He received a Bachelor of Surgery in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Technical in 1983 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Systems Science and Engineering from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988.
In August 2014, he joined the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, as a professor of electrical engineering. He is known for his early work in nonlinear and adaptive control, particularly on gain scheduling, robust control, and more recently, distributed systems Shamma was born in New York City and raised in Pensacola, Florida.
His Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Analysis and Design of Gain Scheduled Control Systems, was advised by Michael Athans.
After graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shamma held faculty positions at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, University of Texas, Austin, and University of California, Los Los Angeles He also held visiting positions at the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shamma returned to Georgia Technical to join the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2007, and is currently the Julian T. Hightower Chair in Systems & Control Systems and Controls.
He is currently with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology as a professor of electrical engineering.
Shamma is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Research Initiation Award and the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. He received the American Automatic Control Council Donald P. Eckman Award in 1996 (32 years after his Doctor of Philosophy advisor Michael Athans received the award in 1964), and was made an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow in 2006.
