The 28th IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2023),took place at the CASINO International Conference Center in Sinaia, Romania, between September 12-15, 2023. ETFA is one of the traditional conferences of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES). Since its inception in 1992 (Melbourne, Australia), the ETFA conference has evolved into one of the leading IEEE conferences dedicated to emerging technologies and automation. The last three editions took place in: ETFA 2020 – Vienna, Austria, ETFA 2021 – Vasteras, Sweden, ETFA 2022 – Stuttgart, Germany.

According to the tradition, the conference started with Industry Day which included 6 thematic workshops and Industry Forum. This year, the Industry Forum was dedicated to Automotive Industry. During this forum took place the plenary presentation of Florian Patzer, PhD (Senior scientist at Fraunhofer IOSB, Germany): "Sustainable smart manufacturing with Catena-X" and 5 presentations of the most relevant companies in the automotive field: Renault Group, FEV Romania, Forvia-Hella, Wind River Systems, Continental Automotive Iasi. Also, a thematic exhibition of ASTI Automation was hosted.

The 2023 edition offered a technical program comprising 252 papers presented in 27 regular and invited sessions, as well as 5 Work in Progress sessions. The 252 papers were selected from 360 papers submitted for evaluation by the technical committee of the conference. The conference was attended by 272 authors, distributed as follows: Austria – 27, Belgium – 1, Czech Republic – 3, Denmark – 5, Ecuador – 1, Egypt – 1, Finland – 3, France – 15, Germany – 84, Greece – 2, India – 2, Italy – 16, Japan – 6, Netherlands – 2, Norway – 4, Portugal – 4, Romania – 37, Syria – 1, Slovenia – 1, Spain – 25, Sweden – 25, Switzerland – 3, Taiwan – 2,  Great Britain – 1, USA – 1. The conference hosted two plenary presentations by leading personalities in the field: Prof. Josep Guerrero (Aalborg University, Denmark): "Brain Models and Neuroscience Inspired Artificial Intelligence for Biological and Energy Space Microgrids" and Prof. Margret Bauer (Lund University, Sweden): "Beyond the hype: Useful aspects of AI, Industry 4.0 and the Digital Twin".

As a conclusion, the conference was a remarkable success, its organizer, the Faculty of Automation, Computers, Electrical Engineering and Electronics of "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, wishing to thank all those who contributed to this success.

Dean FACIEE, Professor Marian Barbu, PhD