Signe Kjelstrup is a professor of physical chemistry since 1985 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. Since 2005, she holds a part time chair on irreversible thermodynamics and sustainable processes at the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. Her works in irreversible thermodynamics concern electrochemical cells, membrane systems and entropy pro- duction minimization in process equipments. She is honorary doctor of the University of North East China, and has been a guest professor of Kyoto University. Her book on irreversible thermodynamics coauthored with K.S. Førland and T. Førland (Wiley, 1988 and 1994, Tapir 2001) has been translated into Japanese and Chinese. Dick Bedeaux is professor of physical chemistry at the University of Leiden since 1984, and holds since 2002 a part time chair at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. Bedeaux, together with Albano and Mazur, extended the theory of irreversible thermodynamics to surfaces. In the context of equilibrium thermodynamics he has worked on curved surfaces. Bedeaux is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and the recipient of the Onsager Medal from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Together with Jan Vlieger he wrote the book Optical Properties of Surfaces (Imperial College Press, 2002 and 2004). Eivind Johannessen is dr.ing. from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and is presently a post doc at the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. His doctor thesis on the state of systems with minimum entropy production was awarded Best doctor thesis defended at NTNU in 2004.