Professor Demetriou is very active with the Controls and Systems research community. He served as an Associate Editor in the IEEE Tr. on Automatic Control (2004-2007), in the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control (2009-2011), and in SIAM J. Control and Optimization (2009-present). He is also serving in the IEEE-Control Systems Society Conference Editorial Board as an Associate Editor (1997-present). In 2003 he established the IEEE-CSS Technical Committee on Distributed Parameter Systems and served as his first chair (2003-2012). He is currently serving as the Secretary of the SIAM Control and Systems Theory activity group, a member of the SIAM/SIAG Advisory Committee and a member of the SIAG/CST Conference Steering Committee. He is the IEEE/CSS-SIAM/SIAG Liaison and is serving as the SIAM Director in the the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) Board.

His research interests center around systems and controls: In particular theoretical and computational aspects of estimation and control for systems governed by partial differential equations; intelligent allocation and scheduling of actuators/sensors in distributed parameter systems; intrusion detection using mobile sensor and actuator networks; hybrid control of distributed parameter systems with switching/moving/scanning actuators sensors; fault detection, diagnosis and accommodation of dynamical systems (lumped and distributed); adaptive estimation and control of finite and infinite dimensional systems; control of structural acoustic systems and fluid-structure interaction systems; active noise control; optimization in thermal manufacturing; damage detection and vibration control of flexible structures with intelligent sensors actuators.

Research funding has been sponsored by AFOSR (Dynamics and Controls Program), DARPA (Defense Sciences Office), ONR (Ocean, Atmosphere, and Space Sensing Systems Division), NSF (DUE, CMS), NASA Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium, NASA (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Tracking Systems and Applications Section).