78 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » JUNE 2011

Guoxiang Gu, Ronald Patton, Zhi-hua Qu, Rodolphe Sepulchre, Mark Shayman, Changyun Wen, and Xiaohua Xia. In addition, the follow-ing CSS members were elected IEEE Fellows but evaluated by other Soci-eties as indicated in parentheses: Eitan Altman (Communications), Maria Valla (Indistrial Electron-ics), Umit Ozguner (Inofrmation Thoeory), Hiroyuki Hama (Power & Energy), Stefano Chiaverini (Robot-ics and Automation), and Ian Fergu-son (Sensors).

THE ORGANIZING COMMITTEEI want to especially thank the mem-bers of the 2010 CDC Organizing Committee without whose dedica-tion and hard work the 2010 CDC would not have been possible. Fathi Ghorbel served as program chair and put together the Techni-cal Program Committee. LK Mestha (Publications chair), Warren Dixon (Finance chair), Jorge Cortes (Work-shop chair), Magnus Egerstedt (vice chair for Invited Sessions), Gang-

bing Song (vice chair for Interactive and Tutorial Sessions), Kristi Mor-gansen (Student Activities chair), Fumin Zhang, (Local Arrangements chair), Marcie O’Malley (Publicity chair), Ann Rundell (Registration chair), and Bonnie Ferrie (Exhibits chair) all worked tirelessly to make the CDC a success. I would also like to thank Sandra Hirche and Shinji Hara for their assistance with the travel support programs. Alessan-dro Astolfi, the CEB chair, and the entire CEB deserve special thanks for providing the large number of reviews of the technical papers. And, of course, Pradeep Misra and Paperplaza continue to provide outstanding and tireless support. Finally, I would like to recognize Pam Halverson from Georgia Tech for her help at the registration desk and the many student volunteers who made sure that the sessions ran smoothly. This was truly a great team effort.

Mark W. Spong2010 CDC General Chair

IEEE Control Systems Award presented to (left) Graham Goodwin by Vicente Piuri.

Graham Goodwin delivering remarks upon receiving the Control Systems Award.

Bill Helton has been pillar of sys-tems theory for many years. So it comes as a surprise that he has a

numerical age and, further, given his perpetual enthusiasm, engagement, and good humor, that it increments at the same rate as for the rest of us. (Bill claims to have a proof of this.)

On October 2–4, 2010, a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation was held to celebrate the accomplishments of Bill Helton in his 65th year. The workshop focused on topics that constitute Bill’s research

legacy—H-infinity synthesis theory for linear and nonlinear systems, lin-ear matrix inequalities, operator model theory, noncommutative geometry, noncommutative computer algebra,

and spectral representations of opera-tors. The workshop was hosted by the Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics and the Department of Math-ematics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), with generous help provided by Bill’s wife, Ruth Williams of the Mathematics Department at UCSD.

Bill was born in November 1944 in Jacksonville, Texas. His father was an oral surgeon in the U.S. Army and later in private practice. His mother was a drama major at Northwestern University and worked in her hus-band’s oral surgery practice. Bill fin-ished high school at Alamo Heights, Texas, at the age of 16. He received his

Control, Optimization, and Functional Analysis: Synergies and Perspectives

A WORKSHOP IN HONOR OF J. WILLIAM HELTON

Bill Helton.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2011.940738

Date of publication: 16 May 2011

JUNE 2011 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 79

undergraduate degree from the Uni-versity of Texas at Austin at the age of 19 and completed his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1968 at the age of 23. After receiving his Ph.D., Bill was on the faculty at SUNY Stony Brook until 1973. He moved to UCSD in 1974 and has held the title of Distinguished Professor of Mathematics since the mid-1990s.

Bill Helton has provided a bridge between the mathematical world of operator theory and the engineering systems areas of circuit synthesis and control theory. Indeed, he is partly responsible for developing the fun-damental connections between these engineering disciplines and in provid-ing the rigorous underpinnings of the mathematical linkages. His capacity to

stand astride mathematics and engi-neering was reflected in the workshop participants, who were a mélange of over 80 attendees from more than 34 universities, including participants from five continents and researchers and graduate stu dents from engineer-ing, mathematics, and control pro-grams in Southern California. The workshop consisted of an eclectic blend of 39 technical talks by a spectrum of invited speakers.

