Dear Friends and Colleagues,
As you are all aware, humankind is facing tre-
mendous technological challenges and opportu-
nities at present, for almost all of which control
and automation are important components. Re-
quirements and expectations on the control and
automation solutions are constantly growing and
it requires ever increasing methodological and
technical knowledge to address these increas-
ingly complex and complicated tasks.
Fortunately, our community has always been
able to attract some of the brightest people to
the field that are working in industry and research
institutions. It is essential to make sure that our
field remains attractive for young people, so that
many of the best choose this direction. Excellent
educational programs, constant renewal and
inclusion of novel ideas and the proper com-
munication of our role, values and success are
very important for this. But so is recognition.
IFAC therefore recognizes great achievements
and talent through its awards program granting
IFAC prizes for different achievements in various
categories.
Five IFAC Major Awards honor extraordinary life-
time contributions, outstanding contributions to
methods, tools and instrumentation, high impact
papers, significant contributions to industrial ap-
plications of control and the outstanding con-
tributions of a young researcher. Distinguished
individuals may be honored by the IFAC Council
as IFAC Fellows for their extraordinary contribu-
tions in our field. The relevance of education is
emphasized through the Harold Chestnut Con-
trol Engineering Textbook Prize.
Furthermore, the Journal Awards, which are
awarded every three years, acknowledge the
best research articles published in the IFAC
Journals and the Congress Prizes honor the best
papers presented at the IFAC World Congress
including the best paper in the area of applica-
tions, the best paper by a young author and the
best interactive paper. While the space in this
column is quite limited, check out our webpage
www.ifac-control.org for more details on all IFAC
awards and see some of the other articles in this
newsletter.
For identifying award-worthy candidates for
each award, IFAC heavily depends on you.
Therefore, I would like to encourage everybody
to nominate suitable candidates for the IFAC
awards through the respective channels or by
contacting the IFAC secretariat in Laxenburg.
Best wishes from Stuttgart,
Frank Allgöwer
(IFAC President 2017-2020)
October 2017 From the IFAC President
Spotlight on IFAC awards