Tomizuka Fest 2026: Celebrating Five Decades of Mentorship in Mechanical Systems Control

On August 7, 2026, colleagues, collaborators, and more than 100 academic “descendants” gathered at UC Berkeley for the Mechanical Systems Control Workshop — better known to everyone in the room as Tomizuka Fest — a day-long tribute to Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka’s half-century of scholarship, teaching, and mentorship on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

I had the honor of co-organizing this workshop, and it is, without question, the most meaningful event of my academic career so far.

About the Honoree

Professor Tomizuka’s academic career spans 1974 to today — fifty years at the heart of mechatronics and control. Over that half-century he has advised 160+ doctoral students, and counting, and his academic lineage has grown to more than 1,000 academic descendants who now lead labs, departments, and even entire universities across 150+ institutions worldwide. Even at 80, he remains tirelessly active on the front lines, continuing to mentor and guide students — a level of dedication that commands the utmost respect. (You can explore here the full scope of his academic family tree, including graduate cohorts by year and by institution.)

Program Recap

The day unfolded across two venues on campus — the Jarvis Auditorium at the Grimes Engineering Center for the workshop, and the Faculty Club for the evening celebration.

Morning — Jarvis Auditorium

• Welcome address (Roberto Horowitz, George Chiu), followed by remarks from Dean Mark Asta (College of Engineering) and Department Chair Chris Dames
• Robotics Session
• Professional Society Colleagues Panel
• Storage Session
• Remarks from Western Digital CTO Xiaodong “Carl” Che

Afternoon — Jarvis Auditorium

• Mechanical Engineering Colleagues Panel
• Vehicle & Transportation Session
• Mechatronics & Manufacturing Session
• Guest of Honor Remarks from Professor Tomizuka himself
• Group photo and walk to the Faculty Club

Detailed Timeline & Speakers

Link to the full recording

Morning — Jarvis Auditorium

• 11:55 — Welcome Address — Roberto Horowitz, George Chiu — Watch
• 14:13 — On Behalf of College of Engineering — Mark Asta (Dean) — Watch
• 23:34 — On Behalf of ME Dept — Chris Dames (Chair) — Watch
• 32:16 — Robotics Session — moderator Roberto Horowitz — Watch
  • 32:16 — Roberto Horowitz — Watch
  • 41:30 — George Anwar — Watch
  • 53:50 — Bin Yao — Watch
  • 1:03:44 — Kiyonori Inaba — Watch
  • 1:12:29 — Changliu Liu — Watch
  • 1:21:23 — Te Tang — Watch
  • 1:29:42 — Jiachen Li — Watch
• 1:39:18 — Coffee Break — Watch
• 1:59:19 — Professional Society Colleagues Panel — mod. George Chiu — Watch
  • 2:01:47 — Wayne Book — Watch
  • 2:04:42 — Gallip Ulsoy — Watch
  • 2:09:13 — Lucy Pao — Watch
  • 2:13:02 — Miroslav Krstic — Watch
• 2:23:42 — Storage Session — mod. Xu Chen — Watch
  • 2:23:42 — Session framing and overview — Watch
  • 2:23:42 — Craig Smith — Watch
  • 2:32:54 — Nancy Dong — Watch
  • 2:44:39 — Steven Zheng — Watch
  • 2:53:00 — Xu Chen — Watch
• 3:01:32 — Remarks from Western Digital CTO — Xiaodong Che — Watch
• 3:12:06 — Minghui Zheng (video recording) — Watch
• 3:14:23 — Lunch — Watch

Afternoon

• 4:39:46 — ME Colleagues Panel — mod. Roberto Horowitz — Watch
  • 4:42:16 — Koushil Sreenath — Watch
  • 4:46:06 — Francesco Borrelli — Watch
  • 4:50:30 — David Bogy — Watch
  • 4:58:47 — David Auslander — Watch
  • 5:02:06 — Kameshwar Poolla — Watch
• 5:06:10 — Vehicle & Transportation Session — mod. Wei-Bin Zhang — Watch
  • 5:06:10 — Wei-Bin Zhang — Watch
  • 5:19:03 — Pushkar Hingwe — Watch
  • 5:28:56 — Wei Zhan — Watch
  • 5:40:55 — Liting Sun — Watch
  • 5:49:24 — Chen Tang — Watch
• 5:58:22 — Coffee Break — Watch
• 6:12:31 — Mechatronics & Manufacturing Session — mod. Tsu-Chin Tsao — Watch
  • 6:12:31 — Tsu-Chin Tsao — Watch
  • 6:13:03 — Prabhakar Pagilla — Watch
  • 6:23:56 — Tesheng Hsiao — Watch
  • 6:32:20 — Soo Joen — Watch
  • 6:40:45 — Sandipan Mishra — Watch
  • 6:49:50 — Kyoungchul Kong — Watch
• 7:01:37 — George Chiu (closing remarks) — Watch
• 7:11:48 — Guest of Honor — Masayoshi Tomizuka’s retrospective — Watch
• 7:38:52 — Group Photo / walk to Faculty Club — Watch

