"I look at myself as the integrator, the person who brings together the technologies and the people who practice them and I have followed that through my career," says Vachtsevanos, who joined Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1984 as a professor.

Since then he has established the school’s Intelligent Control Systems Laboratory.

"My driving force is to always look at the big picture - how to integrate different technologies," he says. "The interdisciplinary concept for us is not that we are jacks of all trades, but the underlying approach which suggests looking at complex systems and processes to see where you can control them. We develop the intelligent tools to do those things, building on top of what we have already into new technologies."

In April Vachtsevanos received the Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activity Award from Georgia Tech.

Vachtsevanos has collaborated with neurologists seeking technology that will help patients who suffer seizures, cardiologists working with patients who have heart arrhythmias, military engineers working to improve the reliability of jet aircraft, meat processors who want to ensure that their boneless chicken is completely bone-free and commercial bakers seeking perfect consistency for the fast food industry.

"You may ask, ‘Where is the link? How do all of these things gel together?’ The underlying theme of them all is intelligent control systems," Vachtsevanos says. "The theme I have pursued for many years is to look at combining classical techniques in systems control with new areas of research like artificial intelligence." For 12 years, Vachtsevanos and his group have participated in research of a very different and chaotic kind of system - the human brain.

"We have been working with neurologists and researchers focusing on how to detect and control epileptic seizures. Our method is to look at the brain as a system we can listen to and it will tell us what we need to know," he says. "The neurosurgeon implants electrodes in the patient’s brain and we monitor the brain’s activity before, during and after a seizure. When that seizure comes on, we can develop a systems approach on how to detect or predict a coming seizure and stop it before it starts."

Vachtsevanos and his colleagues hold several patents for technology to detect seizures and the technology has been licensed to NeuroPace, a West Coast company that has built an implantable device and is conducting clinical trials on its effectiveness.

The same technology could be adapted for use in addressing other neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, he says.

"Some of the generic aspects of the technology can flow into other areas. We are now working with cardiologists to look at and analyze cardiac signals of people at risk for cardiac disease. Cardiac arrhythmia is a major cause of death for people who have suffered a heart attack and we want to see if there are signals that suggest which group of people are more at risk for cardiac arrhythmia," Vachtsevanos says. "The common denominator is that intelligent systems techniques can be used."

Vachtsevanos says his work would not be possible without the technological advances of the past few years.

"For decades the focus has been on the process, but not on the product - computing, imaging, sensors. Our emphasis is to control not only on the basis of the process, but on the basis of the product," he says. "If you can get data that is telling you why something is happening, you can fix it before it happens. Intelligent control systems people are trying to close the loop. We have been introducing things that will do things a little smarter than we have done them before."

©2004 Georgia Tech Alumni Association