Lorenz T. Biegler is the Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Stephen L. Campbell is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at North Carolina State University. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Volker Mehrmann is a Professor of Mathematics at TU Berlin. He is a member of acatech (the German Academy of Science and Engineering) and is currently president of GAMM (the German Society for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics).