Systems, Man & Cybernetics - October 2015 - 28

multidisciplinary research challenges
Ministry of Education of China (1997),
and opportunities in the modern world
a Second Class National Award of Exthat are major concellent Tex tbook
cerns of the SMCS.
from the Ministry of
Mu ltid iscipli na r y
Education of China
The final goal of
research presents
(2002), three First
the research on
emerging and promClass Ministerial
RBC and E-CARGO
ising theories, methResearch Achieveis actually to save
odologies, and modment Awards from
els. Many exciting,
the C o m m i s s io n
and make use of, as
pioneering topics in
of Science Technolmuch as possible,
the industry can find
ogy and Industry for
the resources in
a matching research
National Defense of
the world.
area in the SMCS.
China (1997, 1994,
This Society has
and 1991), and a Secspawned many sociond Class Ministerial
eties in the IEEE and
Excellent Textbook
I believe it will continue that process
Award of the Ministry of Electronics
well into the future.
Industry of China (1996).
SMCM: What is the most coveted reSMCM: How do you see the SMCS of
ward that you seek?
the future?
Zhu: I seek broad acceptance of
Zhu: I believe that SMCS will conRBC theory and its model E-CARGO.
tinue to contribute to the IEEE comI believe that RBC is a powerful themunity and the world because of
ory and E-CARGO is an abstract and
its support for multidisciplinary reaesthetically pleasing model for the
search and practice. In the SMCS, I
SMC research community. RBC and
have encountered many great thinkE-CARGO can be used to model many
ing methodologies seldom considered
cutting-edge research problems in
in computer science research.
different areas such as systems engiFrom the SMCS's perspective, comneering, management, collaboration,
puter science can offer contributions
supercomputing, service computing,
beyond what I could have imagined becloud computing, and even big data.
fore becoming involved in the Society's
RBC and E-CARGO provide a new
activities. There are many growing

way to investigate and discover problems in collaboration. For example, assignment problems have been investigated deeply and widely in the area of
operational research (OR) in the past
decades. However, using RBC and
E-CARGO, a new assignment problem,
group role assignment (GRA) and
GRA with additional constraints, has
recently been discovered. Note that
GRA and related problems have not
ever been investigated in OR. AC and
AC systems are also proposed based
on RBC and E-CARGO.
SMCM: What keeps you up at night
worrying?
Zhu: I must be vigilant to ensure the
quality of my work, its progress, and its
organization. I must never let my peers
down. Volunteer commitments must
be honored. New ideas must be recorded whenever they arise. Associated experimental activities must be contemplated. Costs are too much high when
people deal with collaboration.
I am also worried about the exhaustion of our resources, including
those that are both natural and human. The final goal of the research on
RBC and E-CARGO is actually to save
and make use of, as much as possible,
the resources in the world. These are
some of the things, in my professional
life, that keep me up at night.

Maria Pia Fanti

management and modeling of complex systems (such as automated
manufacturing systems), automatic
guided vehicle systems, railway and
traffic networks, supply chains, and
health-care systems. I have published more than 230 papers and
two textbooks on these topics.
The motivation for my contributions to research, teaching, and volunteering can be stated simply in a few
words: my fondness for studies when
I was a student and my enthusiastic
passion for my job throughout my career. As a student, I found engineering studies very interesting, and the
learning was not an effort but a real

am currently a full professor of
systems and control engineering in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSMC.2016.2520072
Date of publication: 28 April 2016

of the Polytechnic of Bari in Italy,
and chair of the Laboratory of Control and Automation in the Department of Electrical and Information
Engineering. My research interests
include discrete event systems,
Petri nets, consensus protocols,

IEEE SyStEmS, man, & CybErnEtICS magazInE October 2015

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