Evening — The Faculty Club

• Welcome and remarks from Yoshiharu Inaba (FANUC) and Jia-Yush Yen (National Taiwan University of Science and Technology)
• Dinner, followed by an evening of family and colleagues’ remarks — stories spanning ten, twenty, and thirty years of mentorship
• Final remarks from Roberto Horowitz and Professor Tomizuka

Organizers

Tomizuka Fest was organized by Roberto Horowitz, George Chiu, Tsu-Chin Tsao, Boyuan Liang, and myself — all proud academic brothers under Tomi. Pulling together a program that could do justice to fifty years and 1,000+ academic descendants was no small task, and it was a privilege to help build it.

A Special Thank You to Western Digital

Tomizuka Fest received generous sponsorship from Western Digital. Fittingly, WD’s connection to Tomi runs deep: his pioneering work on hard-disk-drive servo control helped shape the storage industry that companies like WD build on today. Our thanks to CTO Xiaodong “Carl” Che for joining us and for WD’s continued partnership with the academic community Tomi built.

I myself had the privilege of organizing and speaking, alongside colleagues who trained under Tomi in the hard-disk-drive servo control world that helped define our early careers. On the day before the main event, we actually held a separate small-group workshop discussing convergent research with roots in HDD mechatronics. The small-group workshop was attended by over 100 engineers and leaders from Western Digital. It explores how principles pioneered in HDD technology—e.g., extreme-precision and high-speed motion-control—serve as a foundation for modern convergent research areas. By bringing together leaders from academia and industry, the event highlights how these roots have evolved into critical fields such as physical AI, autonomous navigation, and sustainable energy systems. Speaker and invited guests at the small-group workshop include:

1. Lucy Pao, Professor and Palmer Endowed Chair, University of Colorado Boulder; IFAC Pawel J. Nowacki Distinguished Lecturer.
2. William Messner, Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University.
3. Xu Chen, McMinn Endowed Associate Professor | Director of Boeing Advanced Research Collaboration | Director of Robotics Education Initiatives, University of Washington.
4. Prabhakar Pagilla, James J. Cain Professor II and Associate Department Head of Research and Operations, Texas A&M University.
5. Wenlong Zhang, Associate Professor | Assistant Director for Research of the School of Manufacturing Systems and Networks, Arizona State University.
6. Yizhou Wang, CTO of INFIFORCE.
7. Haifei Cheng, Engineer at Apple.
8. Jianbin Nie, Engineer at Apple.

What I Learned From Tomi

I joined Tomi’s group in 2008, straight out of college, with almost no research background. Nearly two decades later, sitting in that room with generations of his academic family, I found myself thinking less about any single technique he taught me and more about the shape of the career he modeled — a career built in layers.

At the core: values. From Tomi, and from the wider academic family he built, I learned a set of core values that everything else sits on top of — rigor, a relentless orientation toward quality, open-mindedness, and adaptability. These aren’t abstractions; they’re the habits of mind that show up in how his students approach every problem, from a controls proof to a difficult conversation.

In the mid-layer: technical depth. Built on that core is a layer of technical building blocks — primitives of control, the technology frontier, physics, logic, and engineering rigor. This is the foundation that makes real collaboration with industry possible, and that lets you absorb high-level insight from the pioneers of the field rather than just its surface.

At the outer layer: service, when I can be useful. Radiating outward from that foundation is institutional and societal service — not as an obligation, but as a natural extension of the values and depth underneath. For me that has meant directing BARC for aerospace manufacturing, helping build the Robotics Initiative at the University of Washington in partnership with our engineering departments and local industry, and helping organize conferences and meetings across our community.

Core values at the center, technical depth in the middle, service radiating outward — that is the clearest thing I learned from Tomi, taught not through a single lecture but through seventeen years of watching how he built his own career, and how he helped so many of us build ours.

Happy 80th birthday, Tomi. Thank you for showing so many of us how it’s done.

Explore More

• Event website: https://tomi80th.github.io/tomizukafest/index.html
• Tomi’s academic family tree: https://tomi80th.github.io/tomizukafest/family-tree/index.html