Armando W. Colombo (Fellow IEEE) joined the Department of Electrotechnical and Industrial Informatics at the University of Applied Sciences Emden- Leer, Germany, became Full Professor in August 2010 and Director of the Institute for Industrial Informatics, Automation and Robotics (I2AR) in 2012. He worked during the last 17 years as Manager for Collaborative Projects and also as Edison Level 2 Group Senior Expert at Schneider Electric, Industrial Business Unit. His research interests are in the fields of industrial cyber-physical systems, industrial digitalization and system-of-systems engineering, Internet-of-Services, Industry 4.0-compliant solutions. Prof. Colombo has over 30 industrial patents and more than 300 per-review publications in journals, books, chapters of books and conference proceedings (see https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=FgFDTMEAAAAJ&hl=en ). He has extensive experience in managing multi-cultural research teams in multi-regional projects and has participated in leading positions in many international research and innovation projects in the last 16 years. With his contributions, he has performed scientific and technical seminal contributions that are nowadays being used as one of the basis of what is recognized as “The 4th Industrial Revolution”: networked collaborative smart cyber-physical systems that are penetrating the daily life, producing visible societal changes and impacting all levels of the society. He is co-founder of the IEEE IES TC on Industrial Agents and TC on Industrial Informatics. He is founder and currently Chairman of the IEEE IES TC on Industrial Cyber- Physical Systems, member of the IEEE IES Administrative Committee (AdCom) and of the IEEE Systems Engineering Council. Prof. Colombo is listed in Who’s Who in the World /Engineering 99-00/01 and in Outstanding People of the XX Century (Bibliographic Centre Cambridge, UK).

Birgit Vogel-Heuser is working as a professor at Munich University. She conducts research on the development and system evolution of distributed intelligent embedded systems in mechatronic products and production systems, with the aim of improving product quality, the efficiency and consistency of engineering activities and operational availability. She develops methods, descriptive aids and tools for integrating the various perspectives of mechatronic systems (mechanical, electrical/electronic and software) and phases in the life cycle and their interactions. Key non-functional requirements are real-time behavior, modularity, availability and usability. Her research projects range from fundamental research in automation technology to the derivation of requirements from industrial applications and the development of prototype tools. After graduating in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Aachen (RWTH), Prof. Vogel-Heuser earned her doctorate degree there (1990) in the area of robot programming in mechanical engineering. She acquired industrial experience over a ten year period, including a position as Engineering Director for the Siempelkamp Group (systems engineering). After various professorships (Hagen 1996; Wuppertal 2000; Kassel 2006), she assumed a professorship in the Department of Automation and Information Systems (formerly: Department of Information Technology) at TUM (2009). She is chairwomen of the German agents in automation working group of the GMA (NMO of IFAC) and heads the agents group in IFAC TC 3.1. More information http://www.professoren.tum.de/en/vogel-heuser-birgit/ 

Paulo Leitão received the MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, both from the University of Porto, in 1997 and 2004, respectively. He joined the Polytechnic Institute of Braganca in 1995, where he is Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering. His research interests are in the field of intelligent and reconfigurable systems, cyber-physical systems, Internet of Things, multi-agent systems and self-organized systems. He participated in several R&D projects (e.g., EU GO0DMAN, PERFoRM, ARUM and GRACE) and Networks of Excellence (e.g. IMS and CONET), served as general co-chair of several international conferences, namely IFAC IMS'10, HoloMAS'11, IEEE ICARSC'16 and SOHOMA'16, and published more than 200 papers in international scientific journals and conference proceedings. He is co-author of three patents and received four paper awards at INCOM'06, BASYS'06, INDIN'10 and INFOCOMP'13 conferences. Dr. Leitão is Senior member of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES) and Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (SMCS), past Chair of the IEEE IES Technical Committee on Industrial Agents and member at-large of the IEEE IES Administrative Committee (AdCom). Currently he is chair of the IEEE Standards Association P2660.1 Working Group.

