Marco Ariola was born in Naples, Italy in 1971. He graduated in Electronic Engineering with honors in 1995 at the University of Naples Federico II. He worked for the Italian Aerospace Research Centre from 1995 to 1996, as a researcher in the group of Flight Mechanics and Control. Then he received a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2000 from the University of Naples Federico II. In 1997 and 1998 he was a visiting researcher at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and for several periods between 1998 and 2000 Visiting Researcher at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico, USA. He has also spent long periods at research laboratories for controlled thermonuclear fusion, and particularly in Japan, Naka at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, and in England at the JET (Joint European Torus), where he was responsible for numerous experiments. Presently he is EUROfusion deputy project leader for DEMO diagnostic and control (WPDC). From July 2000 to March 2005 he has been Assistant Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Naples Federico II. From March 2005 to December 2012 he has been Associate Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Naples Parthenope, where, since December 2012 he is Full Professor of Automatic Control. His research is directed both to methodology issues, such as the study of stability and stabilization of uncertain systems, and to relevant applications, such as control of the plasma in machines for nuclear fusion and planning and tracking of trajectories for UAVs. His research activity is documented by more than 150 international publications, appeared as articles in international journals or conference proceedings. He is also co-author of two monographs for Springer-Verlag (“Magnetic Control of Tokamak Plasmas”, and “Finite-Time Stability and Control”) and of the chapter on “Input-Output Stability” for the “Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering”. He has held numerous positions at the University; in particular, he has been Chairman of the Management Engineering Course at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Naples Parthenope from May 2007 to December 2011, and Member of the Commission to apply the changes to the Statute of the University of Naples Parthenope. Currently he is the Coordinator of the PhD program in “Information Engineering” and Coordinator of the “Presidio di Qualità” of the University. He worked as a reviewer of research projects for many institutions, including the Ministry of Education for PRIN and FIRB, the Agence Nationale de la Recherche French, the US Army Research Office, the Department of Energy of the United States. He was invited to serve in committees for awarding the title of PhD at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Eindhoven University of Technology. Since 2006 he is Associate Editor of the Editorial Board Conference of the IEEE Control Systems Society and, since 2006, IEEE Senior Member. Since 2017 he is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.