On May 12, 2019 we shall celebrate the centenary birthday of the late Professor Wu Wen- Ts¨un (1919—2017), one of the most famous and influential mathematicians in China. Wu made foundational contributions to the field of topology and established Mathematics Mechanization as a discipline. This special issue is dedicated to the celebration of Wu’s centenary birthday. It contains 18 papers on research subjects to which Wu made important contributions. Problems addressed in the papers include Hilbert’s 15th problem and the problems of solving partial differential polynomial systems, automated geometric theorem proving and discovering, global optimization for real polynomials, real root computation, Gr¨obner bases computation, computation in commutative, differential, and difference algebra, congruence closure generation, Boolean function construction, and quantum algorithm design, with diverse applications in computer graphics, software verification, cryptography and other areas of mathematics and information science. The papers collected in the special issue demonstrate the deep and broad influence of Wu’s work on research and development in various scientific domains.
Nonlinearity is ubiquitous in engineering and natural systems. The development of nonlinear control can be traced back to decades ago. To date, the research has reached the stage that emphasizes developing methodologies that can handle the complexity characterized by uncertainty, nonlinearity, time-varying dynamics, delays and interconnections. The new trend of seamless integration of controls, communication and computation motivates quite a few new interesting control problems including quantized control, networked control, distributed control, and eventbased control. For cyber-physical systems (CPS) that involve interaction between the “cyber” and the physical processes, the current nonlinear control theory is insufficient to addressing design challenges arising from CPSs and many related engineering applications. Solving the new problems will be of special interest for the control of various practical systems such as robotic networks, electric smart grids, manufacturing production lines, chemical processes and biological systems, and will even contribute to the achievement of smart manufacturing, smart grids and intelligent transportation systems.
The purpose of this special issue is to report new research results, made by leading researchers, that address some of the new emerging nonlinear control problems, not limited to the ones characterized above. After a rigorous review process, eighteen papers were selected for the special issue. Topics of the papers cover a number of interesting research directions in nonlinear and distributed control.
This special issue is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of Journal of Systems Science and Complexity (JSSC) which is under the auspices of the Institute of Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This special issue was organized by the editorial board of JSSC. The papers published in this special issue are high quality contribution to the fields of complex network, systems control, statistics and data science, and computer mathematics.
