The 2002 IFAC Congress in Barcelona is the first Congress in the new millennium, and thus it offers a unique opportunity for IFAC Technical Committees to plan for their future. Each Coordinating Committee within IFAC was asked to prepare a Milestone Report that summarized past accomplishments and future challenges. The Milestone Report was organized around 6 questions that are given below in the manuscript. For Area 7 the future growth areas that were identified and which are discussed in the paper are: information technology, environmental applications, new sensor technologies, genomics, and mechatronics.