Ivana Palunko, PhD is an associate professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Applied Computing, University of Dubrovnik. She earned her Ph.D. in 2012 in Controls Systems from University of New Mexico, USA. From 2012 until 2014 she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (UNIZG-FER) and at Information-oriented Control, TU Muenchen, Germany.

In 2019 she founded the Laboratory for Intelligent Autonomous Systems (LARIAT) at the University of Dubrovnik and currently she is the head of LARIAT. Dr. Palunko’s work, featured in leading journals, includes the most-cited paper, in the top 1% in Engineering based on WoS database. Also, she coordinated and participated in more than 20 projects funded by EU FP7, H2020, HORIZON Europe, ESF, Interreg, US NSF, NATO SfP, EOARD, HRZZ, etc.

Her main research interests are in optimal adaptive control, machine learning and artificial intelligence with applications in robotics and multi-agent systems.