Karen Rudie received her PhD in 1992 from the University of Toronto in the Systems Control Group of the Department of Electrical Engineering, under the supervision of W.M. Wonham. From 1992-93, she worked for one year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Mathematics and iIts Applications in Minnesota. Since 1993 she has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen's where she is currently a Professor. Since 1995 she has been cross-appointed to the School of Computing. In 1999-2000 she was a visiting professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan.
Since 2000 she has been on the editorial board of the Journal of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications where she is now a Department Editor. She has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology (2015-2020), IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (1996-1999) and IEEE Control Systems Magazine (2003). From 2001-2003 she was a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society. She has also served on the Technical Program Committees of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), (2018, 2016, 2014, 2011, 2008, 2003, 2001, 2000) the American Control Conference (ACC) (2008, 1999), the International Workshop on Discrete Event Systems (WODES) (2018, 2016, 2010, 2006) and the IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (2013, 2012), the Discrete Event and Hybrid Systems Program Subcommittee, IFAC World Congress (2005) and the IFAC Workshop on Discrete-Event Systems (2004).
Karen has been a semi-plenary speaker at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (2021) and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (2004-2006). She is a recipient of the following teaching awards: three Queen's Golden Apple Awards in Engineeering and Applied Science, in 2021, 2002 and 1998; and awards from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 1998 for 4th year courses and in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2001 for 2nd year courses. She was listed for five years in the Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities in their list of "Popular Profs" at Queen's University (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005). She is a Fellow of the IEEE and a registered Professional Engineer with Professional Engineers Ontario.
Karen Rudie works in the area of control of discrete-event systems. This is the study of processes whose behaviour is described by sequences of events or actions and which require control to make them behave in some desirable way. Work in this area focuses on mathematically modeling such systems and on searching for solutions to control problems. The mathematical tools used include formal languages and automata theory, mathematical logic, and algebra. Karen's area of expertise is decentralized control of discrete-event systems, namely, those cases where multiple agents act on the system and yet each agent has only a partial view and partial control of the events that occur within the system. In such systems, the development of solutions is complicated by issues of coordination and potential lack of communication between agents.
Karen's current research interests and joint work with graduate students and colleagues includes (1) using discrete-event systems models to examine security in networks and systems and to address cyber-physical attacks on systems, (2) incorporating communication between agents into decentralized discrete-event systems; (3) combining discrete-event systems models and software engineering problems such as concurrency control and service composition; (4) using mathematical logic models of knowledge to help guide agent decision-making in distributed systems problems; (5) modeling emergency response protocols to medical outbreaks using discrete-event systems; and (6) developing partial observation models that capture dynamic sensor activation and communication problems. Under Karen's supervision, her lab developed and produced the integrated discrete-event systems software tool called IDES.
For more information about Dr. Rudie's research, visit the Queen’s Discrete-Event Systems Lab (QDES) web page.
To view Dr. Rudie's publications, please visit the Queen's Discrete-Event Systems Lab web page.