Calculus of Variations, Optimal Control, and Mathematical Biology

This publication is a Special Issue of the journal Axioms entitled “Calculus of Variations, Optimal Control and Mathematical Biology: A Themed Issue Dedicated to Professor Delfim F. M. Torres on the Occasion of His 50th birthday”. This Special Issue is dedicated to Professor Delfim F. M. Torres on his 50th birthday, as a recognition of his significant contributions to Mathematics, in particular regarding the calculus of variations, optimal control, and mathematical biology. Professor Torres is a distinguished University Professor, a highly cited researcher in Mathematics (in the top 1% for Mathematics in the Web of Science in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2019), and a lifetime member of the American Mathematical Society. He is one of the founders of fractional variational analysis and fractional optimal control, and has tremendously contributed to the theory of variational analysis, with applications to many other fields such as optimization, optimal control, time-scale analysis, and mathematical epidemiology and biology. Professor Torres is the recipient of several international awards, including the 325 Years of Fractional Calculus Award, which is a testament to the high regard in which his achievements in the area of fractional calculus and its applications are held. He has been included in the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University in 2020, 2021, and 2022, both as a career-long highly cited researcher and as a single calendar year highly cited researcher. He is considered by Thomson Reuters as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds, has won a Publons Peer Review Award as a world’s top peer reviewer, and was recognized in the top 1% of reviewers. He has also won a Sentinel of Science Award. Many of his research works have been considered top papers in their area, served as research highlights, and been awarded prizes. Besides being a great scholar, he is also a great teacher who has already supervised twenty-four Ph.D. students from all over the world. This Special Issue covers many of Professor Torres’ research interests, which include several areas of pure and applied mathematical sciences, such as approximations and expansions, biology, and other natural sciences, calculus of variations, and optimal control, optimization, difference and functional equations, fluid mechanics, functional analysis, game theory, economics, social and behavioral sciences, general measure and integration, the mechanics of deformable solids, number theory, numerical analysis, operations research, mathematical programming, ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations, quantum theory, real functions, systems and control theory, fractional calculus and its applications, integral equations and transforms, higher transcendental functions and their applications, q-series and q-polynomials, inventory modeling and optimization, dynamic equations on time scales, and mathematical modeling.