Professor Fotis Kopsaftopoulos joined the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in October 2017. He received his Diploma and Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering from University of Patras, Greece, where he worked on stochastic system identification and advanced functional and sequential vibration-based methods for statistical/probabilistic structural health monitoring (SHM). After completing his Ph.D. in 2012, he served as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Stochastic Mechanical Systems and Automation Laboratory of the same Department working on novel personal plane concepts, aircraft trajectory monitoring, and model predictive control for “green” aircraft guidance and navigation. Before joining Rensselaer, he served as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, in the Structures and Composites Laboratory, (April 2013 to September 2017) where we worked on the design, analysis, and integration of intelligent structures and autonomous systems with bio-inspired state sensing and awareness capabilities, as well as novel methods for SHM reliability quantification, monitoring of adhesively bonded structures, and a novel framework for monitoring the state of charge and health of composite structural batteries.

Professor Kopsaftopoulos has published more than 100 journal and conference papers and 4 book chapters. He has participated in various research projects funded by Government and industrial sponsors (AFOSR, NSF, Army, Navy, NASA, ARPA-e, Boeing, Airbus). He serves as an Associate Editor in the Editorial Board of the Structural Health Monitoring International journal (SAGE Publications) and Topic Editor of the Sensors journal (MDPI). He is also the co-Editor of the International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (IWSHM) 2015, 2017 and 2019 Proceedings. Professor Kopsaftopoulos is a member of the Organizing Committee of the International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (IWSHM), deputy Chair of the Technical Health and Usage Monitoring (HUMS) Committee of the Vertical Flight Society (VFS), Member of the SHM/NDE Committee of the ASME Adaptive Structures and Material Systems (ASMS) branch, and member of the Program Committee of the InfoSymbiotics/Dynamic Data Driven Application Systems. He has also served as Guest Associate Editor for Special Issues in the Structural Health Monitoring and Aerospace journals.