The International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) is composed of 44 National Member Organizations (NMO), each one representing the technical societies concerned with automatic control in its own country. The U.S. NMO is the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) consisting of representatives from seven member societies of which the largest is the IEEE Control Systems Society. IFAC sponsors many conferences, but the most important is the triennial World Congress. The 11th such IFAC World Congress will be held August 13-17, 1990 in Tallinn, USSR. The 12th will be held in Sydney, Australia, in 1993, and the 13th in San Francisco, U.S.A. in 1996. The official theme of the 11th IFAC World Congress is "Automatic control in the service of mankind." One objective of the Congress is to strengthen the connections between theory and applications by including papers whose topics range from basic research to industrial and social applications. A second objective is to strengthen the cooperation between researchers from various parts of the world, including the U.S. In the past, this conference has been very successful in attracting researchers and other engineers and scientists from all over the world. The most recent IFAC World Congress, the 10th held in Munich, FRG, in 1987, had an attendance of over 1,500. Thus, the conference is expected to be a particularly good forum for the exchange of ideas among U.S. and non-U.S. experts in automatic control. The conference will be comprised of invited sessions and regular sessions. It will address control theory topics as well as applications to industrial controls, manufacturing systems, automation, and other related issues.
