Themistoklis Charalambous

Associate Professor

Director of the Distributed and Networked Control Systems (DNCS) Group
surname.name {at} ucy dot ac dot cy

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
School of Engineering
University of Cyprus
2103 Aglantzia
Nicosia
Cyprus

Short bio

Themistoklis Charalambous received his BA with First Class Honours and his M.Eng with Distinction in Electrical and Information Sciences from Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD in 2009 in the Control Laboratory of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

Following his PhD, he was a Research Associate with the Human Robotics Group at Imperial College London from September 2009 to September 2010. He then served as a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus from September 2010 to December 2011. From January 2012 to January 2015, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Division of Decision and Control, Department of Intelligent Systems, at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. From April 2015 to December 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Communication Systems Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, at Chalmers University of Technology.

In January 2017, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation, School of Electrical Engineering, Aalto University, as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. In September 2018, he was awarded an Academy of Finland Research Fellowship, and in July 2020, he was appointed tenured Associate Professor at Aalto University.

In September 2021, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Cyprus as a tenure-track Assistant Professor, while maintaining his affiliation with Aalto University as a Visiting Professor. Since April 2023, he has also served as a Visiting Professor at the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities. In May 2026, he was appointed tenured Associate Professor at the University of Cyprus.

Research interests

His primary research targets the design and analysis of (wireless) networked control systems that are stable, scalable and energy efficient. The study of such systems involves the interaction between dynamical systems, their communication and the integration of these concepts. As a result, his research is interdisciplinary combining theory and applications from control theory, communications, network and distributed optimization. See some of his latest preprints here.

Latest (selected) news:

May 2026 - Tenured Associate Professor: Appointed Associate Professor as of May 1st.
August 2025 - Teaching recognition: Collected the highest number of votes by the students for best teaching practices, and hence got shortlisted for the School's Quality Teaching Award (2024-2025).
April 2025 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions - Doctoral Network: Funding for 3 years for the project 'SecReSy4You: Security and Resilience of Critical Cyber-Physical Systems'.
April 2025 - University of Cyprus Internal Research Programs 2024: Funding for 2 years for the project 'LOVELACE: Communication-aware distributed coordination and optimization with applications in machine learning'.
April 2024 - Research Innovation Foundation (RIF) Programmes for Research, Technological Development, and Innovation ''Restart 2016-2020'': Funding for 18 months for the project 'PV-CLEAN: Advanced Photovoltaic Module Maintenance in Urban Environments'.
December 2023 - PhD defense: My PhD student, Dr Elham Abolfazli, has successfully defended her PhD thesis on 'Internal and String Stability Analysis for Vehicle Platooning under the MPF Topology under Communication Limitations'. The thesis can be found here.
November 2023 - Associated Editor (AE) for IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control: My nomination for AE role in the TAC has been endorced. Started serving as an AE from January 2024.
August 2023 - Teaching recognition: Collected the highest number of votes by the students for best teaching practices, and hence got shortlisted for the School's Quality Teaching Award (2022-2023).
April 2023 - Visiting Professor at the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities.
December 2022 - PhD defense: My PhD student, Dr Tahmoores Farjam, has successfully defended his PhD thesis on 'Control-Aware Distributed Channel Access for Networked Control Systems'. The thesis can be found here.
May 2022 - European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant: Funding of almost 2 million euros for 5 years for the project 'eMergINg coopERatiVe Autonomous systems - information for control and estimation (MINERVA)'. See more details in the project's website
August 2020 - Teaching recognition: Course "Networked Control Systems" (ELEC-E8123) was listed in the TOP-10 master-level courses of the School, based on the feedback from the students (2019-2020).
August 2020 - Teaching recognition: Course "Control and Automation" (ELEC-C8201) was listed in the TOP-10 bachelor-level courses of the School, based on the feedback from the students (2019-2020).
July 2020 - Tenured Associate Professor: Appointed Associate Professor as of July 1st. See my Installation Talk here.
June 2020 - IEEE Senior Member: Elevated to the grade of IEEE Senior member.
May-June 2019 - Research visit at MIT: Visited the Research Group of Prof Ali Jadbabaie in IDSS, MIT, for 2 months.
April 2019 - Exemplary Reviewer Award in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications for 2018.
April 2019 - H2020 Project: Funding for 3 years for the project 'FINEST Twins'.
June 2018 - Published book ('Distributed Averaging and Balancing in Network Systems with applications to Coordination and Control') in Foundations and Trends® in Systems and Control.
May 2018 - Academy of Finland Research Fellowship: Funding for 5 years for the project 'Co-design of control and communication systems for wireless networked control systems' (ODYSSEY)