This special issue of International Journal of Dynamics and Control comprises papers that were presented at the Mini-symposium on Random Dynamical Systems: Recent advances and new directions at European Nonlinear Dynamics Conference (ENOC 2014) held on 6–11 July 2014 in Vienna, Austria.

The purpose of the mini-symposium was to share and discuss recent advances, trends and emerging new research directions and approaches related to the dynamic systems subjected to random excitations. The mini-symposium gathered people interested in analytical and computational methods in stochastic dynamics with applications to a variety of fields including transport, renewable energy and energy harvesting with contributions to theories of stochastic dynamics as well as stochastic optimal control.

The special issue consists of 7 papers arranged in alphabetic order. The Guest Editors would like to express their gratitude to the Editor-in-Chief J.Q. Sun for helping to prepare this special issue.