130 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » December 2012

T he 2013 American Control Confer-ence (ACC) will be held in Wash-ington, D.C. Monday through

Wednesday, 17–19 June 2013, with workshops being planned for the Saturday and Sunday (15–16 June 2013) before-hand. While the ACC has been held near Washing-ton, D.C. in the past, the 2013 ACC will be the first to be held inside the capi-tal city of the United States. The ACC is the annual confer-ence of the American Automatic Control Council [AACC, the United States national member organization of the International Federation of Auto-matic Control (IFAC)]. The eight national and international society cosponsors of the ACC include the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American Soci-ety of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the Amer-ican Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the IEEE, the International Soci-ety of Automation (ISA), the Society for Modeling and Simulation International (SCS), and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

CONFERENCE VENUEThe 2013 ACC will take place at the Renaissance Washington, D.C., Down-town Hotel, within seven blocks of the White House, the United States Capitol building, the National Mall, and the Smithsonian Institution. The hotel itself is an excellent venue for an ACC, with the meeting space arranged on two adjacent floors, plenty of exhibit space,

and public areas with many power outlets. In addition to complimentary access in the conference meeting areas,

ACC 2013 attendees staying at the Renaissance will receive com-

plimentary Internet access in their hotel rooms. The hotel is also within two blocks of an exten-sive restaurant district, enabling lunches within

a quick walk and plenty of variety for dinner. There

are also several Metro sub-way stations within a few blocks

of the conference hotel, which will allow easy access to many sites and areas of interest around the Washing-ton, D.C., area.

The traditional conference luncheon banquet will be transformed to a buffet dinner at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on Tuesday, 18 June 2013. ACC attendees and their guests will have exclusive use of the museum for the evening, including screenings of shows in NASM’s IMAX theater and planetarium and use of the flight simu-lators. Museum docents will be avail-able throughout the evening.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their family members. Besides being a great tourist city, tickets for family members to attend the Tuesday night event at NASM will be available for purchase when the conference regis-tration site opens.

Washington, D.C., presents ample tourist opportunities, including muse-ums known throughout the world, a world-class zoo, extensive restaurants, and a booming theater district. Here you can step back into the history of the United States and also explore the fron-

tiers of science in the same afternoon. There is plenty to see within easy walk-ing distance of the Renaissance Hotel, and even more a short subway ride away, so automobiles are optional. However, people who prefer to drive can easily also see such sites as the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center (the new home of the Shuttle Dis-covery and an SR-71 Blackbird), Virginia Beach, Jamestown Plantation, Annapo-lis, and Gettysburg (site of the decisive battle of the American Civil War). Wash-ington, D.C. is a town both steeped in history and current as the evening news. Participants can get a lot out of the city by spending extra days exploring the area or simply a summer evening wandering along the Mall, making this ACC a great one for having the family tag along. The conference hotel will hold the conference rate on available rooms 11–24 June 2013 on a space-available basis.

The population of Washington, D.C. is approximately 600,000 and that of the greater Washington metropolitan area is approximately 5.6 million, making the region the seventh-largest metro-politan area in the United States. More than a third of the Washington, D.C., area commuters take public transporta-tion to and from work, which is easy to do as the area has one of the best public transportation systems in the United States. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) oper-ates the Washington Metro, the city’s rapid transit Metrorail (subway) system, as well as Metrobus. Both systems serve Washington, D.C. and its suburbs.

The main train station in Wash-ington, D.C. is Union Station, which is about one mile east of the conference hotel. Union Station is Amtrak’s sec-ond-busiest station and serves as the

ACC 2013 in Washington, D.C.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCS.2012.2214159Date of publication: 12 November 2012

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December 2012 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 131

southern terminus for the Northeast Corridor and Acela Express routes. Union Station also houses a large array of reasonable restaurants oriented around the daily commuter, similar to Grand Central Station in New York.

