Fathi Ghorbel Fathi Ghorbel is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, Houston, Texas where he is also the Director of the Dynamic Systems and Control Laboratory, and the Robotics Laboratory, and the Co-Director of the Biomedical Systems and Instrumentation Lab. His research is in the areas of systems and control theory, robotics, and biomedical engineering systems. Dr. Ghorbel received the B.S. degree with honors from the Pennsylvania State University in 1985, the M.S. degree from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1991 all in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Ghorbel is a member of Sigma Xi, IEEE, ASME, IFAC, SIAM, and IASTED. He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Robotics and Automation, and an Associate Editor for the IEEE Control Systems Society Conference Editorial Board. E-mail: ghorbel@rice.edu URL: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~ghorbel,

James B. Dabney James B. Dabney is a Lecturer and Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University, Houston, Texas. His research is in the application of numerical optimization and optimal control techniques to problems in mechanical engineering, numerical simulation, and control. Dr. Dabney received the B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 1974, the M.S. degree in Process Monitoring and Control from University of Houston - Clear Lake in 1993, and the Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University in 1998. Dr. Dabney is a member of AIAA and ASME and a reviewer for the International Journal of Robotics and Automation, Simulation, and IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. E-mail: jdabney@rice.edu