Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am regularly surprised and impressed to
discover the diverse talents of the many re-
searchers and engineers beyond their deep
knowledge in the systems and control field. Did
you know, for example, that Bob Bitmead, the
Editor in Chief of the IFAC Journal of Systems
and Control, is a passionate player of Austral-
ian Football? Or did you suspect that former
IFAC president Ian Craig performs in concerts
as a cellist? I am very excited to bring some of
those talents on stage at the IFAC 2020 World
Congress. But I am not talking about Australian
Rules Football or about kickboxing, sorry Bob. I
am talking about initiating the world’s first con-
trol orchestra* ) .
How can this possibly work? The idea is to
bring together passionate musicians among
the World Congress participants, practice on
site during the IFAC World Congress and then
perform live for all the Congress attendees. For
this unique event, we are looking for interested
researchers in the field of automatic control
with some previous musical experience. So,
if Mozart, pianissimo or musical scale rings a
bell, or you’re simply curious about this world’s
first control orchestra, then sign up to receive
further information over the next months and
stay ‘tuned’ with no strings attached via https://
www.ifac2020.org/events and stay ‘tuned’ with
no strings attached!
As you can see from this control orchestra
plans, the preparations for the next World Con-
gress are already well on their way for this main
IFAC event taking place July 12 to 17, 2020 in
Berlin, Germany. The conference venue and the
location for the conference banquet (real Berlin
style) have already been arranged and plans
for the technical program with various special
submissions have been established. There will
be oral, interactive, and demonstrator contribu-
tions as well as video submission, to say the
least. Even the submission deadline is already
fixed: Draft Manuscript Submission Deadline
is October 31st, 2019. If you’re interested in
the first Call for Papers, how the preparations
for the World Congress are progressing, what
other interesting and creative non-scientific
program elements will be introduced or simply
forgot which date to block in your calendar, you
can always visit https://www.ifac2020.org/ to
stay up-to-date.
With all the preparations going well, I am con-
fident that the Berlin World Congress will be a
memorable event and I am looking forward to
welcoming you in 2020 to Germany’s exciting
capital city already now. Berlin is unique and
very different to many other European capital
cities. Some say that the best part of Berlin is
that it is not perfect but ever-changing, bursting
with culture, history, creativity and unconven-
tional solutions.
So, I encourage you to study the Call for Pa-
pers, think about interesting research to pre-
sent and, possibly, dust off your instruments! In
the name of the whole organizing team I want
to wholeheartedly invite you to the IFAC 2020
World Congress and I think we can all look
forward to this congress of high scientific level
with many special program elements, on and
off topic.
Best wishes from Stuttgart
Frank Allgöwer
* ) at least as far as we know. Otherwise, we will simply try to be the biggest, or the best 😊
August 2018 From the IFAC President
The world's first control orchestra at IFAC 2020