The 15th European Control Conference (ECC16) [Conference Reports]

The European Control Conference (ECC16), the 15th in the European Control Association (EUCA) series of ECCs, was held in Aalborg, Denmark, from June 29 to July 1, 2016. Anders Rantzer of Lund University, Sweden, as International Program Committee (IPC) chair. A total of 637 technical papers were submitted, including 92 invited papers. Of these, 432 papers were accepted. The first plenary speaker was Munther Dahleh (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), who devoted his talk to the fragility of large networks, with examples drawn from traffic congestion, power outages, and financial crises. Karl Henrik Johansson (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) opened the second day with a lecture on control challenges in freight transportation networks, where new technology creates opportunities for lower costs and smaller environmental footprints. Hana El-Samad discussed the interconnection of synthetic and biological circuits at the cell level. Ming Cao devoted his EUCA Award plenary to evolutionary algorithms for coordination autonomous agents. David Angeli described how input-to-state stability of nonlinear systems can be generalized to handle systems with multiple equilibria. An industrial panel session devoted to the impact on control of the second digital revolution was also organized.