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

Global Concerns XXXIII

The most successful IFAC World Congress in Seoul, South Korea, has just concluded as this column is being composed. Success can be measured by statistics, such as number of papers (more than 2,700) or number of attendees (more than 2,800) and also by the many expressions of praise from many participants. However, a true measure of success can be attributed to the generous hospitality of the Korean NMO under the leadership of President Wook Hyun Kwon. The attention to details has been amazing, and not a single thing was left to chance (including the weather -- umbrellas were provided in case it rained but somehow the rain held off until after the Congress concluded). On the technical side, the Congress Program included nine pleanry speakers, three from each the continents, ASia, America, and Europe. The plenary talks were nicely balanced between academia and industry. In addition to the large number of regular sessions, the Program included video sessions and highlight sessions to attract industry participants. During the Congress banquet an interseting perspective on IFAC was presented by former IFAC Vice President, Rolf Isermann, who chaired the IFAC'50 celebration in Heidelberg in 2006. His remarks discussed IFAC past, present, and future.

On behalf of the US NMO we extend a heartfelt thank you to President Kwon for a very successful and enjoyable Congress. It is expected that President Kwon will report in more detail about the Congress elsewhere in this newsletter. It is now critical that the US NMO turns its attention to the coming triennium and the future. The last triennium has seen a decline in US IFAC activities (only one event was organized in the US during that period). However, the future looks very promising based on the new appointments of 7 IFAC Technical Committee Chairs (TCC) from the US. The organization of IFAC technical events is strongly tied to Technical Committees and their activities. The appointment of the largest number of TCC from the US is a strong indication that IFAC is anxious to see a resurgence of IFAC activities in the US. The 7 TC Chairs are:

Robust Control TCC: Faryar Jabbari, Univ. of California, Irvine, Components and Technologies for Control TCC: Roberto Horowitz, Univ. of California, Berkeley Mechatronic Systems TCC: Masayoshi Tomizuka, Univ. of California, Berkeley Chemical Process Control TCC: Francis J. Doyle, Univ. of California, Sanat Barbara Transportation Systems TCC: Anastasios Chassiakos, California State Univ, Long Beach Economic and Business Systems TCC: Fei-Yue Wang, Univ. of Arizona Control Education TCC: Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, Univ. of Kansas

It is interesting that 5 out of the 7 TCC are from California. This means that we now need a strong participation from other regions of the US. We do hope that the IFAC activities in the US will now see an increase due to the efforts of the new TCC. Another notable participant in IFAC activities is AACC Secretary, Pradeep Misra who has been very active in the development of the IFAC PapersOnLine which was inaugurated during the Congress. He could serve as a model to all volunteers in IFAC and AACC.

Another measure of the US involvement in IFAC is the election of IFAC Fellows. During the last three years 46 new Fellows were elected with 16 Fellows from the US. This is a very strong indication of the continued strong role the US can play in IFAC.

Abraham Haddad
IFAC Council Member