IFAC Newsletter - June 2026 - The International Federation of Automatic Control

IFAC Newsletter – June 2026

View and download the June 2026 issue of the Newsletter.

Dimitri Peaucelle Newsletter Editor · Updated 26-August-2026

Contents in this issue are:

IFAC Major Awards 2023-2026
This newsletter presents the winners of the High Impact Paper Award. All winners of IFAC Major Awards and Medals for this and past triennia can be accessed via www.ifac-control.org/awards/major-awards.
President’s Column
Dong-Il “Dan” Cho highlights highlights the transformative impact of travel grants for early-career researchers and celebrates the support of 93 young and underrepresented researchers through the IFAC Foundation and the Korean National Organizing Committee at the 2026 IFAC World Congress in Busan.
IFAC Executive Officers’ Meeting & Technical Lecture
The IFAC Executive Officers’ Meeting for 2026 took place from 16-18 April 2026 at Vienna Technical University (TU) in Vienna, AT. This year’s Technical Lecture was given by Silvia Mastellone (CH).
IFAC Activity Fund Report: PARC 2025
The Pan-African Robotics Competition (PARC) 2025 took place in Saly, Senegal. By sponsoring it through its Activity Fund, IFAC contributed not only to the success of the event, but also to the development of a new generation of engineers who are learning to apply control principles to real-world challenges from an early stage.
IFAC Conference Report (CAMS 2025)
The 16th IFAC Conference on Control Applications in Marine Systems, Robotics and Vehicles (CAMS 2025) was held from August 25 to 28, 2025, in Wuhan, China.
IFAC Affiliates Portal statistics
Over the past half year, the IFAC Affiliates Portal recorded a 25% increase in approved affiliates. With no surprise, the growth is in conjunction with the 2026 World Congress registrations and the incentive to benefit from a fee reduction for affiliates.
World Congress Update
The 23rd IFAC World Congress will take place in approximately two months (23-28 August 2026) in Busan, KR. The newsletter provides updates on the program, registration, and travel information.
IFAC Activity Fund Report: Control Podcast
The inControl Podcast is a long-form interview series dedicated to systems and control, distributed free of charge across all major podcast platforms. The project supported by the IFAC Activity Fund contributed to the production of new episodes. Cumulative listenership exceeded 150,000 across more than 150 countries/regions and territories, with over 2,500 monthly listeners at the time of writing.
Calendar of upcoming IFAC Conferences

Related from Activity Fund

Build, Control and Fly: Mini-drone Activities

The project aims to engage a diverse range of young people in interactive learning experiences with a focus on control engineering. High-school students will have the opportunity to explore, construct, program, and operate small aerial drones in the form of a hands-on workshop. In addition, captivating drone flight demonstrations will be conducted to educate the broader public.

Activities 27-Aug-2026

Empowering Tomorrow’s Innovators: Unleashing the Potential of Girls in Control Engineering in South Africa

Three control face-to-face workshops have been conducted since 2022 in the Zululand region for 138 girls from three primary schools aged 9 to 15 years. This project will support additional workshops for girls, in Zululand and other parts of the country.

Activities 27-Aug-2026

Teaching Analytics: a feedback control approach to aid student self-assessment in higher education.

The project Teaching Analytics: a feedback control approach to aid student self-assessment in higher education focuses on developing an open web platform to help teachers share assessment materials globally. Teachers can upload, categorize, and search for exam questions in standard LaTeX format. Students can answer these questions online to track their learning progress through personalized concept maps.

Activities 25-Aug-2026

Zoom Workshop Series on Control Systems and Data Science towards Industry 4.0

This workshop series highlights the integration of control systems theory, data science, and machine learning to advance Industry 4.0 applications. Organized by S. Joe Qin from the City University of Hong Kong, the three-module online event brought together global experts and industry leaders. It covered key topics including predictive analytics, process automation in chemical and biological engineering, and machine learning for electrical systems.

Activities 25-Aug-2026

Development of an interactive wave energy exhibition tank to demonstrate energy-maximising control

This project resulted in the design and construction of an interactive wave energy demonstration tank. The equipment shows the importance of control in the efficient conversion of wave energy, while highlighting the benefits of renewable sources of energy to diverse audiences, including the non-technical public and other technical disciplines.

Activities 25-Aug-2026

Pocket-Sized Portable Labs: Control Engineering Practice Made Easy

Pocket-Sized Portable Labs: Control Engineering Practice Made Easy demonstrates how simple experiments using compact, microcontroller-based kits like Arduino and Raspberry Pi can inspire students to study control engineering. Organized under the Portuguese Association for Automatic Control and led by Paulo Moura Oliveira, the project utilized the Temperature Control Laboratory (TCLab) kit to bring hands-on learning into classrooms and homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Activities 25-Aug-2026