Subcommittee on Industrial and Factory Communication Systems Chairs: Thilo Sauter, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria Francisco Vasques, University of Porto, Portugal Scope: Real-time Communication and Applications; Formal Description Techniques; Multimedia Communication Support; Distributed application platforms; Internetworking, Interoperability; Configuration Tools and Network Management; Fieldbus Networks; Industrial Ethernet, Cell Networks; High Speed Networks; Intranet and Internet Access; Factory Applications and Case Studies.

Thilo Sauter is the Head of the Research Unit for Integrated Sensor Systems with the  Austrian Academy of Sciences. He was a research assistant at the Institute of General Electrical Engineering (1992 to 1996), working in the area of programmable logic and analog ASIC design. Since 1996, he has been with the Institute of Computer Technology, where he was head of the center of excellence for fieldbus systems and leading the factory communications group. He is member of the Austrian technical committee ÖVE MR65SC and delegate to the CENELEC committee TC65SC, both concerned with fieldbus standardization. His current research interests are integrated sensor systems and communication networks in automation, with a focus on interconnection issues of fieldbus systems and IP-based networks, as well as industrial Ethernet. Dr. Sauter received his Dipl.-Ing. and Doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the Vienna University of Technology in 1992 and 1999, respectively. Contact email address: t.sauter@iestcfa.org   Francisco Vasques received the “Licenciatura” degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Porto, Portugal, in 1987 and both the MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science from LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France, in 1992 and 1996, respectively. Since January 2004, he is Associate Professor at the Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management Department of the University of Porto. Since November 2006, Prof. Francisco Vasques is at the head of the Master Programme on Mechanical Engineering at his University. He is also the responsible for the Real-Time Systems and the Safety-Critical Computer Systems courses at his University.. Prof. Francisco Vasques is author or coauthor of more than 100 technical papers in the areas of real-time systems and industrial communication systems. His current research interests include real-time communication systems, industrial communications, fault-tolerant systems, and real-time system architectures. Additionally, he is also interested in safety-critical computing systems and communications. Since 2007, he his Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics for the topic on Industrial Communications. He served as Program Co-Chairman for the 2000, 2004 and 2006 editions of the IEEE Workshop on Factory Communication Systems (WFCS), which were held in, respectively, Porto, Vienna and Torino. He also served as track co-chairman for Industrial Communication Systems for the 2003 and 2005 editions of the IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), which were held in, respectively, Lisbon and Catania. Contact email address: f.vasques@iestcfa.org