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Sigurd Skogestad is a professor in chemical engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. Born in Norway in 1955, he received the Siv.Ing. degree (M.S.) in chemical engineering at NTNU in in 1978. After finishing his military service at the Norwegian Defence Research Institute, he worked from 1980 to 1983 with Norsk Hydro in the areas of process design, thermodynamics and simulation at their Research Center in Porsgrunn, Norway. Moving to the US, he worked 3.5 years under the guidance of Manfred Morari, receiving the Ph.D. degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1987. He has been a full professor at NTNU since 1987. During the period 1999 to 2009 he was Head of Department of Chemical Engineering ( Kjemisk prosessteknologi ). Since 2015 he is the Director of SUBPRO, a multi-disciplinary center on subsea technology at NTNU. The author of more than 200 international journal publications and more than 200 conference publications, he is the principal author together with Ian Postlethwaite of the book "Multivariable feedback control" published by Wiley in 1996 (first edition) and 2005 (second edition). Dr. Skogestad was awarded "Innstilling to the King" for his Siv.Ing. degree in 1979, a Fullbright fellowship in 1983, received the Ted Peterson Award from AIChE in 1989, the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award from IEEE in 1990, the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award from the American Automatic Control Council in 1992, and the Best Paper of the Year 2004 Award from Computers and Chemical Engineering. He was an Editor of Automatica during the period 1996-2002, was a member of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Technical Board from 2008 to 2014, and became an IFAC Fellow in 2014. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2012) and was elected into the Process Control Hall of Fame in 20111. He is an honorary member of Norwegian Society of Automatic Control (2015) and was elected as member of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo in 2015. he is an Honorary member of Norwegian Society of Automatic Control (Norsk Forening for Automatisering) (2015). More recently, he received (together with Cristina Zorica) the Best paper award at the ESCAPE 2019 Symposium (Eindhoven, June 2019) and received the Computing in chemical engineering award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (Orlando, 12 Nov. 2019). Professor Skogestad has graduated more than 40 PhD candidates. He presently has a group of about 6 Ph.D. students. He is since 2015 Director of SUBPRO, a research-based innovation center in subsea production and processing at NTNU, funded by the by the Research Council of Norway and industry, and with a budget of about 35 million NOK per year (2015-2023). He is also the leader of PROST which is the strong point center in process systems engineering in Trondheim and involves about 50 people in various departments. The goal of his research is to develop simple yet rigorous methods to solve problems of engineering significance. Research interests include the use of feedback as a tool to (1) reduce uncertainty (including robust control), (2) change the system dynamics (including stabilization), and (3) generally make systema more well-behaved (including self-optimizing control). Other interests include limitations on performance in linear systems, control structure design and plantwide control, interactions between process design and control, and distillation column design, control and dynamics. His other main interests are mountain skiing (cross country), orienteering (running around with a map) and grouse hunting.
	Vincent Gerbaud conducts research in system engineering. A decade ago, the emphasis was on small scale modelling: molecular simulation, thermodynamics, computer aided molecular and mixture design. He started studying wine cream of tartar crystals and is eager to share expertise with anyone willing to taste! At the process scale, he dealt with the design and synthesis of extractive or azeotropic distillation processes. He investigated their optimal design in the light of the thermodynamics of the mixture with entrainer system, which resulted in a general design feasibility criterion. Again, connections to thermodynamics were never far away. At first equilibrium thermodynamics, equations of state models and physico-chemical properties were concerned. Nowadays its more about nonequilibrium thermodynamics with a questioning about their relevance for addressing social and economical systems. He now fuses a combination of nonequilibrium thermodynamic principles and process system engineering tools into the paradigm of E. Morin’s « la pensée complexe » in order to address problems with a holistic approach, considering them as open systems with technical requirements within socio-economic issues and intends to study socio-ecological transitions. He also has an active implication in education, in particular about fostering students’ reflexivity and evaluating generic competencies in engineering studies at the graduate level.
Jutta Valkenberg's team at Bayer is responsible for translating the business strategy of Pharma Product Supply into an IT & Digital strategy. This means defining the required IT & Digital solutions, and the roadmap to get us to the target state. We focus on increased efficiency at our production sites through automation, and the use of shop floor data for analytics. Additionally, we drive the optimization of Supply Chain Planning through simulation tools and advanced planning algorithms, and support our major investment projects to build new state-of-the-art production plants in several locations worldwide.
	Driven by the need to develop more efficient decision-making tools to address the circularity paradigm in practice, the research coordinated by Antonio Espuña at the Center for Process and Environmental Systems Engineering (CEPIMA-UPC) is focused on the application of MultiObjective Optimization techniques and Game Theory to improve the strategic, tactical and operational management of complex supply networks, the development of artificial intelligence techniques to support reactive decision-making, and the identification and use of comprehensive indicators to quantitatively assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the management of the available resources in a system.
Prof. Dr. Ing. Flavio Manenti is Full Professor of Chemical Plants at Politecnico di Milano, CMIC Dept. “Giulio Natta”, where he coordinates the Centre for Sustainable Process Engineering Research (SuPER, https://super.chem.polimi.it) with 10 permanent staff, 15+ collaborators and 20+ students. He has served for two terms the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE, www.efce.info) as elected academic Charity Trustee (2016-2019). Currently, he is President of the Computer Aided Process Engineering (CAPE, www.wp-cape.eu), EFCE’s Working Party. He is the coordinator of Double PhD and MSc bilateral agreement with USA, UK, EU, CH, China and Russian Federation. He published 300+ papers indexed by Scopus along with a series of 5 books titled “… for the Chemical Engineer” edited by Wiley-VCH (Weinheim, Germany) on digitalization in chemical engineering. He co-authored a chapter of Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia by John Wiley and Sons on big data analytics in chemical processes. Research consultant for national and international companies on PSE, H2 production and CO2 Utilization with 21 filed patents and 6 trademarks. 6 technologies have been scaled up to TRL 9 in 2019-2022, with 9-16kt/y operating plants. Other 6 patents are at the industrial implementation phase. For his research activities, he received the Excellence in Simulation Award (Los Angeles, USA, 2007), the Zdenec Burianec Award (Prague, CZ, 2008), the Humboldt Research Award (Berlin, GER, 2014), ESCAPE best lecturer (Budapest, HUN, 2014), ESCAPE best poster presentation (Portorose, SLO, 2016), Mashelkar Golden Medal (New Delhi, IN, 2019). In free time, he is active UEFA-licensed soccer coach with two national championships and 6 regional championships awarded and Federal soccer coach for the U13 National Team (SGS FIGC Italia).

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