who always challenged me to go further. I also would like to thank to the reading committee Prof.dr.ir. Jacquelien Scherpen, Prof.dr. Rafal Wisniewski and Prof.dr. Ian Manchester, for their nice comments and feedback of my thesis document. I am also grateful to Prof.dr. Henk Broer, Prof.dr.ir. Nathan van de Wouw, Prof.dr. Claudio de Persis, Dr. Hildeberto Jardón-Kojakhmetov and Dr.ir. Bart Besselink for accepting being part of the PhD committee. 2 Er gaat niets boven Groningen! To my paranymphs and beloved friends Pablo Borja and Alain Govaert, for their unconditional friendship and companionship during the different stages of my PhD time. The friendship with Pablo goes back to October 2013, when we meet during the Mexican Congress of Automatic Control in Ensenada Baja California, which was the first control conference for the both of us; remarkably, we did not meet at the conference itself but at the Mexican control scientists favorite networking spot, the Hussongs Cantina. On the other hand, I had the pleasure of meeting Alain when he started his PhD studies, first as classmate during the Mondays of DISC courses in Utrecht, and later as friend. I keep a lots of good memories with him exploring the different social spots in Groningen, networking sessions at the Benelux meetings on systems and control, and the recent trip to the ECC 2019 in Naples Italy. I also thank Alain's fellowship and effort for motivating me to do sports; it did not work though hehe. He is my best Dutch friend. Since probably it will take too long if I thank person per person, I want to thank in general to all the members and former members of the Jan C. Willems for Systems