Short Biography

Cristian Mahulea is a Full Professor (Catedrático de Universidad) at the University of Zaragoza (Spain), in the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering.

He received the Laurea and M.S. degrees in control engineering from the "Gheorghe Asachi" Technical University of Iasi (Romania), in 2001 and 2002, respectively, and Ph.D. degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Zaragoza (Spain) in 2007. He joined the University of Zaragoza in 2008 as Assistant Professor, becoming Full Professor in 2024. Between 2020 and 2024, he served as Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering. He was visiting professor at the University of Cagliari (Italy), Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering during nine months in 2008, 2010 and 2024.

His research interests include discrete event systems, hybrid systems, automated manufacturing, Petri nets, mobile robotics and healthcare systems. He co-authored, with Mihaela Matcovschi and Octavian Pastravanu the book Applications of Petri Nets in Studying Discrete Event Systems (Iasi, Romania, 2002), and, with Marius Kloetzer and Ramon Gonzalez, the book Path Planning of Cooperative Mobile Robots Using Discrete Event Models (Wiley-IEEE Press, January 2020). He was also the main developer of two MATLAB toolboxes: the Petri Net Toolbox for the simulation, analysis and synthesis of discrete-event systems modeled with discrete Petri nets and RMTool for path planning and motion control of mobile robots.

He has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Sheffield (U.K.), University of Cagliari (Italy), Boston University (USA), ENS Paris-Saclay (France) and Aix-Marseille University (France).

Since 2023, he has been Co-Director, together with Prof. Jorge Júlvez, of the Cátedra Alimak Group, a joint initiative between the University of Zaragoza and Alimak Group. This Chair fosters research, innovation, and technology transfer in the fields of industrial automation, safety, and digitalization, with a focus on strengthening collaboration between academia and industry.

He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Editorial activities

• Associate Editor of Journal of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications (JDES) (Since 2023)
• Associate Editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) (Since 2023)

Scientific boards

• Co-chair of the IEEE RAS TC on Automation in Logistics (TCAL)
• Co-chair of the Subcommittee on Industrial Automated Systems and Control of the IEEE IES Technical Committee on Factory Automation
• Member of the Computer Science for Complex System Modeling Group (COSMOS)
• Member of the IFAC TC 1.3. Discrete Event and Hybrid Systems
• Member of IFAC CEA (Comité Español de Automática)

Member of the PC for these incoming conferences

• WODES 2026: 18th Workshop on Discrete Event Systems, Eindhoven, Netherlands. June 2026.
• 2026 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, August 17-21, 2026, Shenyang, China.
• 17th APCA International Conference on Automatic Control and Soft Computing, September 9-11, 2026, Coimbra, Portugal.
• ETFA 2026: 31st IEEE Int. Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, Vasteras, Sweden. September 2026.
• 30th International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing, October 21st-24th, 2026, Hotel International Iasi, Iași, Romania.

Past activities

• Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC) (2020-2025)
• Head of the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering, University of Zaragoza (2020-2024).
• General co-chair of ETFA 2019: 24th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies And Factory Automation, Zaragoza, Spain, September 2019.
• Associate Editor of the IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS) (2017 - 2022).
• Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE) (2014 - 2017).
• Associate Editor of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) (2024 - 2025).
• Program Committee co-chair of ETFA 2017, ETFA 2018 and ETFA 2023, IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies And Factory Automation.
• Co-editor (together with A. Giua, M. Silva and J. Zaytoon) of the Proceedings of the 3rd IFAC Conference on Analysis and Design of Hybrid Systems (Zaragoza, Spain), September, 2009.