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...

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,...