Information Acquisition in the Exploration of Random Fields -- A Computational Comparison of Alternatives to Including Uncertainty in Structured Population Models, -- Sorting: The Gauss Thermostat, the Toda Lattice and Double Bracket Equations, -- Rational Functions and Flows with Periodic Solutions -- Dynamic Programming or Direct Comparison?, -- A Maximum Entropy Solution of the Covariance Selection Problem for Reciprocal Processes -- Cumulative Distribution Estimation via Control Theoretic Smoothing Splines -- Global Output Regulation with Uncertain Exosystems -- A Survey on Boolean Control Networks: A State Space Approach -- Nonlinear Output Regulation: Exploring Non-minimum Phase Systems -- Application of a Global Inverse Function Theorem of Byrnes and Lindquist to a Multivariable Moment Problem with Complexity Constraint -- Unimodular Equivalence of Polynomial Matrices -- Sparse Blind Source Deconvolution with Application to High Resolution Frequency Analysis -- Sequential Bayesian Filtering via Minimum Distortion Quantization -- Pole Placement with Fields of Positive Characteristic -- High-Speed Model Predictive Control: An Approximate Explicit Approach -- Reflex-Type Regulation of Biped Robots -- Principal Tangent Sytem Reduction, -- The Contraction Coefficient of a Complete Gossip Sequence, -- Covariance Extension Approach to Nevanlinna-Pick Interpolation: Kimura-Georgiou Parameterization and Regular Solutions of Sylvester Equations -- A New Class of Control Systems Based on Non-equilibrium Games -- Rational Systems – Realization and Identification -- Semi-supervised Regression and System Identification, -- Path Integrals and Bézoutians for a Class of Infinite-Dimensional Systems.

In this edited collection we commemorate the 60th birthday of Prof. Christopher Byrnes and the retirement of Prof. Anders Lindquist from the Chair of Optimization and Systems Theory at KTH. These papers were presented in part at a 2009 workshop in KTH, Stockholm, honoring the lifetime contributions of Professors Byrnes and Lindquist in various fields of applied mathematics.