Vladimír Kučera was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1943. He studied at the Czech Technical University in Prague, obtaining an Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering with distinction in 1966. He received the CSc. and DrSc. research degrees in Control Engineering from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1970 and 1979, respectively.
During 1970-2017, V. Kučera was a Research Scientist at the Institute of Information Theory and Automation, one of the research institutes of the Academy of Sciences in Prague. He held various research and managerial positions, including vice director (1986-1990) and Director (1990-1998) of the Institute. Since 2018, he has been an Emeritus Scientist at the Academy of Sciences. Since 1992, he has been active at the Czech Technical University in Prague. During 1999-2000, he was Head of the Control Engineering Department; during 2000-2006, he was Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering; and during 2007-2015, he was Director of the Masaryk Institute of Advanced Studies. In 2015, he was appointed Vice Director of the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague.
V. Kučera held visiting positions at the National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada in 1970-1971; the University of Florida, Gainesville, the USA in 1977; Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique, Nantes, France in 1981-1982; Australian National University, Canberra, Australia in 1984; Uppsala Universitet, Sweden in 1989; Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Mexico City in 1991; ETH Zürich, Switzerland in 1992; the University of Newcastle, Australia in 1993; Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 1995 as well as many short visiting appointments. He was a Nippon Steel Professor at the Chair of Intelligent Control, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, in 1994.
The research interests of V. Kučera include control systems analysis and design. He contributed to the theory of Riccati equations and pioneered the use of polynomial equations in designing control systems. His best result is the parameterization of all controllers that stabilize a given plant, known as the Youla-Kučera parameterization, which has become a new paradigm in robust and optimal control. Recently, he has resolved a long-standing open problem of control theory, the decoupling of linear systems by static-state feedback. He discovered the canonical form and the complete invariant of stable linear systems with respect to a group of stability-preserving transformations. He has been the Principal or Associate Investigator of 29 research projects with total support exceeding 1,150 M CZK (about 50 M USD).
The industrial experience of V. Kučera includes the design of an adaptive controller for a rolling mill; the development of fast and precise servomechanisms; cooperation with the Nippon Steel Corporation, Japan, and the participation in European projects Dynamic Control and Management Systems in Manufacturing Processes, Advanced Methodologies and Tools for Manufacturing Systems, and Self-Learning Sheet Metal Forming System. Since 2000, he has been Manager of the Center for Applied Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, which was supported by the projects LN00B096 (2000-2004), 1M0567 (2005-2011), and presently by TE01020197 (2012-2019).
V. Kučera is the author of four books: Algebraic Theory of Discrete Linear Control (in Czech) (Academia, Prague 1978), Discrete Linear Control: The Polynomial Equation Approach (Wiley, Chichester 1979), Analysis and Design of Discrete Linear Control Systems (Prentice-Hall, London 1991), and Polynomial Methods for Control Systems Design, edited with M. J. Grimble (Springer, London 1996). He published 135 research papers in the most influential journals of automatic control, 180 contributions to the proceedings of international conferences, and 80 other technical works. The Google Scholar service lists 8,256 citations of his publications; his most cited work (Kučera V.: Discrete Linear Control: The Polynomial Equation Approach. Wiley, Chichester 1979) has earned 1,516 citations. The Google Scholar h-index of V. Kučera is 41.
V. Kučera combines research with teaching. Since 1996, he has been a Professor of Engineering Cybernetics at Czech Technical University in Prague. He teaches graduate courses on systems and control. He also gave many lessons at prestigious European, American, Asian, and Australian universities.
V. Kučera serves on the editorial boards of Int. J. Robust and Nonlinear Control, and Bull. Polish Acad. Sciences. He was Editor-in-Chief of Kybernetika (1990-1998), an Associate Editor of Automatica (1987-1996), and a member of the editorial boards of Syst. Control Letters (1987-1994), Int. J. Control (1990-1999), Int. J. Systems Science (1986-1999), J. Math. Systems, Estimation and Control (1991-1998), Automa (2001-2007) and Slaboproudý obzor (2001-2007). He is a Life Advisor and Fellow (was President 2002-2005) of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), Life Fellow of IEEE (the first Fellow ever in the Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia in 1996), and was a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society Board of Governors (1996-1998). He is a founding member and Fellow of the Engineering Academy of the Czech Republic (he was Vice-President from 1999 to 2006) and past Chairman of the Czech Committee for Automatic Control (1993 – 2002).
V. Kučera received the Prize of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1973, the Kybernetika Best Paper Award in 1976, the National Prize of the Czech Republic in 1989 for his contributions to the theory and practice of automatic control, the Automatica Prize Paper Award in 1990 for paper Fundamental Theorem of State Feedback for Singular Systems, Hlávka Foundation Prize in 1992, Outstanding Service Award from IFAC in 1996, Medal of the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic in 2000, Felber Gold Medal of the Czech Technical University in Prague, and in 2006 he was appointed Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Académiques, a national order of France for distinguished academics. He is an Honorary Professor at the Northeastern University, Shenyang, China (1996) and received Doctor honoris causa degrees from Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse (2003), and Université Henri Poincaré, Nancy (2005). He is the 2021 laureate of the National Prize Česká hlava (Czech Mind), the most prestigious Czech award for science and research that scientists in the Czech Republic can achieve. In 2023, he was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society. Only three Czechs received this honor in the past – Presidents Masaryk, Beneš and Havel.