The latest Seminar on Advanced Industrial Control Applications, SAICA 2009 was held in Madrid and attended by 100 delegates exploring the theme “Can we control Climate Change”.
The Seminar for Advanced Industrial Control Applications, SAICA, is a bi-annual forum for professionals from industry and academia to share knowledge and experience in advanced control technologies. The latest event, SAICA 2009, took place on the 16th and 17th of November 2009 in Madrid, Spain.
SAICA 2009 focused on the theme “Energy efficiency, Emission Reduction and Sustainability” in various industries such as power generation, environment, cement and chemical. One hundred delegates attended from several different countries to help address the question “Can we control climate change?”
SAICA 2009 was organised by the Joint Spanish Chapter of Control Systems Society (CSS) and Industrial Applications Society (IAS) of the IEEE whose current president is Mr Pedro Balsa. IEEE is the acronym of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the largest engineering association in the world, comprising more than 380,000 members from more than 150 countries. It was constituted 125 years ago with Thomas Edison and Graham Alexander Bell among the founders. The IEEE is the most important organisation world wide for engineering and information technologies. In addition, SAICA was supported by the Fundación Gómez Pardo (Gomez Pardo Foundation), the Engineering College of Mining, the UK Trade and Investment division of the British Embassy in Madrid and the UNED (Open University of Spain) which published the seminar proceedings.
Mr Pedro Balsa, during his speech to the SAICA 2009 delegates, said that “SAICA has established itself as one of Europe’s foremost events focused on the role of advanced control technology in combating climate change”.
Among the speakers and contributers were the Rt. Hon. Malcolm Wicks, former UK Minister of Energy and currently special representative to the UK Prime Minister on international energy issues, and Mr Jesús Sainz, President of PromoMadrid. In addition, there were representatives from Carbon Recycling International, the Solar Platform of Almeria, the Repsol Foundation and BG Group together with academic institutions including the UNED, (represented by the Vice Rector of Research, Ms Paloma Collado), the Politechnic University of Cataluña, University of La Coruña, the National University José de Sucre from Venezuela, and the University of Strathclyde (UK).
During the event, Doctor Juan Manuel Martín Sánchez was awarded Fellowship of the IEEE for his exceptional achievements and extraordinary contribution to the development and application of predictive, adaptive predictive and adaptive predictive expert control methodologies.
The organisation and the participants brought the sessions to a close, having taken part in an event of the highest technical quality which augers well for the next SAICA event of 2011.