There are three international air-ports that serve the Washington, D.C. area. The airport closest to downtown Washington, D.C. is Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which has its own Metrorail station. Wash-ington Dulles International Airport is approximately 25 miles (40 km) west of Washington, D.C., in Virginia, and Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport is approx-imately 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Washington, D.C. in Maryland.

The climate in Washington, D.C., is subtropical with four seasons of approxi-mately equal duration. During June, the weather is typically pleasant with an aver-age high temperature of 84 °F (29 °C) and an average low temperature of 66 °F (19 °C).

The 2013 Acc conference hotel is located in central Washington, Dc, close to many museums and monuments.

B National Air and Space MuseumC White HouseD National Theatre

Legend: E Warner TheatreF International Spy MuseumG Smithsonian American Art MuseumH Verizon CenterI National Building MuseumJ National ArchivesK Lincoln Memorial

W Hirshorn MuseumX Museum of the American IndianY U.S. Botanical GardenZ U.S. CapitolAA Union StationBB Arlington CemetaryCC FDR Memorial

L Vietnam Veterans Memorial

M Korean War Veterans Memorial

N World War II Memorial

O Washington Monument

P Holocaust Museum

Q National Museum of American History

R National Museum of Natural History

S National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden

T National Gallery of Art – West Bldg

U National Gallery of Art – East Bldg

V Sackler and Freer Galleries

ORGANIZING COMMITTEEThe organizing committee is com-posed of members from both academia and industry whose research expertise spans the diverse areas of the ACC:

» General chair: Lucy Y. Pao, Uni-versity of Colorado Boulder

» Program chair: Daniel Y. Abramovitch, Agilent Laboratories

(a) The U.S. capitol, (b) the White House, (c) the Washington monument, and (d) the Smithsonian museums are some of the nearby attractions. [Images, except (d), from Des-tination Dc. Image (d) courtesy of Daniel Y. Abramovitch.]

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

132 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » December 2012

what to See in washington, D.c.ashington, D.c., is the capital of the United States. This fed-

eral district was approved and created by the U.S. congress

in 1790 and is not a part of any U.S. state. The headquarters for

the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the U.S. fed-

eral government are located in this district, as are many of the

nation’s monuments and museums. Washington, D.c. has 7464

acres of parkland, providing a large percentage of tree canopy

and a park-like feel throughout the city. Selected parks in the D.c.

area include rock creek Park, the chesapeake and Ohio canal

National Historical Park, the National mall and constitution Gar-

dens, and the U.S. National Arboretum.

The National mall is an open park in downtown Washington,

D.c., that spans the area between the Lincoln memorial and

the U.S. capitol building, and many prominent monuments and

museums are on or near the mall. The Washington monument,

situated near the center of the mall, is topped by an apex that

was once the largest piece of cast aluminum in the world. The

White House, where the U.S. president resides, is just north

of the mall. Several memorials, including the National World

War II memorial, the Korean War Veterans memorial, and the

Vietnam Veterans memorial, are located on the mall. The Tidal

basin, around which are the Franklin Delano roosevelt memo-

rial, Jefferson memorial, martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, and

the District of columbia War memorial, is just south of the mall.

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational foundation

chartered by congress in 1846 that maintains most of the nation’s

official museums and galleries in Washington, D.c., and many of

these are also along the mall. Since the Smithsonian is funded in

part by the U.S. government, its museums are open to the public

free of charge. Smithsonian museums located on the National

mall include the National Air and Space museum (which houses

many artifacts intimately tied to control), the National museum of

Natural History, the National museum of African Art, the National

museum of American History (which houses one of the largest

collections of flyball governors on the planet, as well as Stan-

ley, the autonomous vehicle that won the original DArPA Grand

challenge, and the restored Star Spangled banner that inspired

America’s National Anthem), the National museum of the Ameri-

can Indian, the Hirshhorn museum and Sculpture Garden, the

Arts and Industries building, and the Smithsonian Institution

building, which is locally referred to as “The castle” and serves

as the institution’s headquarters. closer to the Acc 2013 con-

ference hotel are the Smithsonian American Art museum and

the National Portrait Gallery, both of which are located in the

Donald W. reynolds center, near chinatown. The National Zoo,

which is a metro ride away in Woodley Park, is also part of the

Smithsonian.

