Daizhan Cheng is the creator of the novel and highly-useful product of matrices called the semi-tensor product (STP) or Cheng product. He holds a PhD from Washington University, St. Louis, and since 1990, he has served as a professor with the Institute of Systems Science, AMSS, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the author / co-author of 14 books, over 250 journal papers, and more than 150 conference papers. He received the Second National Natural Science Award in both 2008 and 2014, the Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Price of CAS in 2015, and the Automatica Best Paper Award (2008–2010), bestowed by the IFAC.