President's Corner

For many of you the 2008 American Control Conference (ACC) was your first ACC, so it is worth reviewing the role of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC). The AACC is the umbrella organization responsible for organizing the annual ACC and representing the member societies in the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). The AACC board of directors, composed of representatives from each of the eight member societies, meets twice a year, at the ACC and CDC. The board is responsible for approving the budget for each ACC, and the nomination and selection of the General and Program Chairs for each conference.

Each year a survey of participants is conducted, and the last survey indicated a high level of satisfaction with the 2007 ACC in New York City. There was general agreement that a hotel in the center of a city is preferred over convention centers with multiple hotels. There was also a preference for keeping the conference in traditional cities in the Northeast, West Coast and Midwest, while expanding to include Canadian cities, such as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. A link to a summary of the survey is provided to the left. At the meeting of the AACC Board in Seattle, Montreal was approved as the site for the 2012 ACC. Tariq Samad, 2012 General Chair, has done an excellent job of scouting the possible hotels and is in the process of signing a hotel contract. The 2012 ACC will be held in cooperation with the Canadian National Member Organization of IFAC. Nomination deadline for the AACC awards is November 1, 2008.

I encourage you to nominate outstanding candidates for each of the AACC Awards. Please contact your society colleagues, leadership, and society award committees and nominate a colleague today.

The 2008 AACC Awards follow:
The Richard E. Bellman Award was given to Pravin Varaiya for pioneering contributions to stochastic control, hybrid systems and the unification of theories of control and computation.
The Control Engineering Practice Award was given to Babatunde A. Ogunnaike for pioneering the application and implementation of model predictive control, nonlinear state estimation, nonlinear control, and product control to polymer and granulation processes.
The Donald P. Eckman Award was given to Asu Ozdaglar for contributions to optimization theory, game theory and its applications to congested markets, and learning in large networks with applications to human and social networks.
The John R. Ragazzini Award was given to Stephen Yurkovich for leadership in control education through curriculum and laboratory development, for contributions in continuing education for control engineers in industry, and for promotion of student involvement in engineering professionalism.

I thank Hassan Khalil for chairing the AACC Awards Committee; Hassan will continue to chair the committee for the next two years.

2009 American Control Conference
The AACC will hold the 28th American Control Conference (ACC) Wednesday through Friday, June 10-12, 2009, at the Hyatt Regency in St. Louis, Missouri. I look forward to seeing you in the Gateway to the West! I thank you all for your participation in past and upcoming AACC events.

B. Wayne Bequette
President, AACC 2008-2009