Dan Davison, PEng

Dan Davison is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

His research interests include theoretical control, which involves various aspects of linear and nonlinear control, including performance limitations in feedback control, multi-agent control schemes, and time-delay systems.

Professor Davison is also interested in applied control, in areas such as psychological systems with rich dynamics. Current projects include stabilization of crowds governed by notions of suggestibility, the modeling of cognitive dissonance, and the study of social psychological systems in which a person is influencing others to change their attitude. His approach towards research is that he allows applications to motivate the discovery of theories instead of the other way around, which reduces the need to force the finding of applications for theories. He has written various papers about control theory and its applications.

• linear and nonlinear control
• control systems with time delays
• multi-agent control schemes
• psychological system with interesting dynamics
• engine control
• aircraft control
• Mechatronics & Controls

• 1997, Doctorate PhD, University of Michigan, United States
• 1994, Master's MASc, University of Toronto, Ontario
• 1992, Bachelor's BASc, University of Toronto, Ontario

• 2020-2022 Associate Dean Undergraduate

• ECE 190 - Engineering Profession and Practice
  • Taught in 2023
• ECE 481 - Digital Control Systems
  • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021
• ECE 488 - Multivariable Control Systems
  • Taught in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Davison, Daniel E and Bortoff, Scott A, Regulation of the Acrobot”, Nonlinear Control Systems Design 1995, 361, 2016
• Wang, William SW and Davison, Daniel E and Davison, Edward J, Controller design for multivariable linear time-invariant unknown systems, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2292, 2013
• Davison, Daniel E and Davison, Edward J, Optimal Servomechanism Control of Plants With Fewer Inputs Than Outputs, IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 11332, 2011
• Davison, Daniel E and Spieser, Kevin, Stabilization of suggestible crowds, Advances in Systems Theory: Control, Communications, Manufacturing, and Rational Behavior, 75, 2009
• Spieser, Kevin and Davison, Daniel E, Multi-agent stabilisation of the psychological dynamics of one-dimensional crowds, Automatica, 657, 2009