Dr. Jorge Sofrony, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá

Jorge Sofrony was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1978. He received his degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad de los Andes in 2001. He traveled to the UK to obtain his MSc in Control Systems at Imperial College, were he was awarded the Shell Centenary Scholarship Fund. In 2003 he joined the Control and Instrumentation Group at the University of Leicester and in 2007 received his PhD title under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Turner. Since 2007, he has been lecturer at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia where he has taken several courses related with control and instrumentation.

His doctoral research concentrated on the development of a novel synthesis technique for anti-windup compensation of input saturated systems. During this time he was able to work within the GARTEUR action group on pilot-induced-oscillations (PIO). He was part of the SAIFE (Saturation Alleviation In-Flight Experiment) campaign, funded and supported by the German aerospace research center DLR, and focusing on testing anti-windup algorithms developed by the University of Leicester. His research interests focus on the control of robotic manipulators and the compensation of Human-Machine-Interactions of tele-operated systems.

Andreas Kroll, University of Kassel, Germanyf

Dr. Kroll (1967) received the diploma in Electrical Engineering from the University of Dortmund (Germany) in 1992. He obtained the Ph.D./Dr.-Ing. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Duisburg (Germany) in 1996. From 1997 to 2006 he was with ABB Corporate Research and held assignments as research engineer, sub-department head, and R&D project manager. He and his team worked on advanced control, optimization and supervision of processing and power plants.

Since 2006 Dr. Kroll is with the University of Kassel and heads the department of Measurement & Control, Mechanical Engineering. He has written more than 60 scientific papers and is co-author of a book (Hydraulic Servo-Systems: Modelling, Identification and Control, Springer, 2002). His research interests include Computational Intelligence based methods for modelling, control, pattern recognition and optimization. His group works on applications in the fields of mobile systems, automotive as well as process and energy systems.

Matthew Turner, University of Leicester, United Kingdom

Matthew Turner was born in Corby, 1975, and educated locally. He obtained a BEng (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Surrey in 1996. In the same year he joined the Control Group in the Department of Engineering at the University of Leicester to study for a PhD. After completing his PhD in 2000, he stayed at Leicester as a Research Associate, working with Professor Ian Postlethwaite. In July 2002 he took up a Lectureship in control at Leicester where he has responsibility for a number of graduate and undergraduate courses.

His PhD study was concentrated in the areas of helicopter flight control system design and some more theoretical aspects of controlling systems subject to pathwise-in-time constraints. During his post-doctoral years he worked on anti-windup compensator synthesis and related problems, and was fortunate enough to spend the summer of 2000 visiting the University of California, Santa Barbara. For some time now he has been involved with several aerospace research establishments, both at home and abroad, and is also a member of a GARTEUR action group on pilot-induced-oscillations.

Dr. Flavio Prieto, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá

Flavio Prieto received a degree in electronic engineering in 1991 from Francisco José de Caldas Distrital University, a degree in physics in 1992 from the National University of Colombia, and his M.Sc. in electrical engineering in 1995 from Andes University, all in Bogotá, Colombia.
He received his Ph.D. in 2000 in industrial automation from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées at Lyon, France and from the École deTechnologie Supérieure, Université du Québec, Montréal, Canada. His Ph.D. dissertation was developed in cooperation between the two universities. He joined the National University of Colombia in February 2000 as a lecturer. His research activities have been focused on computer vision, image processing, automated inspection systems, and pattern recognition. He has been working on various research projects with groups from Canada, France and Mexico.
As a result of his research work he has produced more than fifty scientific papers in conferences and journals and he has supervised thirteen graduate students (Master and PhD).  He has been participating as a committee member in many national and international conferences. He also has been a reviewer for many national and international academic journals.