ABOUT CEA-IFAC

The 'Comité Español de Automática de la IFAC', the Spanish National Member Organisation of IFAC and the host organization for this Congress, was founded in 1968 at the initiative of the automatic control community in Spain. Contemporary research areas such as automatic control, robotics, real-time, artificial vision, simulation, etc., have gained tremendous importance in the engineering field. In Spain, a group of academics and industrialists interested in that subject founded the CEA–IFAC with the aim of providing a communication channel for researchers and academic staff.

The main objectives of CEA-IFAC are:

• To promote the study, application and improvement of automatic control techniques;
• To promote collaboration and coordination among Spanish specialists;
• To promote cooperation between academia and industry in the automatic control environment;
• To promote international relations, especially with the International Federation of Automatic Control and its delegations in other countries, as well as with other entities related to automatic control;
• To promote collaboration among its associates;
• To become a communication channel between the administration and the collective it represents, in all relevant matters;
• To develop and organise courses, conferences, congresses, study meetings, working commissions, and so on;
• To preparation and publish standards, reports and monographs;
• To promote the creation of laboratories and learning centres.

Among the many activities organized by CEA-IFAC, the "Jornadas de Automatica" deserve special mention. The "Jornadas" are held every year and are a meeting place where personal relationships may be established and experiences in education and research may be exchanged. The first time they were celebrated was more than 20 years ago in Valencia, where no more than about 20 people met. Last year, in Barcelona, there were more than 200 people working in control engineering present.

The past president of CEA-IFAC was Prof. Pedro Albertos and its current president is Prof. Sebastian Dormido.

More information about CEA-IFAC can be found at http://disa.bi.ehu.es/cea-ifac/cea-ifac_en/index.html