The IFAC Foundation Kwon Award

 

Purpose and Funding

One of the aims of the IFAC Foundation is to promote the awareness and dissemination of the social relevance of automatic control. The IFAC Foundation recognizes at each IFAC World Congress the contributions of individuals or a group of individuals who through their work have shown how automatic control science and technology can contribute to significant advances in the broad area of “sustainable development”. This includes work on the topics of renewable and clean energy, management of energy, water and resources in general, control in agriculture, pollution control, climate control, and related topics.

The IFAC Foundation Kwon Award is made in honour of Professor Wook Hyun Kwon whose initial donation fostered the creation of the IFAC Foundation. It is awarded for a paper published in one of the IFAC Journals (https://www.ifac-control.org/publications/journals), and it is fully funded by the IFAC Foundation. 

 

Award

The winner (or winning team) receives a certificate and cash prize of 2000 euro (total). Moreover, the awardee(s) are recognized appropriately during the IFAC World Congress at which the award is given. 

 

Kwon Award Ceremony at IFAC2026 in Busan

The following photograph shows, from left to right, Frank Allgöwer (Chair of the Foundation Board), Angela Fontan and Karl H. Johansson (two of the 2026 awardees), and Wook Hyun Kwon, whose initial donation paved the way for the creation of the IFAC Foundation.

 

Past awardees

Year Congress Site Winner Country
 2026 Busan

Angela Fontan, Patricia Eustachio Colombo, Rosemary Green, and Karl H. Johansson

for their paper

"A Systems Perspective on Promoting Sustainable Food Systems"

published in Annual Reviews in Control 2025 (vol. 60, 101020)

  SE/UK
2023 Yokohama

Juan D. Gil, Lidia Roca, Guillermo Zaragoza, Julio E. Normey-Rico, and Manuel Berenguel

for their paper

"Hierarchical control for the start-up procedure of solar thermal fields with direct storage"

published in Control Engineering Practice 2020 (vol. 95, 104254).

 ES/BR

2020

 Berlin

No award was given

  
2017 Toulouse

Salman Hafeez, Steven R. Weller, and Christopher M. Kellett

for their paper

"Impact of Climate Model Parametric Uncertainty in an MPC Implementation of the DICE Integrated Assessment Model"

published in the proceedings of the 20th IFAC World Congress 2017 (pp. 959-965).

 Citation: 

“For the use of advanced control technology to potentially impact the climate change policy.”		 AU