There are many other museums throughout Washing-

ton, D.c. The National Gallery of Art is also located on the

National mall, and while its collections are owned by the

U.S. government, it is not part of the Smithsonian Institu-

tion. Selected other museums include the International Spy

museum, which is just a few blocks from the Acc 2013 hotel,

and the U.S. Holocaust memorial museum located near the

Washington monument. Some of the exhibits, notably the

White House and U.S. capitol, require advanced tickets.

Some other sites, such as the Washington monument and

the United States Holocaust memorial museum, require tick-

ets either in advance or on a first-come, first-served basis.

Washington, D.c. is a thriving center for the arts. The John F.

Kennedy center for the Performing Arts on the Potomac river

is home to the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington

National Opera, and the Washington ballet. The National The-

atre, Warner Theatre, and historic Ford’s Theatre are all located

in downtown Washington, D.c., not too far from the Acc 2013

conference hotel. The capitol Steps, a hilarious satire group

of politics and pop culture, perform every Friday and Saturday

evening at the ronald reagan building and International Trade

center, a few blocks from the hotel.

A number of professional sports teams make their home in

Washington, D.c. While the redskins (NFL), capitals (NHL),

and Wizards (NbA) will be out of season in June, the mystics

(women’s NbA), the Nationals (Washington’s mLb team), and

Dc United (men’s soccer) will be in action at the time of the Acc.

more information about Washington, Dc is available from

the Wikipedia web site [3].

RESOURCES[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/tours-and-events[2] http://www.visitthecapitol.gov/visit/book_a_tour/index.html[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.c., accessed may 28, 2012.

» Vice chair, Special Sessions: Lalit K. Mestha, Xerox Corp

» Vice chair, Invited Sessions: Kathryn E. Johnson, Colorado School of Mines and National Renewable Energy Laboratory

» Vice chair, Industry and Applica-tions: Haitham Hindi, Accuray

» Vice chair, Student Affairs: Carolyn Beck, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

» Exhibits chair: Sean B. Anders-son, Boston University

» Finance chair: Peter Meckl, Purdue University

» Local Arrangements chair: Zongli Lin, University of Virginia

» Publications chair: Randal W. Beard, Brigham Young University

» Publicity chair: Santosh Devasia, University of Washington

» Registration chair: Eric W. Frew, University of Colorado Boulder

» Workshops chair: Linda Bush-nell, University of Washington.

The Program Committee is similarly balanced, with 24 members from academia, ten members from indus-try, and four from national laborato-ries, again representing a broad set of research areas that the 2013 ACC plans to include in its technical pro-gram. Further, seven of these program committee members are from outside the United States and will help to encourage international participation at the ACC.

w

December 2012 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 133

General chair Lucy Pao (second from left) and daughter Sarah (left), son matthew (second from right), and hus-band Leo radzihovsky (right) in beijing, china.

Program chair Danny Abramovitch (left), his wife Susan Alters (second from left), and sons michael (second from right) and David (right) in San Francisco.

Vice chair for Industry and Applications Haitham Hindi with his favorite robot.

Vice chair for Student Affairs carolyn beck and her hus-band Geir Dullerud at Frogner’s Park in Oslo, Norway.

Publications chair randal beard (second to right) with research students raj Sharma (left), Peter Neidfeldt (second from left), carlos Oliveira (middle), and brandon carrol (right) at mt. Timpanogas in Utah.

Publicity chair Santosh Devasia feeding koi in Seattle.

ThE ACC 2013 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

134 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » December 2012

Vice chair for Special Sessions Lalit mestha at the Grand canyon in Arizona.

exhibits chair Sean Andersson at the boston museum of Science.

registration chair eric Frew at coogee beach in New South Wales, Australia.

Finance chair Peter meckl with his wife marie.

