Guest Editorial for Special Issue on Fractional Order Systems and Controls

YangQuan Chen (M'95-SM'98) earned his Ph.D. degree in advanced control and instrumentation from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 1998. Dr. Chen was on the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Utah State University before he joined the School of Engineering, University of California, Merced in 2012 where he teaches "Mechatronics" and "Unmanned Aerial Systems" for undergraduates and "Fractional Order Mechanics" and "Nonlinear Control" for graduates. His current research interests include mechatronics for sustainability, cognitive process control and hybrid lighting control, multi-UAV based cooperative multi-spectral "personal remote sensing" and applications, applied fractional calculus in controls, signal processing and energy informatics; distributed measurement and distributed control of distributed parameter systems using mobile actuator and sensor networks (e-mail: yqchen@ieee.org, or, yangquan.chen@ucmerced.edu).

Dingyü Xue received his BSc, MSc and D Phil from Shenyang University of Technology in 1985, Northeastern University, China in 1988 and Sussex University, UK in 1992, respectively. He has been a professor in the School of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University since 1997. He is the author of several books on control system computer-aided design, system simulation and scientific computation. His major research interest covers the areas of fractional calculus and fractionalorder systems, CACSD, systems simulation, system modelling and identification (e-mail: xuedingyu@ise.neu.edu.cn).

Antonio Visioli was born in Parma, Italy, in 1970. He received the Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Parma in 1995 and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Mechanics from the University of Brescia in 1999. Currently he holds a professor position in Automatic Control at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of the University of Brescia. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of the TC on Education of IFAC, of the IEEE Control Systems Society TC on Control Education and of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society TC on Factory Automation Subcommittees on Event-Based Control & Signal and on Industrial Automated Systems and Control, and of the national board of Anipla (Italian Association for Automation). His research interests include industrial robot control and trajectory planning, dynamic inversion based control, industrial control, and fractional control. He is the author or co-author or editor of four international books, one textbook and of more than 200 papers in international journals and conference proceedings (e-mail: antonio.visioli@unibs.it).