SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC GmbH (SCHNEIDER), Germany

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC is the world's power and control specialist. Through its world-class brands, Merlin Gerin, Square D and Telemecanique, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC anticipates and satisfies its customers' requirements in the residential, building, industry and energy and infrastructure markets. With 112,000 employees and operations in 190 countries, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC generated sales of €13.7 billion in 2006 through 13,000 distributor outlets.

The SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC Industrial Automation brands offer its target industrial process end users and OEM customers superior products and services throughout their automation journey. SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC Business Automation Unit as part of SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC Industries employs around 2000 people. Key customers like Daimler Chrysler, Coca Cola, VW, Mars, Opel, Merck, General Motors, Ford, BASF, Thyssen, Burton using the competencies and project experiences in the automation and electrical distribution business of SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC Industrial Automation. Innovative technologies like PC based control systems are developed and driven by Schneider Electric well as contributions to international standards for automation like IEC 61131 and IEC 61499. Further Schneider Electric is leading in the combination of IT and industrial automation, in the usage of Internet based protocols and in the development of web-based service-oriented architectures and agent-oriented software for flexible control and collaborative automation systems.

Dr.-Ing. Armando Walter Colombo. Manager of Anticipation/Advanced Projects in the CAPS Department, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC BU Automation, France, Germany and the EU. He received the Doctor degree in Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, in 1998. From 1999 to 2000 was Adjunct Professor in the Group of Robotic Systems and CIM, Faculty of Technical Sciences, New University of Lisbon, Portugal. He joined SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC Industrial Automation in 2001. His research interests are in the fields of intelligent supervisory theory, service-oriented architectures, factory automation, embedded systems. Dr. Colombo has participated in many international projects and has more than 150 refeered publications in journals, books and conference proceedings. He is a senior member of the IEEE, member of the AdCom of the IEEE IES and member of the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., Chair of the IEEE IES Technical Committee on Industrial Agents and serving as Associated Editor of the IFAC Associated Journal ATP-International.

Currently, Dr. Colombo is co-ordinating the FP6 European Integrated Project on “Service-Oriented Cross-Layer Infrastructures for Smart Embedded Devices (SOCRADES)”, which counts on the participation of major European players like SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC, Siemens, ABB, ARM, SAP, and other 9 consortial partners. He is also acting as deputy leader of the cluster “Production Automation and Control (PAC)” of the FP6 NoE on “Innovative Production Machines and Systems (I*PROMS: http:// www.iproms.org )”.

Dr. Nataliya Popova. Dr. Popova received her first Master Degree in Electronics and Automatics Engineering from the Technical University (Sofia), Bulgaria in 2002; the second Master Degree in Power Electronics from Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France in 2003; and the Doctor Degree from Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France in 2006. The PhD thesis with subject "Innovative cooling techniques applied to three-dimensional electronic packagings", was a part of the European project "Microcooling" in cooperation with Thales Avionics (France), Alcatel Space (Belgium), EHP (Belgium) and Selex Sistemi Integrati (Italy). Besides the scientific work, she had the chance to improve her knowledge in other professional fields e.g. international relationship. She had as well experience in giving courses in the domain of power electronics and thermal management.

In September 2006, Dr. Popova joined “project management organization (PMO) – EU projects team in SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC GmbH (Seligenstadt, Germany).