Vice chair for Invited Sessions Katie Johnson with husband curt Stevens in colorado.

Workshops chair Linda bushnell with her sons, mantas (left) and Kipras (right), in Seattle.

Local Arrangements chair Zongli Lin on a cruise on Lake como in Italy.

December 2012 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 135

TEChNICAL PROGRAM AND PLENARY LECTURESThe technical program will feature theme tracks in sustainability, societal challenges for control, and smart health-care systems. Each theme will include a semiplenary and special track, includ-ing tutorial and invited sessions. In addition to the special themes, the con-ference technical, (semi-)plenary, and special sessions will reflect the diversity of theory and applications of control that is one of the hallmarks of an ACC. To encourage industry participation, we have requested and have obtained per-mission from the American Automatic Control Council to have a one-day reg-istration fee (onsite only).

Plenary LecturesOur slate of plenary and semiple-nary speakers consists of well-known researchers and leaders from industry, a national laboratory, and academia.

Plenary Lecture: Advanced motion control for High-Tech Systemsby Maarten Steinbuch, Eindhoven Uni-versity of Technology, The Netherlands

Maarten Steinbuch is a full professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), where he is head of the Con-trol Systems Technology group of the Mechanical Engineering Department. He is also director of the TU/e Auto-motive Systems Graduate Program and scientific director of the Centre of Com-petence for High Tech Systems of the Federation of Dutch Technical Univer-sities. He has over 12 years of industrial experience with Philips Research Labs and Philips Center for Manufacturing Technology. He is editor-in-chief of

the IFAC journal on Mechatronics and an associate editor of the International Journal of Powertrains. His research interests are in modeling and control of advanced motion systems, robotics for care and cure, automotive powertrains, and fusion plasmas.

Semiplenary Lecture: event-based Optimization of Stochastic Systems and Its Applications to Social, Financial, and engineering Problemsby Xi-Ren Cao, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

Xi-Ren Cao is a chair professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and an affiliate member of the Institute for Advanced Study at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He has worked as a consult-ing engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation, a research fellow at Har-vard University, and a reader, professor, and chair professor at HKUST. He owns three patents in data- and telecom-munications and has published three books in the areas of performance opti-mization and discrete-event dynamic systems. Selected honors include being Fellow of IEEE and IFAC and best paper awards from the IEEE Control Systems Society and The Institute of Manage-ment Sciences. He has served as the edi-tor-in-chief of Discrete Event Dynamic Systems: Theory and Applications, as an associate editor at large of IEEE Transac-tions of Automatic Control, as a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control Systems Society, and as a mem-ber on the Technical Board of IFAC. His current research areas include financial engineering, stochastic learning and

optimization, performance analysis of economic systems, and discrete-event dynamic systems.

Semiplenary Lecture: The Key to a Successful Next Generation of buildings: controlling for energy efficiencyby Paul Torcellini, National Renew-able Energy Laboratory, USA

Paul Torcellini is the principal group manager for Commercial Buildings Research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which is a U.S. Department of Energy national lab-oratory. He leads the Commercial Build-ing’s Research Efforts, which is dedicated to developing methods and technologies to achieve substantial energy savings in commercial buildings, both new and retrofit. This work has been recognized by many awards, peer-reviewed techni-cal papers, and other publications. He has been at the NREL for 18 years. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Colo-rado School of Mines. He is a registered Professional Engineer and holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University.

Semiplenary Lecture: Intelligent Surveillance and Decision Support in Healthcare Systemsby Markus Fromherz, Xerox Corpora-tion, USA

courtesy of bart van Overbeeke Fotografie.

136 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » December 2012

The National Air and Space museum houses many artifacts in the develop-ment of control, including a V1 buzz bomb, the Apollo 11 command capsule (columbia), and Spaceship 1.

The Sr-71 and corsair at the Udvar-Hazy center near Washington Dulles Airport.

Steam engines with flyball governors. Two of the many examples of flyball governors at the National museum of American History.

