Sigurd Skogestad was born in Norway in 1955. He received the Siv.Ing. degree (Diploma Engineer) in chemical engineering from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim in 1978. After finishing his military service at the Norwegian Defence Research Institute, he worked from 1980 to 1983 with Norsk Hydro in the areas of process design and simulation at their Reseach Center in Porsgrunn, Norway. He then spent 3.5 years in the US working towards his Ph.D. under the guidance of Manfred Morari, receiving the Ph.D. degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1987. He has been a professor of chemical engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) since 1987, and since 1999 he is Head of Department of Chemical Engineering.

He heads a group of about 10 Ph.D. students and is the Head of PROST which is the strong point center in process systems engineering in Trondheim - and involves about 50 people in various departments.

The goal of his research is to develop simple yet rigorous methods to solve problems of engineering significance. Research interests include the use of feedback as a tool to (1) reduce uncertainty (including robust control), (2) change the system dynamics (including stabilization), and (3) generallly make the system more well-behaved (including self-optimizing control). Other interests include limitations on performance in linear systems, control structure design and plantwide control, interactions between process design and control, and distillation column design, control and dynamics.

The author of more than 100 journal publications and 150 conference publications, he is the principal author together with Ian Postlethwaite of the book "Multivariable feedback control" published by Wiley in May 1996. In October 2000 he published a book on "Process engineering - mass and energy balances" and a second edition came in August 2003 (In Norwegian; , Prosessteknikk (Tapir, 2000/2003) (he is considering writing an English edition.)

Dr. Skogestad was awarded "Innstilling to the King" for his Siv.Ing. degree in 1979, a Fullbright fellowship in 1983, received the Ted Peterson Award from AIChE in 1989, the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award from IEEE in 1990, and the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award from the American Automatic Control Council in 1992. He was an Editor of Automatica during the period 1996-2002.