Call for hosting NMPC 2024

IFAC Technical Committee 2.4 Optimal Control is pleased to open a call for hosting the 8th IFAC Conference on Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) in 2024. This follows the NMPC 2021 event held in Bratislava, Slovakia.

The main criteria that are adopted for the selection of NMPC 2024 are summarized as follows (without a priority): 

• General activity in the field of model predictive control in the proponent country.
• Availability of an appropriate infrastructure and facilities for setting up a conference of the size of the last few NMPC conferences. 
• Proposing team, possibly with their activity within IFAC. 
• Geographical distribution of the Conference in earlier years. 
• Moderate registration fees and availability of some inexpensive accommodation.

The timetable and guidelines for the selection procedure are as follows:

• Deadline for the submission of proposals: 31 October 2021. The proposals must be sent by email to the chair of TC 2.4 (see below). The proposal should consist of a document describing the candidature with special regards to the criteria specified above. The whole proposal must be limited to 2 pages, size A4, font Times Roman 11pt. 
• The TC Chair will send out the received proposals to TC 2.4 members by 7 November 2021. Members can request for clarifications and additional information about the proposals. Additional information requests must be transmitted to the Chair of TC 2.4 who will forward them to the specific proponents. All the members will be kept informed about the requests and the answers. Deadline for requests of additional information: 30 November 2021. 
• If only one proposal has been received, then this proposal will automatically be deemed as successful with no need for voting.
• Should there be more than one proposal, then each proposing team is to prepare a video presentation not longer than 5 min. Deadline: 7 January 2022. Distributed to TC members by 14 January 2022.
• Voting will be open to all IFAC TC 2.4 members and organised via an electronic system to be confirmed closer the date. Deadline: 31 January 2022.

The voting rules are as follows:

• All TC 2.4 members have a right to vote except those from the proposal countries.
• The TC 2.4 Chair is excluded from voting, except in the case to break a tie.
• The voting is considered valid with at least 10 votes. In case the quorum is not reached, a different democratic selection procedure will be decided.
• If more than two proposals are evaluated, two voting stages will be set up. In the first stage, the two proposals that have obtained the higher number of votes will be identified. The second stage will be a simple majority vote between these two. In the possible second stage, members of countries excluded in the first stage have right to vote. Deadline for second stage: 18 February 2022.

For additional information:
Eric Kerrigan
TC 2.4 Chair
e.kerrigan@imperial.ac.uk