IFAC's New Presence on Social Media
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PHONE (+43 2236) 71 4 47 | FAX (+43 2236) 72 8 59 | E-MAIL: [email protected] www.ifac-control.org IFAC’s New Presence on No.6 Social Media December 2015 IN THIS ISSUE: Connect with IFAC on Facebook, IFAC’s New Presence on Twitter and the IFAC Blog! Social Media Event Report: ACC 2015 As part of the IFAC Social Media Strategy, IFAC supports the mandate of the IFAC media policy. has now established a blog (available at http:// The primary contact point for the publishing IFAC Council 2015 blog.ifac-control.org) and a presence in Twitter of the articles takes place on the IFAC blog and Facebook. (blog.ifac-control.org) and is simultaneously Event Report: Fast ZERO 2015 announced on IFAC’s Twitter (@IFAC_Control) Since the introduction of the new brand identity, and Facebook (IFACcontrol) pages as a means Mechatronics Journal: Changes IFAC has been developing and implementing a of driving traffic to the IFAC website and blog Annual Reviews in Control: Re- coordinated social media strategy with the aim page. cent Editorial Changes of increased visibility and growing engagement of matters concerning automatic control. The To supplement each article and to drive contin- Event Report: IBCE 2015 ultimate goal is to share knowledge and stir ued discussion around this topic it is hoped that conversation about the influence of automatic supplementing posts in Twitter and Facebook Who’s Who in IFAC: Radhakant control in today’s society with the wider public will grow the interest and subsequently the dis- Padhi, IFAC Council Member audience. cussion around the primary themes. Where and when required, aggregated content related to Event Report: DCDS 2015 The first phase of the social media strategy, each bi-monthly post will be shared on Twitter Event Report BMS 2015 which was to establish an online presence, was and Facebook to stir the conversation. collectively developed by the IFAC Social Me- Forthcoming Events dia Liaison (Jakob Stoustrup) and Studio UHU, The activity and growth of these platforms are a Cape Town based design and communication monitored using the latest social media analyt- agency responsible for the design of the IFAC ics tools, which can publish results on either Reminder: IFAC identity in 2014 in cooperation with the IFAC a high level or if required, show granular user Major Medals President Janan Zaytoon and the IFAC Secre- activity. With the first two articles having been and Fellow tariat. It was during the first six months of 2015 launched in September 2015 the Twitter ac- that the planning and implementation of re- count has gained over forty followers (and grow- Nominations: sources, infrastructure and operational capac- ing) while the blog has received over one hun- Deadlines and Calls ity had to be confirmed before the prospect of dred views. It is too early to evaluate the level of launching the IFAC on social media was to be success, as one would require at least another The calls for nominations and all forms realized. three to six months of continuous engagement for IFAC Fellows and IFAC Major Med- in order to establish a set pattern but it is clear als for the 2014-2017 triennium are It is widely regarded that one of the corner- that people are already taking notice of IFAC on available on the IFAC website. stones of a successful social media campaign social media. The prospect of building an online is the ability to generate consistent, relevant community and engaging with them on the role Deadlines and engaging content to one’s audience. Tak- of automatic control in our modern society is ing into consideration the complexity, size and looking good. IFAC Fellow Nominations (Please note: overlapping ‘streams’ of content it was decided IFAC Fellows are now awarded on a tri- to ‘feed’ content into the social media chan- All readers of this newsletter are encouraged ennial and not yearly basis!) nels by means of articles generated by the IFAC to support the IFAC Social Media Strategy by Technical Committees. Taking into considera- following and retweeting/sharing the IFAC blog Fellow Nominations: 12 January 2016 tion the workload and responsibilities of the TC and participating in the discussions at the IFAC members, it was decided to rely on designated Twitter and Facebook accounts. New material is Fellow References: 2 February 2016 voluntary TC members and to initially limit the constantly posted so check these sites often for posting articles to two a month. updates and your chance to connect and dis- Major Medal Nominations: 15 February cuss issues relating to control engineering with 2016. Contributed blog articles from the IFAC TCs are the worldwide IFAC community! edited and curated by the IFAC Social Media Li- All nominations and reference materi- aison before the scheduled post in order to en- Submitted by Jakob Stoustrup, IFAC Social Me- als are to be sent to the