Wellcome address from IPC chair

It is great pleasure to warmly welcome you in Slovenia for the "9th International PhD Workshop on Systems and Control".

Well, the official title of the event is not as short as that. It includes the peculiar extension "A Young Generation Viewpoint". The reason is quite obvious. Indeed, ever since the first workshop in Marianska (Czech Republic) in 2000, the event has attempted to gather exclusively young PhD students and scientists. The idea was to let them stir their views on various aspects of systems and control in a friendly atmosphere and out of reach of the "shadow" of senior colleagues.

As such, this workshop is believed to be useful for two reasons. First, is expected to stimulate seeking and identifying the common concepts behind apparently diverse fields. Secondly, it might help raising the awareness of how important is to be able to disseminate the ideas to a broader professional audience and not only to the specialists in the field.

In an attempt to provide better conditions for accomplishing the goals, some additional moves have been done during the preparation of the event.

This year the programme is enriched with three plenary lectures aimed to provide a flavour of ongoing perspective research tracks. The lectures deliver a good sample of necessary basic material in order to be of interest for an indeed broad audience.

The IPC has also put considerable effort in peer review of the submitted papers and, especially, in providing useful feedback to the authors.

Finally, the event is now officially run under the sponsorship of the Slovenian branch of IEEE.

The main drivers on the organisational side were Matej Gašperin and Boštjan Pregelj. Matej in particular is to be credited for the bulk of the creative effort and preparation of the internet environment for papers submission and review.

On this occasion, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the papers contributors, invited speakers, reviewers and everyone who has helped bringing the event into its final shape. I truly hope you will enjoy the spirit of the Workshop and beauties of the Mediterranean.

Đani Juričić
Workshop Chair