It is my great pleasure to invite you to the 20th World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control, taking place in Toulouse, France.

The IFAC World Congress is the forum of excellence for the exploration of the frontiers in control science and technology. This Congress is attended by a worldwide audience of scientists and engineers from academia and industry. It offers the most up-to-date and complete view of control and automation techniques, with the widest coverage of application fields.

You will join delegates from across the globe at a gathering that offers us the opportunity to step beyond our regular networks and meet colleagues from around the world.

IFAC was founded in Paris in September 1957. The French Control and automation community has pyed a major role in IFAC since its early days and will do everything it can to make the 20th IFAC World Congress a great success and to celebrate a prestigious 60th anniversary of IFAC in 2017, in Toulouse. Several highlights will also be proposed, including automation and control Popularization events and an exhibition of automatic control demonstrators.

Apart from an interesting and stimulating program there will of course be time to explore Toulouse, a beautiful French city, both cutting edge and steeped in history, set in a dramatic landscape of a region famous for its natural beauty and numerous fascinating tourist attractions within a short drive from the city.

Toulouse and its region form a platform of excellence acknowledged worldwide in aeronautics, space and embedded systems. The delegates to IFAC 2017 will have the opportunity to visit industrial installations with high levels of automatic control, including the Airbus A380 assembly lines and the "Cité de l’Espace" theme park.

In a world of limited resources, automatic control can provide the answer to the challenges of a sustainable development and has the opportunity of making a greater and even more significant impact on the society.

It is in this optimistic perspective that the community of control and automation in France warmly extends to you a cordial invitation to attend the 2017 IFAC World Congress in Toulouse.