Conference on Decision and Control

Conference on Decision and Control
Name	Conference on Decision and Control
Abbreviation	CDC
Discipline	Control theory
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Frequency	Annual
First	1962
Country	International

Conference on Decision and Control

The Conference on Decision and Control is an annual international meeting focused on control theory, systems engineering, and decision-making research. The conference draws researchers from institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University, and is sponsored by organizations including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE Control Systems Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, American Automatic Control Council, and national academies like the National Academy of Engineering. Many attendees have affiliations with research labs such as Bell Labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and companies like General Electric, Siemens, Honeywell, Bosch, and Toyota.

History

The conference traces roots to early control gatherings connected to International Federation of Automatic Control, Automatica, and workshops that involved figures from Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and Cornell University. Initial meetings featured contributors associated with Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Richard Bellman, Harry Nyquist, and Rudolf Kálmán, and intersected with developments at RAND Corporation, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Bell Labs, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and NASA. Over decades the conference expanded alongside milestones such as the rise of stochastic control, robust control, optimal control, and intersections with work from Claude Shannon, Andrey Kolmogorov, Leonard Kleinrock, and Ilya Prigogine. Shifts in venue and sponsorship reflected collaborations with institutions including Imperial College London, ETH Zurich, University of Cambridge, National University of Singapore, and Tsinghua University.

Scope and Topics

The conference covers topics spanning optimal control frameworks linked to Pontryagin's Maximum Principle and methods developed at Princeton University and Soviet Union research centers, to robust control advances influenced by Yale University and University of Minnesota groups. Sessions include themes connected to stochastic processes research from Kolmogorov Institute, game theory contributions tied to John Nash and Reinhard Selten, and cyber-physical systems work related to California Institute of Technology and ETH Zurich. Other topics interface with robotics research from Carnegie Mellon University and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, networked control influenced by AT&T Bell Laboratories and Cisco Systems, and applications in aerospace linked to European Space Agency, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Boeing.

Organization and Governance

The conference is governed by committees often formed from members of IEEE Control Systems Society, American Automatic Control Council, and academic representatives from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Imperial College London, and ETH Zurich. Program chairs have historically included faculty from California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, University of Michigan, and University of Oxford. Advisory roles draw from fellows of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, recipients of the IEEE Medal of Honor, members of the National Academy of Engineering, and awardees like holders of the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award.

Conference Editions and Venues

Editions have been held in locations such as New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Houston, Munich, Paris, London, Zurich, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Sydney, and Toronto. Special joint meetings co-located with events like American Control Conference, European Control Conference, International Federation of Automatic Control World Congress, and workshops associated with NeurIPS, ICRA, CDC-ECC have occurred at venues including Moscone Center, Palazzo Vecchio, ExCeL London, and university campuses such as Stanford University and University of Cambridge.

Notable Papers and Contributions

Significant papers presented have advanced theories related to state estimation tied to Rudolf Kálmán's work, H-infinity methods influenced by researchers from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), and landmark algorithms bridging control and learning with ties to Yoshua Bengio-adjacent research and machine learning communities at University of Toronto and Google DeepMind. Contributions have included breakthroughs in nonlinear control associated with Isaac Newton Institute collaborators, distributed optimization linked to AT&T Bell Laboratories research, and hybrid systems work connected to California Institute of Technology and University of California, Santa Barbara. Applications impacting industry have emerged through collaborations with Boeing Research & Technology, Lockheed Martin, Toyota Research Institute, and Siemens Corporate Technology.

Awards and Recognitions

Awards presented or associated with the conference include honors from IEEE Control Systems Society, recognition parallel to the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award, and best paper awards often shared by scholars from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, and ETH Zurich. Many recipients are fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and members of the National Academy of Engineering or Royal Society.

Participation and Submission Process

Participation typically requires electronic submission through systems used by IEEE Xplore processes and adherence to review standards common to venues like NeurIPS, ICML, and IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. Program committees drawn from Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, University of California, Berkeley, Imperial College London, and ETH Zurich perform peer review. Acceptance leads to presentation formats including plenary lectures often delivered by scholars affiliated with Princeton University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and invited industry talks from organizations such as Microsoft Research, Google Research, IBM Research, and Amazon.

Category:Control theory conferences