MSC PREVIEW
«
MSC 2011—A Denver, the Mile High City, Experience
T
he 2011 IEEE Multiconference on
Systems and Control (MSC 2011)
will be held September 28–30,
2011, in the mile high city of Denver,
Colorado. After previous meetings in
Russia and Japan, we decided to return to the United States and organize
the 2011 MSC in the heart of the Rocky
Mountains. The conference venue, the
Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel
(http://www.SheratonDenverDowntown.com, http://www.vpix.net/
index.php?tour=1710), is a recently
renovated hotel, which is centrally located in the heart of Denver, the 16th
Street Mall, and the pedestrian area.
Several factors contributed in choosing Denver by the IEEE Control Sys- Denver at night.
tems Society (CSS) Board of Governors:
» Colorado is fourth in the nation in the aerospace industry.
» The Denver metropolitan area is home to major companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman,
Raytheon, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
» The State of Colorado has launched major initiatives
for a green environment and clean energy.
» Denver is home to a wide spectrum of high-tech companies.
» Colorado has several well-known universities with
major research and development activities in control
and related areas.
» There are people from Denver who have been active
in the CSS for years.
Planning the MSC 2011 has been a pleasant and ongoing
experience due to the professionalism and compatibility of
the organizing committee members. All of us know each
other either through CSS functions, technical committees,
and other activities or have socialized together, have organized several other conferences in the past, have worked
or work in the same university, or even had the same Ph.D.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2011.940740
Date of publication: 16 May 2011
thesis advisor. It is not an exaggeration to say that in this
MSC 2011 committee “we work all for one and one for all.”
All committee members, including Program Chairs Jagannathan Sarangapani, Stjepan Bogdan, and Graziano Chesi,
Program Vice-Chairs Jonqlan Lin and Zhang Jing Bing,
Tutorial and Workshop Chair Zdenko Kovacic, Invited
Session Chair Sesh Commuri, Exhibits Chair John McInroy,
USA/EU Liaison Chair Kostas Kyriakopoulos, Transition
to Practice Award Chair/Best Student Paper Award Chair
Lalit K. Mestha, Publication Chair Zhendong Sun, CSS
Conference Editorial Board Chair Alessandro Astolfi, CSS
Conference Publications Chair Pradeep Misra, Publicity
Chair Maja Matijasevic, Registration Chair Rafael Fierro,
Local Arrangements Chair Jerry Edelstein, and Finance
Chair Ron DeLyser are contributing to planning an outstanding meeting.
MSC 2011 aims to bring together, through a unique
forum, different groups of qualified scientists, engineers,
researchers, and practitioners from academia, industry,
the federal government, federal laboratories, funding
agencies, and representatives of national and international organizations to discuss the state-of-the-art and
future directions in advanced control technology and
applications, intelligent systems, computational intelligence, computational methods for control system design,
JUNE 2011
«
IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 87
Planning the MSC 2011 has been a
pleasant and ongoing experience
due to the professionalism and
compatibility of the organizing
committee members.
handling, and incorporating uncertainty in system
design and control, and novel and cutting-edge technologies as applied to complex systems.
MSC 2011 will feature several kinds of presentations
including contributed and invited papers, special sessions, a session dedicated to undergraduate control and
mechatronic systems education, tutorials and workshops, and a joint NSF/EU panel to discuss current and
future challenges in control systems and control systems
Denver with some celestial color.
technology, as well as research initiatives and funding
opportunities.
Novel features of MSC 2011 will be an open industrial
forum where industry representatives will discuss relevant
problems that need be solved to improve system performance and special and invited sessions jointly organized
with other IEEE Societies (Systems, Man, and Cybernetics,
Robotics and Automation, Computational Intelligence),
coordinated by the Technical Committee on Intelligent
Control (TCIC) Chair Kevin L. Moore.
Through keynote addresses and invited and solicited
presentations, the outcome of MSC 2011 will provide a
better understanding of what academia and industry are
doing and what civilian, military, national, and international authorities need. Four speakers will give keynote
presentations during the meeting. In alphabetical order
they are B.D.O. Anderson, S. Boyd, M. Morari, and R.D.
Robinett III. To keep abreast of ongoing preparations and
88 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
»
JUNE 2011
information about Denver, Colorado, see the conference
Web site (http://www.msc2011.org).
ABOUT DENVER
Denver is a metropolitan city, the capital of the state of Colorado, and the jewel of the Rocky Mountain area. Due to its
elevation of 1 mi, or 5280 ft (1609 m) above sea level, Denver is nicknamed the “mile-high city.” The main attractions
in downtown Denver include the Colorado State Capitol,
the Denver Art Museum, the Denver U.S. Mint, Larimer
Square, LoDo (Lower Downtown) Historic District, and
Confluence Park. Other must-see attractions include the
City Park, Denver Zoo, Botanical Gardens, Cherry Creek
Shopping District, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and Buffalo
Bill Museum. Details and more information can be found
through the conference Web site [1].
ABOUT THE STATE OF COLORADO
Colorado is the only state that is an almost perfect rectangle [1]. Writers over 100 years ago called it “the highest
state,” with the average elevation 6800 ft above sea level.
The highest point in Colorado is Mount Elbert, 14,431 feet
above sea level. Colorado has more than 1000 peaks above
10,000 feet and 54 peaks that top 14,000 feet [1]. Colorado
became a state in 1876, when the United States celebrated
its 100 birthday, which is why it is called the Centennial
State [1], [2].
The state has been named for the Colorado River; Colorado in Spanish means red or ruddy. The state flower
is the blue/lavender columbine, the state bird is the lark
bunting, the state animal is the bighorn sheep, and the
state tree is the Colorado blue spruce.
The first human beings came to Colorado about 15,000
B.C. Those first arrivals were hunters and food gatherers
who had migrated to North America from Asia. They were
called Paleo-Indian, which means ancient people who made
stone tools [1]. About 2000 years ago new influences came
from the south from today’s Mexico. Other Native Americans have also been found to have explored the eastern
plains of Colorado, while modern tribes include the Apache,
the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Cheyenne, and the Utes.
The state of Colorado has been destination point for
explorers, trappers, traders, miners, cowboys, and farmers.
The state faced an almost 270-year war, the longest civil war
between whites and Indians, who both called North America home [1]. Today, Colorado is one of the most advanced
states in the United States, with diverse high tech industry
and an above national average educated population.
Kimon P. Valavanis
General Chair
REFERENCES
[1] T. J. Noel and D. A. Smith, Colorado—The Highest State. Colorado: Univ.
Press of Colorado, 1995.
[2] M. Sprague, Colorado. New York: Norton, 1976.