On the first day of the workshop, lec-tures were presented by Pablo Parrillo, Rekha Thomas, Scott McCullough, Vic-tor Vinnikov, Igor Klep, Bernd Sturm-fels, Roger Howe, Hugo Woerdeman, Eduardo Sontag, Bob Skelton, and John Doyle. The lectures on the second day

were given by Keith Glover, Sanjay Lall, Juan Camino, Allen Tannenbaum, Matt James, Mihai Putinar, Dan Voiculescu, Joe Ball, Ron Douglas, Leiba Rodman, Estelle Basor, Salma Kuhlmann, Dmitry Kaliuzhnyi-Verbovetsky, and Mauricio de Oliveiras. On the third and final day of the workshop, lectures were given by Art Krener, Miroslav Krstic, Bill McEneaney, Jeff Allen, Bob Bitmead, Paul Fuhrmann, Larry Fialkow, Raul Curto, Rien Kaashoek, Jim Agler, Nich-olas Young, Jiawang Nie, Jie Chen, and Mark Stankus. The topics of the talks wove an elaborate path, at times wildly gyrating, but always continuously deformable back to their reliance on the solid contributions of Bill Helton. The themes of mathematics, engineering,

Participants of the workshop in honor of Bill Helton.

Mark Stankus (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) and Bob Bitmead.Rien Kaashoek (Free University, Amsterdam).

Jim Agler (UCSD). Jie Chen (UC Riverside). Keith Glover (Cambridge University).

80 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » JUNE 2011

and computation were energetically conveyed by the representatives of these various camps, while the collec-tive audience benefited from the aha! moments of realization of the common territory really being traversed.

As befits such a celebratory occa-sion for a key individual like Bill, the presentations dwelt on subjects both technical and personal, notably includ-ing both coverage of material of the latest technical advances, but also dealing with Bill’s lasting impact on the research fields, the individuals’ research, and their careers. The audi-ence was often regaled with stories of Bill’s assistance, insights, and impact as a core part of the technical presentation. In light of the strong intergenerational nature of the speakers and audience, Bill’s influence was mapped out across his extraordinary professional career.

The workshop banquet was held on the first evening of the workshop in the UCSD Faculty Club. Remarks at the banquet were offered by Jim Agler, Bob Bitmead, Bob Skelton, and Jim Ralston. Slides sent by Bruce Francis, with thoughts and photo-graphs covering the period of devel-opment of H-infinity control in the 1970s and 1980s, were also presented. The highlight was a captivating, reve-

latory, and intricate epistolary depic-tion by Jim Agler of the delights, travails, and even the mechanics of working with Bill across the years at UCSD, as hindered by modern tech-nology.

A grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided support for travel and local expenses for 33 researchers, graduate students, and invited speakers. Complete informa-tion on the workshop, including the final program and the abstracts of the talks, is available on the work-shop Web site http://math.ucsd.edu/~funconf/.

Miroslav Krstic Bob Bitmead

Matt JamesBill McEneaney

Ruth Williams and Bill Helton.

» P U B L I C AT I O N A C T I V I T I E SP U B L I C AT I O N A C T I V I T I E S (continued from page 24)

in flux. There was a high degree of una-nimity among all panelists and members of the audience regarding the value of peer review. There were only minor dif-ferences of approach among the pub-lishers represented. While all expressed willingness to allow authors to post final versions of their published papers, Elsevier and the IEEE have adopted the policy that the posted version can be the paper in the form that it is finally accepted, but it cannot be the fully edited

version that has appeared in the publish-ers’ journals and Web archive (Science Direct and IEEE Xplore, respectively). SIAM, on the other hand, grants authors “the right to post an electronic version of the final SIAM file of the work on the author’s current institutional Internet server…” but it does not grant the right to post preprints or the redacted version to their personal Web site.

The panel discussion highlighted many of the ways in which scholarly

publishing in the STEM disciplines is changing. The CSS publications—IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, and IEEE Control Systems Magazine—remain leading sources of information for control systems profes-sionals worldwide. The value that our editorial boards add in terms of peer review is probably at an all-time high given the vast proliferation of pub-lishing venues that offer peer review that is at best superficial and in many instances nonexistent. Nevertheless, the World Wide Web and the Internet have facilitated the growth of radically new ways of disseminating knowl-edge. We conclude by expressing the hope that all scholars in our field will explore the opportunities provided by the CSS’s initiative to create and man-age repositories on arXiv.org. More information is available at http://arxiv.org/corr/home and http://arxiv.org/archive/math.

John Baillieul Roberto Tempo

The 49th IEEE CDC Panel on E-Print Servers and Traditional PublishingPANELISTS

• Christos G. Cassandras, 2010 IEEE CSS vice president for Publications

• G. David Forney, Jr., past-president, IEEE Information Theory Society

• Christopher Greenwell, publisher, Control and Signal Processing, Elsevier Ltd

• David K. Marshall, publisher, SIAM

• Jon G. Rokne, 2010 IEEE vice president, Publication Services and

Products Board

• Simeon Warner, arXiv.org and the Cornell University Library

PANEL MODERATORS

• John Baillieul, past-president, IEEE Control Systems Society

• Roberto Tempo, 2010 president, IEEE Control Systems Society