Bernhard Maschke has graduated as engineer in telecommunications from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France, in 1984. He received his Ph.D. degree in Automatic Control in 1990 for his work on the control of robotic manipulators with flexible arms performed at the Advanced Robotics Engineering Unit of the Atomic Energy Commision (CEA) in Fontenay–aux–Roses, (France). He then received the Habilitation to Direct Research from the University of Paris-Sud, Orsay, France in 1998 for his work on Port Hamiltonian systems. He has been Associate Professor at the Laboratory of Industrial Automation of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France from 1990 until 2000. Since September 2000, he is Professor of Automatic Control at the Laboratory of Control and Chemical Engineering (LAGEP UMR CNRS 5007) of the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France. His research interests concern the system’s theory and control of open and complex multi-physical systems. He contributed to the formulation of physical systems’ theory in terms of port-Hamiltonian systems and the development of passive controllers based on the assignment of the geometric structure in closed loop. His current research activity mainly concerns the geometric structure of Irreversible Thermodynamic systems, Boundary Port Hamiltonian systems defined on Lagrange submanifolds in finite and infinite-dimension and the optimal control based on the minimisation of the exergy and entropy creation.

Boussad Hamroun is an Associate Professor at LAGEPP and at the Department of Electrical and Process Engineering University Lyon 1, involved in publications on subjects such as robust control of bilinear systems and heat exchanger modeling. He co-supervises the EEEA bachelor's degree and teaches courses in automation and linear dynamic systems.