Editorial.

Abstract

As someone who has been researching in multidimensional, or nD, control systems since the early 1980s, it is a particular honor to become Editor-in-Chief of this journal in succession to the Founder, the late Nirmal Bose, and Zhiping Lin who took over after Nirmal’s untimely death. I would like to thank Zhiping on behalf of all of us: editors, associate editors, board members, authors and reviewers, and general readers for his sterling service. nD systems arise over a wide variety of areas and also the properties of the signals involved can vary greatly from one area to the next. The underlying commonality is that the signals are functions of more than one indeterminate. The diversity of applications means that output from research in nD systems exclusively appeared for many years in a wide range of conferences and journals. The founding of MDSSP provided a shared publication output and thereby, in my view, greatly expanded the transfer of analysis tools and ideas from one discipline to another, e.g., stability theory and tests from circuits and signal processing to control and vice versa. The bi-annual workshop (NDS) started bymy long standing friend and research collaborator Krzysztof Galkowski, with a supporting role from myself and others, is the only conference/workshop dedicated to nD systems research. I see the founding and success of MDSSP over the years as essential in the development of nD systems theory and applications. It is therefore essential that it continues to be above all else a premier outlet for the very best research and this will be my goal for the duration of my editorship. Currently there is a very healthy balance of papers accepted but not yet published, special issues in progress and a steady rate of submissions. This provides leeway for full discussion of any proposed changes and innovations and this is a course of action I will follow as editor-in-chief. Once a submission is received, the requirement for timely and high quality reviews requires dedicated editors and associate editors. The system used by MDSSP works very well and I can now see why a large number of associate editors is required. Continuity is also critical, especially in the transition from one editor-in-chief to the next, and I am delighted that Anton