The paradigm of complexity is pervading both science and engineering, le- ing to the emergence of novel approaches oriented at the development of a systemic view of the phenomena under study; the de?nition of powerful tools for modelling, estimation, and control; and the cross-fertilization of di?erent disciplines and approaches. One of the most promising paradigms to cope with complexity is that of networked systems. Complex, dynamical networks are powerful tools to model, estimate, and control many interesting phenomena, like agent coordination, synch- nization, social and economics events, networks of critical infrastructures, resourcesallocation, informationprocessing, controlovercommunicationn- works, etc. Advances in this ?eld are highlighting approaches that are more and more oftenbasedondynamicalandtime-varyingnetworks, i.e.networksconsisting of dynamical nodes with links that can change over time. Moreover, recent technological advances in wireless communication and decreasing cost and size of electronic devices are promoting the appearance of large inexpensive interconnected systems, each with computational, sensing and mobile ca- bilities. This is fostering the development of many engineering applications, which exploit the availability of these systems of systems to monitor and control very large-scale phenomena with ?ne resoluti

The paradigm of complexity is pervading both science and engineering, le- ing to the emergence of novel approaches oriented at the development of a systemic view of the phenomena under study; the de?nition of powerful tools for modelling, estimation, and control; and the cross-fertilization of di?erent disciplines and approaches. One of the most promising paradigms to cope with complexity is that of networked systems. Complex, dynamical networks are powerful tools to model, estimate, and control many interesting phenomena, like agent coordination, synch- nization, social and economics events, networks of critical infrastructures, resourcesallocation, informationprocessing, controlovercommunicationn- works, etc. Advances in this ?eld are highlighting approaches that are more and more oftenbasedondynamicalandtime-varyingnetworks, i.e.networksconsisting of dynamical nodes with links that can change over time. Moreover, recent technological advances in wireless communication and decreasing cost and size of electronic devices are promoting the appearance of large inexpensive interconnected systems, each with computational, sensing and mobile ca- bilities. This is fostering the development of many engineering applications, which exploit the availability of these systems of systems to monitor and control very large-scale phenomena with ?ne resoluti

This Festschrift is intended as a homage to our esteemed colleague, friend and maestro Giorgio Picci on the occasion of his sixty-?fth birthday. We have knownGiorgiosince our undergraduatestudies at the University of Padova, wherewe ?rst experiencedhisfascinatingteachingin theclass ofSystem Identi?cation. While progressing through the PhD program, then continuing to collaborate with him and eventually becoming colleagues, we have had many opportunitiesto appreciate the value of Giorgio as a professor and a scientist, and chie?y as a person. We learned a lot from him and we feel indebted for his scienti?c guidance, his constant support, encouragement and enthusiasm. For these reasons we are proud to dedicate this book to Giorgio. The articles in the volume will be presented by prominent researchers at the "- ternational Conference on Modeling, Estimation and Control: A Symposium in Honor of Giorgio Picci on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday," to be held in Venice on October 4-5, 2007. The material covers a broad range of topics in mathematical systems theory, esti- tion, identi?cation and control, re?ecting the wide network of scienti?c relationships established during the last thirty years between the authors and Giorgio. Critical d- cussion of fundamental concepts, close collaboration on speci?c topics, joint research programs in this group of talented people have nourished the development of the ?eld, where Giorgio has contributed to establishing several cornerstones.

This open access book provides a comprehensive treatment of recent developments in kernel-based identification that are of interest to anyone engaged in learning dynamic systems from data. The reader is led step by step into understanding of a novel paradigm that leverages the power of machine learning without losing sight of the system-theoretical principles of black-box identification. The authors' reformulation of the identification problem in the light of regularization theory not only offers new insight on classical questions, but paves the way to new and powerful algorithms for a variety of linear and nonlinear problems. Regression methods such as regularization networks and support vector machines are the basis of techniques that extend the function-estimation problem to the estimation of dynamic models. Many examples, also from real-world applications, illustrate the comparative advantages of the new nonparametric approach with respect to classic parametric prediction error methods. The challenges it addresses lie at the intersection of several disciplines so Regularized System Identification will be of interest to a variety of researchers and practitioners in the areas of control systems, machine learning, statistics, and data science.This is an open access book.