Society News

The 28th ICAS congress was held at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 23-28 September. The RAeS Australian Division was the Congress host with Engineers Australia as the co-host. The local organising committee comprising a team of RAeS And EA members was chaired by Cees Bil of the Melbourne Branch, with Cam Macphee, Secretary of the Brisbane Branch, as deputy-chair.

The Congress broke a number of records with over 900 abstracts submitted of which 450 were selected for oral or poster presentation  covering a wide range of topics. Due to the overwhelming number of high-quality abstracts the technical programme was expanded to twelve parallel sessions over 4 days with the fifth day reserved to technical visits. Cees and Cam commented that “We welcomed about 780 delegates from 40 countries, which is a very good result and an important indicator for the respect by the international aerospace community for R&D in Australia. Our country contributed more than 15% of the final papers and was recognised twice in the lineup of ICAS awards that are bestowed at each congress”.

Cam Macphee and Cees Bil

 At the Congress, Professor Murray Scott FRAeS, Managing Director of Advanced Composite Structures Australia was elected as the new ICAS President from 1 January 2013 and he will lead the ICAS organisation to the 29th Congress which will be held on 7-12 September 2014 in St Petersburg, Russia.