Thomas I. Strasser received a master's and a PhD degree from Vienna University of Technology and was awarded with the venia docendi (habiliation) in the field of automation from the same university. For several years, he has been a senior scientist in the Center for Energy of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. His main responsibilities involve strategic development of smart grid automation and validation research projects and mentoring/supervising junior scientist and PhD candidates. Before joining AIT, Dr. Strasser spent more than 6 years as senior researcher investigating advanced and reconfigurable automation and control systems at PROFACTOR research. He is active as a senior lecturer (Privatdozent) at the Vienna University of Technology. Dr. Strasser is the co-author of more than 200 scientific publications (journal publications, book editorials and chapters, conference papers, editorial of conference proceedings, technical reports) as well as two patents in the above mentioned areas. He has presented results of his research work in various international and national conferences, workshops, events, and seminars and is an active member in various program committees of scientific conferences and serves as an associate editor of Springer, Hindawi, and IEEE Journals. He was and is involved as scientific and/or sub-project coordinator in several national and international research projects. In addition, he is an evaluator of research proposals and projects for several national and European funding agencies including the European Commission, ECSEL and Eureka Eurostars. Dr. Strasser is also member of international IEC and IEEE standardization working groups and senior member of IEEE where he is also involved in several activities of the IES (AdCom member-at-large 2018-2020), SMCS (BoG member-at-large 2018-2020), and PES societies. He servers also as the Austrian representative in the CIGRE study committee C6. Dr. Strasser is also one of the founding members of the Eclipse 4diac open source initiative. Additional information is provided at https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6415-766X.

Stamatis Karnouskos is with SAP, dealing with emerging industrial technologies related to the Internet of Things and Enterprise systems. He investigates the added value of integrating networked embedded devices and enterprise systems. For more than 20 years Stamatis leads efforts in several European Commission and industry-funded projects related to industrial automation, smart grids, Internet/cloud-based services and architectures, software agents, security, and mobility. Stamatis has been the chair (2016-2019) of the IEEE IES Technical Committee on Industrial Agents. (see https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WkLswkoAAAAJ)

Bilal Ahmad is a Senior Research Fellow at WMG, University of Warwick. He received his PhD in Automation Systems and MSc in Mechatronics from Loughborough University, UK. He has over 15-year experience in applied industrial research in the manufacturing sector. His specialisation areas include lifecycle engineering of cyber-physical systems with specific focus on system integration and deployment of control systems. He led development of a number of engineering tools and methods to support lifecycle engineering of modular automation systems in collaboration with automotive manufacturers, machine builders and control vendors. These include tools for virtual build and validation of assembly automation systems, automatic code generation and virtual commissioning. Dr Ahmad has worked as a PI, Co-I and lead researcher on a large number of EPSRC, Innovate UK, Horizon 2020, FP7, ARTEMIS and industry funded research projects.

Andrea Bonci is a tenured assistant professor and researcher at the Department of Information Engineering (DII) of the Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy. He received the master degree in electronic engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Artificial Intelligent Systems at University of Ancona, Italy. Currently, as professor, he holds the courses of “Automation Laboratory” and “Dynamics and Control of Intelligent Robot and Vehicles“, respectively in the Bachelor and Master degrees for the Science degree in Computer Engineering and Automation at the Polytechnic University of Marche.

His experiences in research and technology transfer range from automatic control to industrial automation systems up to autonomous and intelligent systems. His research interests in the automation field include systems and control theory, robotics, control of mechatronics systems, nonlinear system dynamics and control, modeling and control of dynamical systems. In industrial context instead research and development interests concern Cyber Physical Systems, smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0, KPI for intelligent manufacturing, Predictive Maintenance, smart materials, new technologies for the factory of the future, industrial applications of automation, robotics, mechatronics, and automation in constructions. Lastly, interests in autonomous and intelligent systems are focused on modeling and control autonomous systems, autonomous vehicles, vehicle dynamics, intelligent robotics, unmanned aerial and ground vehicles, sensor and data fusion, multi-sensor fusion, embedded control systems.

Currently he is head of the Automation Laboratory at Polytechnic University of Marche, and besides he is Principal Investigator for the same University in the EU project H2020 "ENCORE" (ENergy aware BIM cloud Platform in a COst effective Building REnovation Context) call: LC-EeB-02-2018. He is a member of the Marche Manufacturing Regional Cluster, affiliated with the National Intelligent Factory Cluster (CFI). He is also deputy coordinator of the regional Macro node of the Industry 4.0 National Competence Center ARTES 4.0, funded by National Ministry of Economic Development (MISE). He has participated in and participates as task leader in the several national projects such as, REACT (Methods and Tools for the REACTive Product Design and Manufacturing) funded by MISE, and in CFI project. He is team manager of the “i-Labs” laboratory, a regional technology transfer laboratory on Industry 4.0 technologies, and furthermore he is team manager and task leader in the H3DFLAB, a regional project on mechatronics and man-focused manufacturing. These last are both funded by the European Regional Development Fund ERDF, POR MARCHE region FESR 2014/2020. Currently he is also involved in several research activities funded by national companies and agencies in some of the previous fields, some of them are Santoni SpA, MIELE SpA, Campetella Robotic Center, HSD SpA, and others.

