Dr. Sadegh's early research work was in the field of robotics and automation. His major contribution to this field was the development of a class of adaptive and learning controllers for nonlinear mechanical systems including robotic manipulators. This work, which evolved from his doctoral research, enables a robot to learn a repetitive task through practice, much like a human being, and without requiring a precise model. He later demonstrated that implementing this learning controller can significantly improve the performance of industrial robots without significantly increasing their cost or complexity, and has the potential to improve the accuracy, autonomy, and productivity of automated manufacturing systems. In addition to robotics, he developed a similar learning controller for speed regulation of copier photoreceptors as part of a project sponsored by the Xerox Corporation. Dr. Sadegh began at Tech in 1988 as an Assistant Professor.