The 16th International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Control Systems (ICALEPCS 2017) was held in Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain at the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya from the 7th to the 13th of October 2017, hosted by the ALBA Synchrotron. The conference was endorsed by the European Physics Society (EPS), The Physical Society of Japan (JPS), the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies (AAPPS), the American Physical Society (APS) and the Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS-IEEE).
An International Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC) with 40 members and chaired by Andy Götz (ESRF, France) advised the organization. The ISAC met the year before the conference to define the tracks and themes and during the conference to review bids and conclude on hosting ICALEPCS 2021, which will be held in Shanghai (China) hosted by the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF). The Program Committee (PC) with 43 members met together five months before the conference to finalize the scientific program and was chaired by Oscar Matilla from the ALBA Synchrotron. Both committees worked constructively to encourage participation from experts around the world.
Parallel sessions were held on Tuesday and Thursday to schedule 111 oral talks, in addition to keynotes, miniorals and speakers’ corners. This new type of presentation -speaker’s corner- was included in the program with a very good acceptance and an excellent feedback. A total of 17 contributions were presented in this format, where presenters could setup an interactive live demo of their work on a big screen addressed to the audience surrounding the speaker.
A total of 600 abstracts were submitted of which 450 were finally accepted and processed to be published in the proceedings book. ICALEPCS 2017 had an excellent attendance of 607 registered participants of which there were 468 full conference delegates. The ten workshops held on the weekend prior to the conference got an excellent participation with 560 total number of registrants. The workshops were: EPICS Satellite Meeting, TANGO workshop, White Rabbit Tutorial Workshop, PLC based control systems, HDF5 data format, Control System Cyber-security Workshop, Motion Control Workshop, Sardana Scientific SCADA Suite, User Experience in MicroTCA, MRF Timing Protocol Users Workshop.
Javier Serrano (CERN, Switzerland) has been awarded the ICALEPCS Lifetime Achievement Award for his major contributions to the creation of the Open Hardware movement. The ICALEPCS Early Career award and a price money was awarded to Daniel Tavares (LNLS, Brazil) for his excellent work on the BPM and Orbit Feedback system hardware designs and his involvement in the Open Hardware movement.
I would like to thank Oscar Matilla, the Program Chair and our colleagues of the Local Organizing Committe, Guifré Cuní, Concepció Girbau and Isidre Costa for their involvement and hard work over these years and in particular during the last weeks. This is of course extensive to the local organizing team comprising more than 30 persons for their commitment and priceless help for the success of this conference.
On behalf of this local organizing team, I would like to thank as well, the International Scientific Advisory Committee and in particular the chair Andy Götz for his availability and his extraordinary commitment, the Program Committee, the editorial team and everyone involved for their invaluable contribution which made ICALEPCS2017 a great conference. I would like as well to thank Gloria Casanova and her team (PCO) for their remarkable investment and dedication.
I would like to wish Kevin Brown, Richard Farnsworth, Seth Nemesure and their team at BNL all the best for the organization of ICALEPCS 2019, and our best wishes as well for Shanghai 2021.
David Fernández.
ICALEPCS 2017 Conference Chair.
