Southeast Control Conference 2021: A Networking and Brainstorming Opportunity for the Regional DCSD Community; Blacksburg, Virginia; November 29-30, 2021

The goal of the Southeast Control Conference (SECC), which is at its second edition, is to provide an intellectually stimulating environment where student and researchers in the areas of dynamics, control, sensing, and diagnostics can present their research to one another, exchange some of the latest cutting edge research ideas, and build their professional networks. The SECC will be open to participants working in the southeast of the continental US to strengthen a regional network and incentivize rapid exchange of research novelties.

Special emphasis will be given to the active recruiting of participants from traditionally underrepresented minorities in engineering and historically black colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The Southeast is home to a number of productive research groups in dynamics, control, and systems theory and, although most of these groups are geographically close to one another, they rarely interact outside a few international conferences, and the depth of interactions at these international conferences is limited due to a large number of attendees and to competing obligations.

Most of the topics addressed at SECC fall within the purview of NSF's Dynamics, Control and Systems Diagnostics program, and, by supporting this conference for the first time, NSF will help this innovative new conference to become better established in its first few years of existence by relieving some of the fundraising burdens and enabling the organizers to focus on building sustained awareness and interest in the event, demonstrating the value of the event, and establishing easily replicated procedures for organizing future edition of the SECC.

The SECC 2021 will be structured over one and a half days and will alternate oral presentation sessions and poster presentations with multiple breaks, offering tours of the Virginia Tech campus, and a social banquet. This organization will maximize the attendees’ opportunities to exchange research ideas and network. A guest speaker, possibly a program manager in a relevant federal funding agency, and possibly with a diverse background, will present about their research portfolio and will serve as a potential role model for younger attendees.

Speakers will be selected based on the relevance, depth, and breadth of a one-page abstract evaluated by the Program Chairs. As part of the abstract submission process, the candidate speakers’ demographics will be recorded to maximize the opportunities of speakers from diverse research groups and institutions to intervene. A post-conference survey sent to all attendees will allow the Conference organizers to assess the effectiveness of SECC in reaching its goals.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.