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DECEMBER 2008 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 39

JIE CHENQ. What led you to your currentposition as editor-in-chief of the Jour-nal of Control Systems Engineering?

Jie: My undergraduate major wasin aerospace engineering at North-western Polytechnic Uni-versity in Xian, China,which certainly has a lot todo with control systems.But I guess I kind of stum-bled into the controls field;in retrospect, the lowestgrade I ever had in collegewas in automatic control, sothis was not really my cho-sen field, per se. But I wasjust a kid then, not knowingat all what I wanted to do.Northwestern Polytechnic,while heavily concentratedin aerospace engineering,offered a solid training inbroad engineering disci-plines, which prepared mewell for my subsequentgraduate training at theUniversity of Michigan(UMich), and which hasinvariably had an effect onmy career. I went to UMich in 1984,

two years after college. As many of usmay fondly remember, that was anexciting time for our field; the entirefield seemed revitalized, with robustcontrol at the center stage and devel-oping at a frenzy speed. With a fantas-

tic controls program and anintellectually stimulating environmentat UMich, my interest in systems and

control took off, and I was quicklydrawn into the intricacy and the beau-ty of control theories. I wrote a thesison robust control under the supervi-sion of Jim Freudenberg, and Ireceived my Ph.D. in 1990. I joined theUniversity of California, Riverside, in1994, where I have been teaching eversince. As we are conversing, I am verypleased and proud that I have been amember of CSS for many years

How did all of this lead me tobecome the editor-in-chief of the Jour-nal of Control Science and Engineering?Well, other than my background insystems and control, my experienceof serving on control journal editorialboards contributed a lot. Before thisposition, I had already served as anassociate editor and a guest editor forseveral journals, including IEEETransactions on Automatic Control andAutomatica, two of the foremost jour-

nals in our field. Itseemed like a naturalprogression.

Q. Please describe thehistory and develop-ment of the Journal ofControl Science andEngineering. How doesthis journal comple-ment existing journalsin the systems and con-trol field in terms oftopics, authors, andreadership?

Jie: It all started withan e-mail from OlaMahmoud in early 2006.Ola, who is a publishingeditor of Hindawi Pub-lishing Corporation,was searching for some-one to start an openaccess journal in auto-

matic control. I was made aware ofthis new publishing model and,indeed, was convinced that it could

In this issue of IEEE Control Systems Magazine (CSM), we speak with two editors of

control publications—and one former editor. Jie Chen of the University of California at

Riverside and Brett Ninness of the University of Newcastle are the editors, respectively,

of the Journal of Control Science and Engineering and IET Control Theory. The for-

mer journal is the first Web-based control journal, while the latter journal has a long his-

tory of operation under several names. We took this opportunity to find out more about

the development and operation of these publications as well as their plans for the future.

Jie and Brett are both active researchers in the control field, and we learn about their

interests and views on control research and education.

Next, we speak with 2009 IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) President Tariq

Samad. Tariq is a former editor-in-chief of CSM, and he has held numerous positions

in CSS. This interview provides us with the chance to learn about the many exciting

plans Tariq has for 2009.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2008.929930

(from left) Jie Chen, his wife Yan, and sons Stephen and Chris atop thespectacular Palamidi Fortress, at Nafplio, Greece prior to ECC’07.

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40 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » DECEMBER 2008

have an impact on the field. I took thechallenge and assembled an editorialboard made of some of our finest col-leagues. There you go, the Journal ofControl Science and Engineering wasborn in April 2006. It’s a tough pathto tread on, as you may imagine howhard it can be to establish a new jour-nal among many journals that havebeen long and well established. With-out any question, we have a long wayto go. Nevertheless, I think we havemade significant headway in thishighly competitive venue, and I ampleased that the journal is gaining agood reputation. We have had asteady increase in the volume and,more importantly, the quality of thesubmissions. We have publisheda few regular issues. We alsopublished an excellent specialissue on robustness issues in faultdiagnosis and fault tolerant con-trol, with Jakob Stoustrup andKemin Zhou serving as guest edi-tors. Thanks to the enthusiasm,the effort, and above all the dis-cerning taste and the high stan-dards of the editorial board andthe guest editors, I think we aredoing okay, and the journal isbeginning to be recognized.

The Journal of Control Scienceand Engineering seeks to comple-ment the existing mainstreamcontrol journals in several ways.First, it adopts an open access pub-lishing model; in fact, to the best ofmy knowledge, it is the first openaccess journal in the control field.What this means is that anyone withInternet access anywhere in the worldcan download the papers published inthe journal free of charge; that is, nosubscription of any kind is needed.This unlimited access, we hope, canhelp accelerate the dissemination ofthe knowledge and also distribute itto a wider readership, which shouldserve well the interest of both theauthor and the reader. Second, it ismy intention that the journal bebroadly represented, both geographi-cally and in technical disciplines. Inthe former aspect, our editorial board

is truly an international cast. We espe-cially want to serve and facilitate theprogress of the control communitiesin developing countries. In the latter,the journal tries to go beyond the tra-ditional boundaries to accommodateas broadly as possible the establishedand newly emerging areas of controltheories and applications.

