The 19th Biennial International Conference on Accelerator and Large Experimental Physics Control Systems runs from
7 – 13 October; and is hosted (by SARAO) for the first time in Africa.

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”. As we share our improvements and advances in our work with the community, we have 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. We wish to express our profound gratitude to our sponsors for empowering us to bring our ideas into reality.