The 2016 American Control Conference will be held Wednesday through Friday, July 6–8 at the award-winning Boston Marriott Copley Place, centrally located in the Back Bay district of Boston. The conference venue is connected to the Copley Place Mall with a variety of shops, restaurants, and a large grocery store, and is within minutes of the historic sites like Trinity Church, Boston Common and the Public Garden, Kenmore Square, Beacon Street, and Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. Other sites like Harvard Square, MIT, Faneuil Hall, the Freedom Trail, the Bunker Hill Monument, and the New England Aquarium are easily accessible via Boston's famous subway, "The T".

The ACC brings together an international community of researchers and practitioners to discuss the latest findings in control research and practice. The ACC is the annual conference of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC, the U.S. national member organization of the International Federation for Automatic Control (IFAC)). National and international society co-sponsors of ACC include American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), IEEE Control Systems Society (IEEE-CSS), International Society of Automation (ISA), Society for Modeling & Simulation International (SCS), and Society for Industrial & Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

ACC 2016 will feature a semi-plenary lecture by the 2015 Eckman Award winner and one on “Therapeutic Robotics: Challenges of Controlling Physical Interaction” by Neville Hogan. A unique tandem semi-plenary lecture “Open-Ended Control Challenges in the Oil Service Industry” by Jason Dykstra and Karlene Hoo will discuss the chemical process control opportunities at the bottom of an oil well. Delphine Dean will talk about how very precise measurements can inspire societal work in “Nano to Really Macro: How Working with AFMs Can Help with Design of Medical Devices for Hospitals in Resource Poor Countries”. Our plenary lecture features Lucy Pao describing mechatronic control systems from the very large to the very small in “Combined Feedforward/Feedback Control of Flexible Structures:  Recurring Themes across Diverse Applications”. In our Public Lecture, Stephen Boyd will describe how algorithms are hidden in modern smart devices in the public lecture “Mathematical Optimization in Everyday Life: The Growing Role of Hidden Algorithms in Smart Products and Systems”. The 2016 ACC technical program will comprise several types of presentations in regular and invited sessions, tutorial sessions, and special sessions along with workshops and exhibits.

Call for Contributed Papers:  Papers are invited in the form of regular manuscripts (allotted 6 proceedings pages). There is no separate short paper format.

Call for Invited Sessions: Invited sessions consist of 6 papers presenting a unifying theme from a diversity of viewpoints. Proposals must clearly describe the motivation and relevance of the session. Proposals must be accompanied by full versions of each paper, which will be individually reviewed together with the proposal itself.

Call for Tutorial Sessions: Tutorial sessions are invited sessions organized to provide an introduction to a topic of interest. The format is structured around a main tutorial paper (up to 18 pages) and talk (60 minutes) to bring the participants up to speed, followed by three presentations (with or without papers of up to 6 pages each) to give a picture of the state of the art. Tutorial sessions involving strong industry and academic collaboration are highly encouraged.

Call for Special Sessions: Special sessions offer a venue for creating awareness of, and providing exposure to emerging research areas, research and funding opportunities, and other topics of broad interest to the conference attendees. History and industry-sponsored sessions also fall into this category.

Call for Workshops: Workshops to be held prior to the conference are solicited on all related topics. Proposals for workshops addressing novel control methodologies and nonstandard control applications, as well as workshops with strong tutorial value are encouraged.

Exhibits: Exhibitors are invited to showcase, demonstrate and market control-related publications, software tools, educational products, services, and jobs. Exhibits are open to all attendees of the ACC.

All papers and session and workshop proposals must be submitted through the conference submission website. All submissions must conform to the policy found at the conference website: http://acc2016.a2c2.org/.  Manuscripts should be written in English, be in 2-column format, and meet strict page limits.

Boston is the United States’ second oldest city, steeped in traditions, and dotted with major research universities. The weather in early July is moderate and week of July 4 brings the traditions of American Independence Day, associated with many of the historic sites.

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