IFAC Newsletter - October 2025 - The International Federation of Automatic Control

IFAC Newsletter – October 2025

View and download the October 2025 issue of the Newsletter.

Derik le Roux Administrator · Updated 16-August-2026

Contents in this issue are:

IFAC Fellows 2023-2026
Seven of the 25 IFAC Fellows for the 2023-2026 triennium are introduced in detail. The series will continue in the upcoming newsletters.
President’s Column
Dong-Il “Dan” Cho summarizes the outcomes of six IFAC Presidential Task Forces, including those on Societal Harmony, Strategy for Societal Challenges, and IFAC Awards.
IFAC Affiliates Portal statistics
The newsletter presents further statistics about IFAC affiliates from the portal. The database now counts more than 8700 affiliates.
Harold Chestnut Control Engineering Textbook Prize
The prize is presented at each triennial for the best control engineering textbook. Nominations are now open and will be accepted until 1 February 2026.
Kwon and Diversity & Inclusion Awards
The IFAC Foundation solicits award nominations for papers published in IFAC journals in the broad area of sustainable development. Furthermore, nominations are requested for individuals or teams who have made outstanding contributions to the scientific promotion and/or the advancement of diversity and inclusion within IFAC.
IFAC WC 2026 Update
Various updates are provided regarding submissions, plenary speakers, open invited tracks, competitions, workshops, and tutorials.
IFAC Conference Reports (ACA 2025, NOLCOS 2025)
The 23rd IFAC Symposium on Automatic Control in Aerospace (ACA) was held in Harbin, China, from August 2 to 6, 2025. The 13th IFAC Symposium on Nonlinear Control Systems (NOLCOS) was hosted by the University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland, from July 23 to July 25, 2025.
IFAC Activity Fund Report: Control Engineering Exercise Journal
This initiative revolves around a journal-like publication of conceptual exercises accompanied by their solutions. The ultimate objective is to establish a framework where exercises are published with DOIs, making them citable and interconnected within the academic community.
IFACX
For the past three years, IFAC has been providing a new service for NMOs, named “IFACX”. This service allows NMOs to give an IFAC label to some domestic technical events.
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