Alessandro Astolfi was born in Rome, Italy, in 1967. He graduated in electrical engineering from the University of Rome in 1991. In 1992 he joined ETH-Zurich where he obtained a M.Sc. in Information Theory in 1995 and the Ph.D. degree with Medal of Honour in 1995 with a thesis on discontinuous stabilization of nonholonomic systems. In 1996 he was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" for his work on nonlinear robust control. Since 1996 he is with the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department of Imperial College, London (UK), where he is currently Professor in Non-linear Control Theory. From 1998 to 2003 he was also an Associate Professor at the Dept. of Electronics and Information of the Politecnico of Milano. Since 2005 he is also Professor at Dipartimento di Informatica, Sistemi e Produzione, University of Rome Tor Vergata.

His research interests are focused on mathematical control theory and control applications, with special emphasis for the problems of discontinuous stabilization, robust stabilization, robust control and adaptive control. He is author of more than 70 journal papers, of 20 book chapters and of over 160 papers in refereed conference proceedings. He is author (with D. Karagiannis and R. Ortega) of the monograph"Nonlinear and Adaptive Control with Applications" (Springer Verlag). He is Associate Editor of Systems and Control Letters, Automatica, IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, the International Journal of Control, the European Journal of Control, the Journal of the Franklin Institute, and the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing. He has also served in the IPC of several international conferences.

Christos G. Cassandras is Professor of Manufacturing Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University. He is also co-founder of Boston University's Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE). He received degrees from Yale University (B.S., 1977), Stanford University (M.S.E.E., 1978), and Harvard University (S.M., 1979; Ph.D., 1982). In 1982-84 he was with ITP Boston, Inc. where he worked on the design of automated manufacturing systems. In 1984-1996 he was a faculty member at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts/Amherst.

He specializes in the areas of discrete event and hybrid systems, stochastic optimization, and computer simulation, with applications to computer and sensor networks, manufacturing systems, and transportation systems. He has published over 250 refereed papers in these areas, and two textbooks. He has guest-edited several technical journal issues and serves on several journal Editorial Boards.

Dr. Cassandras is currently Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and has served as Editor for Technical Notes and Correspondence and Associate Editor. He is a member of the IEEE CSS Board of Governors, chaired the CSS Technical Committee on Control Theory, and served as Chair of several conferences. He has been a plenary speaker at various international conferences, including the American Control Conference in 2001 and the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in 2002.

He is the recipient of several awards, including the Distinguished Member Award of the IEEE Control Systems Society (2006), the 1999 Harold Chestnut Prize (IFAC Best Control Engineering Textbook) for Discrete Event Systems: Modeling and Performance Analysis, and a 1991 Lilly Fellowship.

He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE.

Tianyou Chai received his Ph. D. degree in Control Theory and Engineering from Northeastern University in 1985. Since then he has been with the Center of Automation at Northeastern University, where he became a Professor in 1988 and a Chair Professor in 2004.He is the founder and Director of the Center of Automation, which became a National Engineering and Technology Research Center in 1997. He has served as a member of Chinese National Disciplinary Appraisal Group (since 1992), and a Vice-Director of Committee of Experts of Advanced Manufacturing and Automation in National 863 High-Tech Program during 2001-2006. In 2003, he was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering, and he was elected as IEEE Fellow and academician of International Eurasian Academy of Sciences in 2007.

Dr. Chai's research interests include adaptive control, intelligent decoupling control, integrated plant control and system and the development of control technologies with applications to various industrial processes. Over the years, he has been a Principle of Integrator for more than 30 research projects, including the National Fundamental Research Program, State Key Program of National Natural Science, National High-Tech Program, National Key Technology Plan, National High-Tech Industrialization Priority Project and Key Automation Engineering of Enterprises. He has made a number of important contributions in control technologies and applications. These include multivariable adaptive decoupling control theory and applications, innovative intelligent decoupling control technology, the development of a hybrid intelligent optimal control technique for automation systems, which has been successfully applied to process industries such as iron and steal, minerals processing, nonferrous metals, electric power, resulting in enormous economic benefits.

For his contributions, he has won 3 prestigious awards of National Science and Technology Progress, 10 first-class awards of Science and Technology Progress from various Ministries of China and Liaoning Province. He received 2007 Industry Award for Excellence in Transitional Control Reaserch, IEEE Multi- conference on System and Control in Singapore. He also received Technological Science Progress Award from Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation in 2002, Science and Technology Honor Prize of Liaoning Province in 2003, and honor of "National Advanced Worker" in 2005, respectively.

Dr. Chai has about 500 publications including 380 journal papers and 115 papers in international conferences, 3 books. He has been invited to give 10 plenary speeches in international conferences of IFAC and IEEE. He has registered 12 invention patents among which two patents have been granted.

He has successfully supervised fifty-six PhD and one hundred fifty-five MS students in control engineering. For his outstanding work towards training of highly qualified personnel, he has won the award of Excellent Teacher of China.

He was a member of IFAC Technical Board and the chairman of IFAC Coordinating Committee on Manufacturing and Instrumentation during 1996-1999. He is Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Control Engineering and on editorial board of a number of technical journals.

Katsuhisa Furuta was educated at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Tokyo, Japan (MS 1964, Ph. D 1967). After graduation he was with Tokyo Institute of Technology until 2000, where he held the position of Professor of Control & Systems Engineering, Graduate School of Information Science & Engineering, and School of Engineering. In 2000 he received Professor Emeritus there. As a short term position he served as Russell Severance Springer Visiting Professor, University of California at Berkeley (1997). Since 2000 he has been with Tokyo Denki University, where he is now Professor of School of Science & Engineering and School of Future Science as well as Director of the 21st Century COE (Center of Excellent) Project on HAM (Human Adaptive Mechatronics).

K. Furuta's research interests lie in the broad areas of System Control, Robotics, Mechatronics, and Computer Vision. He is a pioneer researcher in control of pendulum, so called Furuta Pendulum which has been used for control study and education in many countries. He has delivered plenary lectures at the academic conferences including IFAC Congress (2002-Barcelona), IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2003-Maui), and also IEE Tustin/ UKACC Lecture (2003). K. Furuta held numerous positions in academic societies including the Vice President, Technical Activities, of IEEE Control Systems Society (1996-1997), Associate Editor of IEEE Transaction on Automatic Control (1991-1993), President of SICE (1999- 2000), IFAC Technical Board Member (1993-1996), IFAC Council Member (1994-1999), Automatica Paper Prize (1999-2002), and the editor of Automatica in Applications (1996 -1999). He served as Member of Science Council of Japan (1997-2003) as one of national activities. He received many awards including of Honorary Doctorate-Helsinki University of Technology (1998), IEEE CSS Distinguished Member (1998), and IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000). He is Fellow of SICE (1992), IEEE (1996), IET (2003), IFAC (2006), and Honorary Member of SICE (2006).