Massimiliano Pirani is a researcher at the department of information engineering (DII) of Marche Polytechnic University (Ancona, Italy). He received the Master and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from the same university. His initial research interests included identification of nonlinear systems, higher order statistics, nonlinear signal processing, neural networks, audio electronics, speech processing, loudspeaker systems enhancement. His research currently involves Cybernetics, holonic multiagent systems, intelligent manufacturing systems, cyber-physical systems of systems, control theory, extended artificial intelligence, and computer science.
From 2004 to 2015 he worked as a computer science researcher, research manager and head of software departments in industrial and consumer electronics sectors. He was mainly involved in artificial intelligence, smart control technology, networking and Web technologies applied to bioprocessess, industrial systems automation and smart home. He is a research, innovation manager and development consultant in embedded electronics systems, Industrial IoT, intelligent control, and distributed computing.
He has been adjunct professor on Internet, computer and computer networks, and mathematics at the Marche Politechnic University.
He directed the design and development of a decision support system tool for the Regional project POR/L598 in 2009, "Decision Support System for SBR treatment of waste water”. He participated to the research and management in four EU FP5/FP7 projects, and currently The H2020 ENCORE project for the development of holonic systems and architectures for the management of building construction processes. He is involved on different National and Regional projects such as: REACT, a National Project for developing Methods and Tools for the REACTive Product Design and Manufacturing (funded by National Ministry of Economic Development MISE); i-Labs, a Regional laboratory devoted to the developing of Industry 4.0 technologies and their technology transfer (funded by the European Regional Development Fund ERDF, POR MARCHE region FESR 2014/2020); ARTES 4.0, the National Competence Center for Industry 4.0 (funded by National Ministry of Economic Development MISE).
A list of his publications can be found at https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=rD4f9igAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate 

Luis Ribeiro is an Associate Professor in Manufacturing Engineering with specialization in Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems at The Division of Manufacturing Engineering from the Department of Management and Engineering of Linköping University, Sweden. He holds a Swedish Docent degree in Manufacturing Engineering from Linköping University and a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Specialization in Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He has been involved, in different roles, in several international research projects from the 6th, 7th and H2020 European Research Programmes, and several Portuguese and Swedish national projects. These projects have focused on smart automation and plug and produce systems, for various industries including automotive, white goods and aerospace, and have explored and developed many concepts and technologies that are now considered some of the foundational ideas of the so called 4th Industrial Revolution His main research areas include: design, development and implementation of intelligent manufacturing systems based in cyber-physical components, distributed architectures to support intelligent systems and self-organization and emergence in manufacturing. His interests in these areas are in control, reconfiguration and monitoring/diagnosis. He is involved in several technical communities that are actively engaged in this research area for example the IEEE Technical Committees on: Industrial Agents, Cybernetics for Intelligent Industrial Systems and Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems. He is, starting from 2020, the vice-chair of the Industrial Agents TC. He is also a member of the expert group on flexible processes of the Swedish Production 2030 initiative and one of the leaders of the expert group in Virtual Production of the same initiative. His publications list can be found in https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=sv&user=9ikXfOYAAAAJ

Daniel Vera has over 13 year of experience in Research and Development in the domain of manufacturing engineering. His expertise focuses on the design of advanced system engineering and production management solutions and their integration with existing processes and IT infrastructures. He is currently working on developing "Industry 4.0" solutions, advanced data capture, storage, management and data analytics methods as basis for the deployment of Machine Learning solutions in manufacturing, traceability strategies and advanced/predictive maintenance applications. Daniel has worked with a number of sectors: warehousing systems' automation, electronic component manufacture, transport industry with a particular focus on power train electrification the automotive sector through collaboration with major manufacturer Nissan, Mazda, Ford Motor Co & JLR. Daniel is member of HVM CATAPULT several strategic and leadership groups (Data Acquisition and Analytics technology forum, Digital Strategy Team) and work in tight collaboration with HVMC to support SME engagement via the North West and National industry mapping programs.

Alois Zoitl holds a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering with focus on dynamic reconfiguration of real-time constrained control applications and a Master degree in Electrical Engineering with the focus on distributed industrial automation systems from Vienna University of Technology.

Currently he is a Professor for cyber-physical systems for engineering and production with the Johannes Kepler University, Linz. Before that he was research group leader for Industrial Automation at the research institute fortiss GmbH in Munich, Germany. He is co-author of more than 150 publications (3 books, 6 book chapters, 19 journal articles) and the co-inventor of 4 patents in the mentioned areas.

Alois Zoitl conducted and lead several industry funded R&D projects as well as coordinated and participated in several public funded (national as well as European) R&D projects. He is a founding member of the open source initiatives Eclipse 4diac, providing a complete IEC 61499 solution. Furthermore, he is a member of the IEEE, and GMA. Since 2009 he is an active member of the IEC SC65B/WG15 for the distributed automation standard IEC 61499. He was named convenor of the group in May 2015.