MARTIN BROKATE is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Technical University, Munich, Germany. He received his PhD in Mathematics at Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, in 1980, and was appointed to the Chair of Numerical Analysis and Control Theory in 1999. He was the spokesman of Special Research Area 438 “Mathematical Modeling, Simulation and Verification in Material-Oriented Processes and Intelligent Systems” from 2001 to 2004. He was the Dean of the Department of Mathematics in 2003–2006. His interests lie in applied analysis and control theory, with a focus on the mathematical analysis of rate-independent evolutions and hysteresis operators.   PAMMY MANCHANDA is Senior Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India and Secretary of the Indian Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ISIAM). She has published more than 50 research papers in several international journals of repute, edited4 proceedings for international conferences of the ISIAM and co-authored 3 books. She has visited the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) (a UNESCO institution) at Trieste, Italy, many times to carry out her research activities, attended and delivered talks and chaired sessions at several international conferences and workshops across the globe, including the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) during 1999–2015 and the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM). She is the managing editor of the Indian Journal of Industrial and Applied Mathematics and a member of the editorial board of the Springer book series Industrial and Applied Mathematics. ABUL HASAN SIDDIQI is a distinguished scientist and Adjunct Professor at the School of Basic Sciences and Research, and Coordinator at the Centre for Advanced Research in Applied Mathematics and Physics (CARAMP) at Sharda University, Greater Noida, India. He was a visiting consultant at ICTP; Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman; MIMOS, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and a professor at several reputed universities including Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India; and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He has a long association with ICTP (a regular associate, guests of the director and senior associate). He was awarded the German Academic exchange Fellowship thrice to carry out mathematical research in Germany. He has published more than 100 research papers jointly with his research collaborators, 13 books and edited proceedings of 17 international conferences, as well as supervised 29 PhD scholars. He is the founder secretary and the current President of the ISIAM, which celebrated its Silver Jubilee in January 2016. He is the editor-in-chief of the Indian Journal of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (published by ISIAM) and the Springer’s book series Industrial and Applied Mathematics.