IFAC Membership
IFAC members are national organisations, one per country, named National Member Organisations. See the list of existing NMOs. See also here how to join IFAC as a national organisation of a country not yet represented in IFAC.
Individuals are invited to join their country’s NMO and, whatever country they are in, to be IFAC Affiliates. Registration is free and should be done at affiliates.ifac-control.org. Detailed instructions are provided on the Affiliate Registration page.
Affiliate status with IFAC is free of charge. There are no individual memberships. IFAC is funded through membership fees from the NMOs, as well as from publications.
The services include the possibility to share and consult information about other Affiliates. It also gives access to more advanced features such as:
- Receiving the IFAC Newsletter.
- Receiving alerts about the IFAC Conferences in your field/s of interest.
- Benefit for reduced registration fees at IFAC Conferences. Conferences are typically 10€ (or the local equivalent) less expensive for IFAC Affiliates, than for non-affiliates.
- Participating in IFAC Technical Activities.
- Organizing IFAC Conferences.
- Participating in IFAC Journals.
- Applying to IFAC Awards.
- Applying to the IFAC Activity fund.
- And more to come in the future.
Moreover, being an IFAC Affiliate is free of charge. Any individual who is interested in Control Engineering should sign up!
How do I connect with IFAC?
- If you are already an IFAC Affiliate, Connect to your personal account and access all IFAC restricted data.
- If you are not yet an IFAC Affiliate, Sign up for free to become one, and meanwhile, you may also browse the Web public data.
IFAC Events
Each IFAC event is independently-run. You can find information about upcoming events on the forthcoming events section of the IFAC website. Registration, calls, and other information about each event is available on the event’s webpage.
IFAC organizes 3 types of events, in addition to the flagship World Congress held every three years.
An IFAC Symposium is a technical meeting covering a well-defined theme of Control Engineering. Symposia on the same subject are arranged as a regular series, usually on a triennial basis. They are organized by a host country NMO and are scientifically assisted by those IFAC Technical Committees which take an active interest in the selected topics of the meeting. Attendance usually ranges between 100 and 500 participants. IFAC maintains a Masterplan for future symposia activities.
An IFAC Conference is a technical meeting of about the same scope and size as a Symposium but it is not necessarily part of a series of events. Conferences may also cover topics that are more specialized.
An IFAC Workshop is a more informal and less structured meeting than a Symposium or a Conference. It usually has a narrower scope and a more limited attendance (between 50 and 100 participants). However, provisions for the host country National Member Organization acting as organizer, for the scientific support by the appropriate TCs and for co-sponsorship by other scientific organizations are similar to those for Symposia.
As a rule, no Symposia or Conferences take place in the year of the Congress, and also the number of Workshops is restricted in order to avoid conflicting dates.
IFAC main-sponsored events can be held in any country with an IFAC NMO. If you are interested in holding an IFAC event in your country or interested in IFAC/control activities in your country, please contact your local NMO for further information.
The forthcoming events are published in the IFAC Newsletter, as well as on the IFAC homepage.
You will need to contact the individual event team/organizers. The IFAC Secretariat has no part of the organization and administrative work of the individual IFAC events. Contact information can usually be found in the event information listed under ‘Forthcoming Events’ on the IFAC website, as well as on the websites set up by the events themselves.
IFAC's Structure
IFAC events are listed in the calendar of upcoming events, which is published in the IFAC Newsletter as well as on the IFAC website. IFAC event organizers can inform the IFAC Secretariat which keyword/s (a list will be provided) are in line with their meeting and the Secretariat will send out the information (like CfP, etc.) to the respective IFAC affiliates (maximum of two e-mails, exceptions to this must be approved by the IFAC president or one of the two vice-presidents). Therefore the IFAC Secretariat has set up a separate event software program and e-mail address. The event organizers must also provide a reply-to address, where they want to receive information/question from the receipients that wish to contact them.
Email addresses can be found with names on the lists of IFAC officials on the IFAC website.
IFAC is mostly run by volunteers. The permanent IFAC staff at the IFAC Secretariat consists of three salaried employees for the administrative and technical work. The other positions and duties within IFAC are filled by volunteers. IFAC volunteer positions are for fixed three-year terms. IFAC officials and officers cover their own expenses for travel, meetings, and other expenses in conjunction with their service to IFAC.
The permanent Secretariat office of IFAC with three staff members is located in Laxenburg, Austria (south of Vienna.) However no technical activities are conducted at this office.