Stanley, the self-driven vehicle that won the first DArPA Grand challenge, Dorothy’s ruby Slippers, and the portrait of Stephen colbert (at the National museum of Ameri-can History).

December 2012 « IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE 137

Views from the Washington mall: the Smithsonian castle, the Washington monument, and the U.S. capitol building.

The White House and the Lincoln memorial.

Within a metro ride or an easy drive: the National Zoo, the marine corps War memo-rial, and Arlington National cemetery.

Views at Gettysburg, site of the decisive battle of the American civil War, which is 85 miles north of Washington, Dc. On the left is the view from Little round Top at Get-tysburg, site of the fiercest fighting of day two of the battle. On the right is the view of the Virginia monument from cemetery ridge, the field across which Pickett’s charge took place on day three.

138 IEEE CONTROL SYSTEMS MAGAZINE » December 2012

Markus Fromherz is the chief innovation officer of Healthcare at Xerox Corporation, where he is responsible for innovation across the payer, provider, government, and employer healthcare businesses in the Xerox Services group. He has also been a Vice president at the Palo Alto Research Center, where he directed PARC’s Intelligent Sys-tems Laboratory, which develops advanced information and automa-tion systems based on intelligent user interfaces, language and image understanding, and reasoning algo-rithms. Applications range from business software to embedded systems to cleantech applications. His research interests have been in the domain of intelligent embed-ded software including constraint-based modeling; model-based planning, scheduling, and control; and model-based design analysis and optimization. He has published widely and spoken internationally and has more than 40 issued and pending patents.

Semiplenary Lecture: Game Theoretic Learning with Applications to Networked control Systemsby Jason Marden, University of Colo-rado Boulder, USA

Jason Marden is an assistant pro-fessor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering at the University of Colorado. He received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineer-ing in 2001 and a Ph.D. in 2007, both in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Los Angels,

where he was awarded the Outstand-ing Graduating Ph.D. Student in Mechanical Engineering. After gradu-ating, he served as a junior fellow in the Social and Information Sciences Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology until 2010 after which he joined the University of Colorado. He received the AACC Donald P. Eck-man Award in 2012, an AFOSR Young Investigator Award in 2012, and his student’s paper was a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in 2011. His research interest is on game theoretic methods for distrib-uted and networked control systems.

Public LectureA public lecture is planned for the early evening of Monday, June 17, 2013. This will be a general lecture with broad appeal. It is expected that the lecture will draw not only confer-ence attendees and the general public but also individuals from government organizations. The public lecturer will provide some depth about control sys-tems, put them in a historical context, talk about how humans interact with this technology, and make this acces-sible to an educated but not technical audience.

Public Lecture, monday evening, 17 June 2013: How We Interact with robots, Feedback Loops, and Autonomous Systems: Historical Perspectives and a Look Forward by David A. Mindell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA

David A. Mindell is the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineer-ing and Manufacturing and profes-sor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, and he has formerly been department head of MIT’s Program on Science, Technology, and Society (STS). He is an expert on the history and technology of human/machine relationships in complex technologi-cal systems. During the 2011–2012 academic year he was a visiting scholar at Aurora Flight Sciences Inc. His current research involves examining human/machine rela-tionships in extreme environments, including human spaceflight, mili-tary robotics, undersea explora-tion, aviation, and surgery, with a goal toward developing general models of networks of humans and machines. Mindell’s books have received several prizes and include Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight (MIT Press, 2008), Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Con-trol, and Computing before Cybernetics (Johns Hopkins, 2002), and Iron Cof-fin: War, Technology, and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor (Johns Hop-kins, 2012).

Please visit our conference Web site http://a2c2.org/conferences/acc2013/ for more information about the devel-oping technical program for the 2013 ACC. We look forward to seeing you in Washington, D.C. in June!

Lucy PaoACC 2013 General Chair

Daniel AbramovitchACC 2013 Program Chair

courtesy of Stuart Darsch, boston.

Please visit

our web site for

more information.