Abstract :
I would like to thank the members of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) for giving me the opportunity to serve as its 44th president for 2010. I feel particularly flattered because I am the first CSS president affiliated to a non-Anglo-Saxon institution since the Society was created in 1954. I will do my best to continue along the path that has already been established by my distinguished predecessors. Trying to get a "good start" into my president\´s year, I decided to spend the fall semester of 2009 in the United States. Indeed, the present article was written in early October during my stay at the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). While visiting UIUC I had the pleasure of being involved in various research activities and teaching a graduate-level course focused on design methods using randomized algorithms. I believe that CSL holds a record number of four CSS presidents: Joe Cruz (1979), Bill Perkins (1985), Tamer Basar (2000), and Mark Spong (2005).
