The 19th biennial International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems (ICALEPCS) Conference holds a priceless moment in history for the organising committee since it’s the first time it’s being hosted in Africa since its inception.

For some it also presents a nostalgic feeling, being able to travel again after a period of uncertainty on resumption of collocated meetings. As such, this conference offers a fresh start and to discuss innovations again in person and fashion collaborations from the various meetings. In recent decades several instruments have come online to conduct different experiments to test and enable us to glean more insights into theories and improve our understanding of the universe at large. The MeerKAT dishes in South Africa make a star appearance, contributing towards this goal of ground-breaking science, with its highly sensitive receivers for radio wave observations. The need for equally matching control system software in scale and performance cannot be emphasised enough with the arrival of these powerful instruments. This sets the stage to introduce the theme for this year’s conference as “Accelerating Control Systems Software for Ground-breaking Science”. Sharing improvements and advances in work with the community, this conference is a unique learning opportunity to be equipped to produce novel work and support the effort to churn out ground-breaking scientific work. The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), managed by the National Research Foundation (NRF), is honoured to be hosting this edition of the ICALEPCS Conference.

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19th biennial ICALEPCS Conference