebir, R. Berlin, J. Bentsman, M. Ornik, "Viability under Degraded Control Authority," IEEE Control Systems Letters, 2023.
• H. El-Kebir, J. Ran, Y. Lee, L. P. Chamorro, M. Ostoja-Starzewski, R. Berlin, J. Bentsman, "Minimally Invasive Live Tissue High-fidelity Thermophysical Modeling using Real-time Thermography," IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 2023 (Featured on IEEE EMBS homepage).
• B. Petrus, Z. Chen , H. El-Kebir*, J. Bentsman, and B. G. Thomas, "Solid Boundary Output Feedback Control of The Stefan Problem: The Enthalpy Approach," IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2023 (Shared co-first authorship).

• H. El-Kebir, "PROD: Palpative Reconstruction of Deformable Objects through Elastostatic Signed Distance Functions," accepted for presentation at the 2025 Control and Decision Conference.
• H. El-Kebir, R. Berlin, J. Bentsman, M. Ornik, "Viability under Degraded Control Authority," 2024 American Control Conference.
• H. El-Kebir, R. Berlin, J. Bentsman, M. Ornik, "Viabilizability of Control Signals under Control Authority Degradation," 2024 European Control Conference.
• H. El-Kebir, J. Bentsman, and M. Ornik, "Lodestar: An Integrated Embedded Real-Time Control Engine," 2023 Conference on Control Technology and Applications.
• H. El-Kebir, R. Berlin, J. Bentsman, M. Ornik, "Robustly Linearized Model Predictive Control for Nonlinear Infinite-Dimensional Systems," 2023 World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control.
• H. El-Kebir, J. Ran, M. Ostoja-Starzewski, R. Berlin, J. Bentsman, and L. P. Chamorro, "Infinite-Dimensional Adaptive Boundary Observer for Inner-Domain Temperature Estimation of 3D Electrosurgical Processes using Surface Thermography Sensing," 2022 Control and Decision Conference.
• H. El-Kebir, Y. Lee, R. Berlin, E. Benedetti, P. C. Giulianotti, L. P. Chamorro, and J. Bentsman, "Online Hypermodel-based Path Planning for Feedback Control of Tissue Denaturation in Electrosurgical Cutting," 2021 IFAC Symposium on Biological and Medical Systems.
• H. El-Kebir and J. Bentsman, "PDE-Based Modeling and Non-collocated Feedback Control of Electrosurgical-Probe/Tissue Interaction," 2021 American Control Conference.

• Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Rising Star 2024 (May 2024, Univ. of Virginia)One of 36 awardees out of 220 international applicants; selected for research excellence and academic leadership potential.
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory Graduate Fellow (May 2023)
• NASA LEAPFROG Competition Winner (First Place - Software Challenge, September 2021)
• Mavis Future Faculty Fellow (August 2022)

• Peer Reviewer (29 times) for: IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, IEEE Control System Letters, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, IEEE American Control Conference, Reliability Engineering & System Safety.
• Co-chair for two sessions at the 2023 IEEE Conference on Control Technologies and Applications (Robotic Systems and Health and Fault Analysis).
• Avid long distance runner and bouldering fanatic.