Anthony Stafford Beer was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics.
William Ross Ashby was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things. His first name was not used: he was known as Ross Ashby.
Sociocybernetics is an interdisciplinary science between sociology and general systems theory and cybernetics. The International Sociological Association has a specialist research committee in the area – RC51 – which publishes the (electronic) Journal of Sociocybernetics.
Second-order cybernetics, also known as the cybernetics of cybernetics, is the recursive application of cybernetics to itself and the reflexive practice of cybernetics according to such a critique. It is cybernetics where "the role of the observer is appreciated and acknowledged rather than disguised, as had become traditional in western science". Second-order cybernetics was developed between the late 1960s and mid 1970s by Heinz von Foerster and others, with key inspiration coming from Margaret Mead. Foerster referred to it as "the control of control and the communication of communication" and differentiated first-order cybernetics as "the cybernetics of observed systems" and second-order cybernetics as "the cybernetics of observing systems".
Francis Paul Heylighen is a Belgian cyberneticist investigating the emergence and evolution of intelligent organization. He presently works as a research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he directs the transdisciplinary "Center Leo Apostel" and the research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition". He is best known for his work on the Principia Cybernetica Project, his model of the Internet as a global brain, and his contributions to the theories of memetics and self-organization. He is also known, albeit to a lesser extent, for his work on gifted people and their problems.
WMSCI, the World Multi-conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, is a conference that has occurred annually since 1995, which emphasizes the systemic relationships that exist or might exist among different disciplines in the fields of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics. Organizers stress interdisciplinary communication, describing the conference as both wide in scope as a general international scientific meeting, and specifically focused in the manner of a subject-area conference.
Martin Smith is a former Professor of Robotics at Middlesex University in north London, UK. He is also a former President of the Cybernetics Society in the UK (1999–2020).
Ranulph Glanville was an Anglo-Irish cybernetician and design theorist. He was a founding vice-president of the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences (2006–2009) and president of the American Society for Cybernetics (2009–2014).
Charles François was a Belgian administrator, editor and scientist in the fields of cybernetics, systems theory and systems science, internationally known for his main work the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics.
Management cybernetics is concerned with the application of cybernetics to management and organizations. "Management cybernetics" was first introduced by Stafford Beer in the late 1950s and introduces the various mechanisms of self-regulation applied by and to organizational settings, as seen through a cybernetics perspective. Beer developed the theory through a combination of practical applications and a series of influential books. The practical applications involved steel production, publishing and operations research in a large variety of different industries. Some consider that the full flowering of management cybernetics is represented in Beer's books. However, learning continues.
Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with general principles that are relevant across multiple contexts, including in ecological, technological, economic, biological, cognitive and social systems and also in practical activities such as designing, learning, and managing. Cybernetics' transdisciplinary character has meant that it intersects with a number of other fields, leading to it having both wide influence and diverse interpretations.
Chien-Fu Jeff Wu is a Taiwanese-American statistician. He is the Coca-Cola Chair in Engineering Statistics and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is known for his work on the convergence of the EM algorithm, resampling methods such as the bootstrap and jackknife, and industrial statistics, including design of experiments, and robust parameter design.
Yi Lin, also known as Jeffrey Forrest and Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest, is a professor of mathematics, systems science, economics, and finance at Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (SSHE) and at several major universities in China. Lin has been an active researcher in the field of systems science since mid-1980s and serves as the founder and president of the International Institute for General Systems Studies (IIGSS).
Pharmacocybernetics is an upcoming field that describes the science of supporting drugs and medications use through the application and evaluation of informatics and internet technologies, so as to improve the pharmaceutical care of patients. It is an interdisciplinary field that integrates the domains of medicine and pharmacy, computer sciences and psychological sciences to design, develop, apply and evaluate technological innovations which improve drugs and medications management, as well as prevent or solve drug-related problems.
Nicholas Robert Jennings is a British computer scientist who was appointed Vice-Chancellor and President of Loughborough University in 2021. He was previously the Vice-Provost for Research and Enterprise at Imperial College London, the UK's first Regius Professor of Computer Science, and the inaugural Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government on National Security. His research covers the areas of AI, autonomous systems, agent-based computing and cybersecurity.
Laurence Dale Richards has been a key figure in the modern development of cybernetics as a transdisciplinary field of inquiry, often referred to as the new cybernetics. He was the first to create interdisciplinary masters and doctoral programs in engineering management, with curricula built explicitly on concepts drawn from systems theory and cybernetics. He served as president for both the American Society for Cybernetics (1986–88) and the American Society for Engineering Management (1998–99) and was elected an Academician in the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences in 2010.
Jason Jixuan Hu, is a Chinese American cyberneticist, independent scholar and managing director of WINTOP Organizational Learning Laboratory, and organizer/facilitator of the Club of Remy(Youtube Channel). He is noted for his work on "cognitive capacity in human communication, conflict resolution and cooperation solicitation," and on view on distance education in America.
Tom Scholte is a Canadian actor and academic. He is most noted for his performances in the film Last Wedding, for which he was a Genie Award nominee for Best Supporting Actor at the 22nd Genie Awards in 2002 and a Vancouver Film Critics Circle nominee for Best Actor in a Canadian Film at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2001, and The Dick Knost Show, for which he received a Vancouver Film Critics Circle nomination for Best Actor in a Canadian Film at the Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards 2013.
Haneef Akhtar Fatmi (1933-1995) was an Indian engineer specializing in cybernetics. He was born in Bhopal State and took a degree in Electrical Engineering at Karachi University (1951). While studying with Dennis Gabor and Abdus Salam at Imperial College he wrote his doctorate on ionized gases. Whilst at the London University, he helped found the Cybernetics Society.
