Welcome to the 20th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation.

Barcelona,  July 3-6, 2012

On behalf of the Organizing Committee and of the International Program Committee for the 20th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED 2012), it is a great pleasure to welcome you to the conference to be held in Barcelona from July 3 to July 6, 2012.

The optimal and robust performances of control and automation devices are of great significance, for the protection of human life and health, the environment, and of the vested economic value. The correct functioning of those systems has a profound impact also on production cost and product quality. All those researcher and practitioners being active in the field are invited to MED 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, to share recent advances in research and applications in the broad area of systems engineering, control and automation.

Barcelona is unequivocally a Mediterranean city, not only because of its geographic location but also and above all because of its history, tradition and cultural influences. Barcelona is a nice Mediterranean city that offers a high level education, research, development and innovation in advanced engineering related with the topics of the symposium.

The program for MED 2012 Conference includes more than 250 papers in six parallel sessions during three days, with 32 regular sessions and 6 invited sessions. We have selected and appointed three plenary speakers covering different areas of the conference, with the following titles:

• Controlling the Data Deluge
• Identification and control: the two inseparable friends cooperating for the solution of automation problems over more than five decades
• Adaptive Control in Neuro-robotics

and a panel discussion will allow reflecting and drawing conclusions about the Control Engineering Impact in the Society of the Future. Altogether, we have proposed a technical program that we hope will cover your expectations.

A novelty of this conference is the delivering of the best paper award. The preselection has been done based on paper evaluation of the international program committee and it will be complemented by the review of the presentation. A subcommittee of IPC will be in charge of this final selection. This award is sponsored by the Spanish Automática e Instrumentación technical Journal.

We look forward to your attendance at the MED 2012 events and discussions. See you in Barcelona.

Pedro Albertos		Joseba Quevedo