Q. What are your research interests,and what are some of your currentresearch projects?

Jie: I consider myself very much acontrol theorist. Wearing that hat, Ihave worked in a few areas of sys-tems and control, including robustcontrol, system identification, time-

delay systems, and fundamentals oflinear systems theory. Over the yearsmy research has by and large beendriven by two goals: fundamental andcomputational. On the one hand, Ihave been very interested in thefundamental issues of feedback, itshidden beauty, and intriguing com-plexity; for example, the fundamentallimitations and limits of feedbackmechanisms along with the intrinsiccomplexity in modeling and systemidentification have long occupied mymind. On the other hand, I have alsobeen motivated to seek efficient com-putational algorithms and methods tosolve control problems; in the lattervein, I tried to develop computation-ally efficient algorithms for system

identification and time-delay systems.So in a way, my research falls into thetwo extremes, but if you look at itcarefully, a common theme in all mywork is the awe and curiosity towardnature: I may not be able to solve aproblem, but I want to understand it, Iwant to know where the limit is andwhy, as simple as that. Even more so,this trait continues in my currentresearch projects. I am working with acommunications colleague on net-worked control problems, trying tounderstand a few basic things; forexample, we ask questions like: Whatare the intrinsic performance mea-sures and fundamental limits in aninformation-constrained or informa-

tion-limited feedback system?How can communication chan-nel/network characteristics inher-ently limit the performanceachievable? What are the newdesign constraints and tradeoffs?These questions, we believe, real-ly target the core, fundamentalissues at the juncture of informa-tion and control. Otherwise, Ihave also been working withcomputer engineering colleagueson VLSI circuit simulation anddesign problems, ranging fromVLSI circuit model reduction tothermal control of computerchips. This emerging area ofdesign automation using control

techniques is seeing a lot of applica-tions where computational efficiencyis a predominant concern.

Q. What do you see as the key chal-lenges of our field as a whole?

Jie: Control technology is widely,if not overwhelmingly, or even uni-versally, held as an enabling technol-ogy. I share this vision and feel thatthe word “enabling” really definesour field. It spells out both theimportance and perhaps the dilemmaof control technology as a whole. Themain issue I see is its lack of a focus,a product, or an icon, so to speak. Wefacilitate, we enable, but we are notthe driving force. We are every-where, but hardly visible to the lay

Jie contemplates while working on a paper amid thebreathtaking sunset, on the Caldera of Santorini,Greece.

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DECEMBER 2008 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 41

people, sometimes even to profes-sionals outside our field. The keychallenge I see then is that we wantto go out harder and have an evergreater impact on technologies out-side our own field, and to society atlarge. I see this is already happening,and in fact at a quickening pace, withhigh-impact applications rangingfrom semiconductor fabrication tomedical devices to artificial limbs, toname just a few.

Q. What trends do you see in con-trol education, especially at theundergraduate level?

Jie: I see undergraduate controleducation evolving in at least twodirections. It is increasingly moreexperimental, interdisciplinary, and infact, more in touch with real-worldapplications. This trend is observed inboth control laboratory and senior

design. It seems to me that we are notseeing a lot of inverted pendulumexperiments anymore, but new andexciting projects and experiments,such as RoboSoccer and autonomousvehicles, have been developed andwelcomed by students. I see this trendas a very encouraging sign; it showsthe vitality of control education.Another development, which has notfully emerged yet but I think will soontake place, is the revision and consoli-dation of the undergraduate controlcourses. I tend to think this area ismore of a challenge. Over the last 30years or so we have had a massiveaccumulation of knowledge, with var-ious kinds of ideas, techniques, anddesign methods, yet the undergradu-ate control courses remain largelyunchanged. How to incorporate theseadvanced techniques into the under-graduate curriculum is a daunting

task. It’s a question we will have toanswer sooner or later. Having saidthat, of course, this is not an issueunique to us alone; it is actually com-mon to all engineering disciplines.

Q. What are some of your hobbiesand interests outside of professionalactivities?

Jie: I enjoy reading, modern arts,and music. I travel a lot, as many of usdo in our profession. While traveling,I pass time and boredom by compos-ing verses and prose, which I feel is agood way of making a dialogue withoneself and entertaining friends of asimilar interest. All in all, seeing,thinking, and writing brings me joyand gratification.

Q. Thank you for speaking withCSM!

Jie: You’re most welcome.

BRETT NINNESSQ. What is your educational andcareer background and how did thatlead you to your current position aseditor of IET Control Theory?

Brett: I’ve lived all my life inNewcastle and have received all myeducation here as well. After highschool, this involved my undergradu-ate degree, a research masters, andthen a Ph.D., all in the Electrical Engi-neering Department at the Universityof Newcastle.

I guess this sounds quite unadven-turous, but there have been some goodreasons for it. First, Newcastle is, Ithink, a very easy and relaxed place tolive with many natural attractions. Sec-ond, the Electrical Engineering Depart-ment at Newcastle was founded byBrian Anderson and, through thatleadership and its subsequent legacy,was and is a very strong department.Third, and most importantly, GrahamGoodwin was willing to be my mastersand Ph.D. advisor in Newcastle, whichwas far too valuable a gift to pass up!

I did the first two years of myundergraduate degree at night

while working in two local coalmines, essentially as a trainee elec-trician, but officially under a cadetengineer program, which was a ter-rific experience.

Nevertheless, at the end of myundergraduate degree I decided I hadmade a mistake studying engineeringand went to medical school to startover and become a doctor. I had nointention of dropping this plan, butwent back to the Electrical Engineer-ing Department looking for a summerjob, and Graham involved me in aresearch project. It was so excitingworking with him that I did not getaround to going back to medicine,and so now I find myself as a profes-sor of electrical engineering, still atthe University of Newcastle.

Q. Please describe the history anddevelopment of IET Control Theory.How does this journal complementexisting journals in the systems andcontrol field in terms of topics,authors, and readership?(From left) Natasha, Eva, and Brett.

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