Special issue of Journal of Communications in Optimization Theory in honor of Professor Ezra Zeheb

In honor of the 85th birthday of Professor Ezra Zeheb, former Dean of the Faculty of Sciences and Head of Graduate Studies at HIT Holon Institute of Technology, the prestigious journal Communications in Optimization Theory will dedicate a special celebratory issue containing about 190 pages of research papers written by various researchers.

Professor Ezra Zeheb. Photo: Sivan Farge

The issue, edited by Prof. Robert Shorten (Imperial College, London) and Prof. Alexander Zaslavsky (Faculty of Mathematics, Technion), will focus on systems theory, control, and related topics, which is Professor Zeheb's research field.
This celebratory issue expresses the international scientific community's great appreciation for Professor Ezra Zeheb's work and achievements which include 66 published scientific papers in international journals and conferences to date.

This special issue will present 12 articles written by a select group of experts in the fields of control and systems theory. Most of the articles collected here were contributed by former students, research partners, friends, and colleagues of Ezra Zeheb, who were influenced by his scientific work. The authors are researchers from China, France, Britain, India, Ireland, Israel, Turkey, the Netherlands, and the United States.

"These articles cover a wide range of important problems and topics of current research interest. Therefore, we believe that this special issue will be very important to many researchers interested in recent developments in systems theory and control, as well as their many applications," say the special issue editors Robert Shorten and Alexander Zaslavsky.

Professor Ezra Zeheb has been engaged in research and teaching in the fields of control and systems theory for many years, in which he has achieved several significant results. He made a significant contribution to the theory and design of robustly stable systems, and with this citation, he was elected to the prestigious rank of IEEE Fellow.

In 1966, Professor Zeheb received his doctorate from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion. He serves now as the Head of Graduate Studies at HIT - Holon Institute of Technology and holds the position of Professor Emeritus of the Gerard Swope Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion.

Professor Ezra Zeheb is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contributions "to the theory and design of robustly stable systems"; he is a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Britain (IEE) and an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in Israel.

During his professional career, he served as the Technion's representative to the Government Council for Engineering and Architecture, was a member of the Technion's Board of Governors, a member of the Technion's Board of Trustees, a member of the Senate's Preparatory Committee for the appointment and promotion of senior academic staff at the Technion, a member of the committee for appointing vice presidents at the Technion, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology at the Technion. Professor Zeheb also worked as the Director of the Electronics Department at the Center for Research and Development Applications in the Ministry of Defense, Israel, served as an advisor to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, was a member of the technical team at Bell Telephone Laboratories, USA, and served as the head of the Department of Electronics Engineering at the Jerusalem College of Engineering.

As part of his public professional activities, he represents Israel on the Technical Committee for Robust Control of the International Federation of Automatic Control; serves as the Chairman of the Academic Council at Ruppin Academic Center; was a member of the Alon and Guastella Science and Engineering Awards Committee of the Council for Higher Education;  He was the chairman of the IEEE Israel Section; chairman of the IFAC Working Group on Robust Control; and a member of the IDF Intelligence Division Chief's Award Committee for Creative Thinking.