The Encyclopedia of Systems and Control collects a broad range of short expository articles that describe the current state of the art in the central topics of control and systems engineering as well as in many of the related fields in which control is an enabling technology. The editors have assembled the most comprehensive reference possible, and this has been greatly facilitated by the publisher's commitment continuously to publish updates to the articles as they become available in the future. Although control engineering is now a mature discipline, it remains an area in which there is a great deal of research activity, and as new developments in both theory and applications become available, they will be included in the online version of the encyclopedia. A carefully chosen team of leading authorities in the field has written the well over 250 articles that comprise the work. The topics range from basic principles of feedback in servomechanisms to advanced topics such as the control of Boolean networks and evolutionary game theory. Because the content has been selected to reflect both foundational importance as well as subjects that are of current interest to the research and practitioner communities, a broad readership that includes students, application engineers, and research scientists will find material that is of interest.
About the Author: Tariq Samad is a Corporate Fellow with Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions, based in Minneapolis, U.S.A. His career with Honeywell has spanned over 25 years, during which time he has contributed to and led automation and control technology developments for applications in electric power systems, the process industries, building management, automotive engines, unmanned aircraft, and clean energy. His research interests relate broadly to automation, intelligence, and autonomy for complex engineering systems.
Dr. Samad served as the President of IEEE Control Systems Society in 2009 and he is the President Elect for the American Automatic Control Council. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the recipient of a few awards including the 2008 IEEE CSS Control Systems Technology Award, a Distinguished Member Award from IEEE CSS, an IEEE Third Millennium Medal, and an Excellence Award from the Society of Technical Communications (NYC Metro Chapter) in 2002. He was editor-in-chief of IEEE Control Systems Magazine from 1998 to 2003; during his tenure the magazine achieved the highest citation impact factor among automation and control journals. He was the Program Chair for the 2004 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control (Taiwan) and the General Chair for the 2012 American Control Conference (Montréal). Dr. Samad holds 17 patents and has authored or coauthored over 100 publications, including the recent online report, The Impact of Control Technology (ieeecss.org/main/IoCT-report). He currently serves on the editorial board of IEEE Press. He represents Honeywell on the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute and he is a member of the Governing Board of the U.S. Smart Grid Interoperability Panel. Dr. Samad holds a B.S. degree in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

John Baillieul holds professorial appointments in two departments at Boston University: he is Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is former Chairman of several departments. After receiving the Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1975, he joined the Mathematics Department of Georgetown University. During the academic year 1983-84 he was the Vinton Hayes Visiting Scientist in Robotics at Harvard University, and in 1991 he was visiting scientist in the Department of Electrical Engineering at MIT. He has held positions on the editorial boards of many of the leading journals in the field. He was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control for six years from 1992 through June of 1998, and from 2006 through 2011 he was Editor-in-Chief of the SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization. He served on the editorial board of the Proceedings of the IEEE (from 1998-2006. He is a recent recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal for various professional contributions. He was the fortieth President of the Control Systems Society. Professor Baillieul has been a member of the IEEE Publications Services and Products Board (PSPB from 1999 - 2004, 2006), Chair of the PSPB Strategic Planning Committee (2001 - 2002), and Chair of the PSPB Finance Committee (PSPB Treasurer, 2004). He served on the IEEE Board of Directors and as IEEE Vice President of Publication Services and Products during 2007 and 2008. He was General Chair of the combined 48th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and 28th Chinese Control Conference held in Shanghai in 2009.
Baillieul's research has dealt with robotics, the control of cyber-physical systems, and mathematical system theory. Most recently, he has also been recognized as a leader in applying information theoretic methods in control. John Baillieul is recipient of the IEEE Control Systems Society Bode Prize in 2011, and he is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of IFAC, and a Fellow of SIAM.