Greetings and Thanks from the General Chair |
On behalf of the Operating Committee, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to the 2020 American Control Conference in Denver, Colorado. The success of any conference depends first and foremost on its participants, and thus we thank you sincerely for choosing ACC as a forum for disseminating your work. As part of a vital community of colleagues and friends, we are also extremely grateful for your companionship in Denver. The 2020 ACC Operating Committee (OpComm) has brought together their diverse collective experience to develop new innovations for the conference. These include: (i) the Rapid Interactive (RI) sessions that enable participants to present to a large portion of the attendees and for attendees to get a sampling of the many research results in an area, which has been popular at other conferences, e.g., in the Robotics Community; (ii) the fifty or so late-breaking poster presentations (without the need to submit a full paper) that is becoming an increasingly preferred way to communicate emerging ideas in conferences; and (iii) incorporating Federal funding from NSF (through the efforts of our Vice-Chair for Student Affairs, Kira Barton) to increase the diversity of students participating in ACC. We welcome your remarks and comments on the effectiveness of these and potential ways to improve further. ACC is our conference, managed by volunteers from our societies. Hence, I am very thankful to the large community of dedicated volunteers that support ACC activities, including but not limited to the conference OpComm (each of whom played a key role to 2020 ACC's success), the review team (including the Program Chair Martha Grover, the reviewers, the program committee, the Associate Editors, and the Conference Editorial Board) for maintaining the high quality of the ACC program, the American Automatic Control Council (its officers as well as the Steering Committee) for sharing their collective wisdom on the mechanics of putting together a conference, and the current and past OpComms for being generous in sharing their ideas, time, and knowledge. Finally, thanks to Bob Judd, to whom I am indebted to for helping with the hotel and site selection process and the many contracts, and in this special year for renegotiating with the hotel as we transitioned to a fully online conference. It was heartwarming to find the strong interest in the conference from our community, in spite of the Covid-19 situation. Most of the authors of the more than 800+ papers felt sufficient value to submit their final papers to ACC and registering, while paying the full conference fees. Due to the volunteer spirit in our community, we were able to lower the overall registration rates, and refund a substantial portion of the fees back to the registrants. I am very grateful to the support and guidance from the OpComm members and the AACC board and officers all through this transition process. We are anticipating strong participation in ACC 2020 from our community, and we hope to try and hold most of the typical events. You should expect your attendance to be both informative and enjoyable. I hope to see you online in July.
Santosh Devasia
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