12th IFAC Symposium on Automation in Mining, Mineral and Metal Processing (IFAC MMM'07)
Québec City, Canada, 21-23 August 2007

This Symposium was held in North America for the first time since 1980, the year of the 3rd IFAC MMM Symposium in Montréal, Québec, Canada.

75 papers have been selected by the IPC, of which 68 have been presented by authors coming from 20 different countries, including 24 papers from Canada. Half of the papers were industrial papers, i.e. manuscripts written by at least one author working in an industrial setting.

Three outstanding plenary talks were delivered. G.C. Goodwin reviewed modern applied constrained optimization ; J. MacGregor gave an overview of multivariate methods for learning and process monitoring from large data bases; finally, P. Thwaites gave the industrial point of view on the specific control problems in mineral processing and extractive metallurgy.

The 16 sessions of the Symposium presented a wide spectrum of topics including modelling, optimization and automatic control in the fields of mining, mineral processing, pyrometallurgy, electrometallurgy and metal rolling processes. The Symposium was organized by the multi-departmental research group LOOP (Process Observation and Optimization Lab.) of Université Laval, and supported by "Diamond" sponsors, Xstrata Nickel, Algosys and Alcan (Rio-Tinto), "Gold" sponsors, Barrick and Outotec, and "Copper" sponsors, Dofasco (Arcelor-Mittal), Alcoa and Gecamin.

The 102 Symposium participants have enjoyed the 400 years of history, as well as the culinary pleasures, vibrant street life, and thriving cultural scenes offered by Québec City, in a largely French-speaking province, at the crossroads between European and North American cultures. The NOC, IPC, and MMM TC members as well as the session chairs, authors, editors and LOOP students are thanked for having contributed to the success of this IFAC event .

André Desbiens, Université Laval, Canada, Andre.Desbiens@gel.ulaval.ca