So, as Septemember draws to a close, I am starting to look ahead to the new session.   The first thing to do is to introduce you all to our new Chairman who will take over the reins from Stewart Taylor officially on 1st October.   I would like to take the opportunity to thank Stewart for his sterling work in leading the TPN exec team over the last three years and wish him all the best for the future.  


I must also mention our first event of the new session - Big Data Analytics for Smart Power Networks which we are organising in conjunction with Brunel University London.  This will be on 8th November, so do check back over the following weeks for further updates. 


Welcome to our new Chairman: Simon Hart


Simon works at Yasa Motors Ltd and has been involved in the IET for 23 years!  He is a former Chair of Council and has been a Trustee, not to mention the work he does in his Local Network, and of course, our TPN.  On a light hearted note, if Simon were to invite 4 engineers to dinner, it would be Nikola Tesla, Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace and our very own, Dr Colin Arthur, current Chairman of the Communities Resourcing Committee (CRC) 


Anyway, over to Simon:

Welcome to the Control & Automation community where all engineers with an interest in our subject can share information, look for answers and discuss topics.  Our subject is of course very broad and touches a variety of fields.  This makes discussions interesting in a multi- and inter-disciplinary way as our core skills can be deployed in a vast range of applications.


Our newsletter, we hope, will alert you to events that you might otherwise have missed, perhaps highlight some trends and hot topics that you haven’t got around to looking at yet; and maybe sometimes just interest and amuse you.


In order to get the best from this community and newsletter we need to know your views and interests.  We will focus on items of interest to the community and this will evolve as needed.  The community will include pure theoretical items and pure application items and best of all the place where theory and application meet, where academia and industry exchange ideas, generate understanding and provide practical application.


My own area of interest is the control of power electronics in high performance electric motor and generator applications.  This might seem quite specific but it means I have an interest in topics ranging from cybersecurity, “factories of the future” and the “internet of things”, to classical control, transport and artificial intelligence.


I have found the Control & Automation community a fun melting pot of interesting stuff and I hope you will too!