Laurent Lessard is an associate professor in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences.

His research interests include control theory, robust and optimal control, optimization, large-scale/distributed control systems, and machine learning. Lessard is a recipient of the Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award and the Faculty Early Career Development Program Award from the National Science Foundation.

Before joining Northeastern University, Lessard was a Charles Ringrose Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a faculty member at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Laurent holds a Bachelor of Applied Sciences in engineering science from the University of Toronto and received a master’s and doctoral degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University. He completed postdoctoral work at Lund University in Sweden and the University of California, Berkeley.