IFAC Secre- sure that the content and quality of each article dia Liason tariat, [email protected]. No.6 Dec. .2015 Page 2 American Control Conference 2015 IFAC Council 2015 1-3 July 2015, Chicago, Il, USA 4 July 2015 The 2015 American Control Conference (ACC) Ames of Texas A&M University for “fundamental The 2015 IFAC Council meeting was held on 4 was held July 1–3 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. The contributions to the dynamic walking of bipedal July in Chicago, IL, USA, in conjunction with the conference, organized under the auspices of the robots, including foundational results for hybrid American Control Conference. American Automatic Control Council (AACC) – and nonlinear systems, together with the ex- the U.S. National Member Organization of IFAC perimental realization of formal results on novel For those who are not familiar with the structure – attracted more than 1400 registrants from robotic platforms.” of IFAC the IFAC Council is responsible to the more than 60 countries. The conference venue General Assembly for the management of was the Hilton Palmer House, in downtown Chi- Richard P. Mason and Antonis Papachristo- the Federation. It receives its mandate from the cago, just minutes away from Lake Michigan doulou received the O. Hugo Schuck Best Pa- GA and reports to it on the state of the Fed- and many Chicago landmarks. per Award for “Chordal Sparsity, Decomposing eration not less frequently than at each Triennial SDPs and the Lyapunov Equation,” and Matthew Congress. The Council directs and supervises After Wednesday’s opening remarks by AACC J. Bellman, Teng-Hu Cheng, Ryan J. Downey, the functioning of the Federation, including both President Tariq Samad and IFAC President and Warren E. Dixon received the award for the technical and the executive activities Janan Zaytoon, Dr. Clas A. Jacobson of United “Stationary Cycling Induced by Switched Func- Technologies Corporation described advances tional Electrical Stimulation Control.” The ACC A new major medal, the Manfred Thoma Medal, and future opportunities in systems engineering Student Best Paper Award went to “Sensitivity- was approved by vote of the council upon rec- for energy-efficient buildings. Thursday morn- Based Interval PDE Observer for Battery SOC ommendation of a task force chaired by Paul ing opened with lectures by Professor Hamsa Estimation” by Hector E. Perez and Scott Mou- van den Hof. The medal is named in honor of Balakrishnan of the Massachusetts Institute of ra. All finalists for the student best paper award the late IFAC Advisor Manfred Thoma (Ger- Technology on control algorithms for modern air received full travel support to attend the ACC many), who served as IFAC’s president from transportation systems and Professor Thomas and over 100 students also received partial trav- 1984-1987. Thoma was a leading contributor to F. Edgar of the University of Texas at Austin on el support. Special sessions on job-hunting (one the field of control and to IFAC, and supporter advanced control of semiconductor manufac- for academia and another for industry) were well of the careers of many young scientists. The turing. Friday opened with lectures by Professor attended by student attendees. medal recognizes outstanding contributions of J. Karl Hedrick of the University of California- a young researcher and/or engineer under the Berkeley on nonlinear control with applications age of 40 to the field of systems and control to automobiles and Professor Benjamin Shapiro in its widest sense. The call for nominations for of the University of Maryland at College Park on the Manfred Thoma Medal, as well as the other magnetic control of therapy to hard-to-reach IFAC major awards, is available on the IFAC disease targets. website with a nomination deadline of 15 Feb- ruary 2016. Tariq Samad, Thomas Edgar, The establishment of a new journal, IFAC Jour- and William S. Levine nal of Systems and Control, was approved by the Council. Reports were presented by task The awards ceremony was followed by the con- forces concerning industry, membership, re- ference banquet, which was held in the combi- search agenda and IFAC history. nation of the Grand and State Ballrooms. Danny Richard Braatz Abramovitch, General Chair for the 2016 ACC, Other activities reported on to Council included introduced a movie to encourage participants to the new IFAC branding and social media pres- The annual Awards Ceremony of the AACC was attend the conference. The conference ended ence. IFAC’s new website launched in January held on Thursday morning. Professor Thomas F. with a highly energetic closing reception in the 2015. In addition a Youtube channel with con- Edgar of University of Texas-Austin received the Red Lacquer Room in the Palmer House Hilton, tent concerning IFAC history, as well as from Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award for with unlimited food and drink that ran late into IFAC events.