After careful consideration of the COVID-19 situation, it is now clear and we have decided, we must go virtual for the SusTech 2020 Conference.

While countries, states, and counties are working to control the outbreak and keep communities healthy and thriving, with the recent official classification of COVID-19 as a pandemic by WHO, international, national and local travel and gathering restrictions and the unknown future prognosis of COVID-19 has made travel and planning difficult.

Authors of Papers:

It has become clear that we cannot hold a live SusTech conference in April. We have received many requests from authors for online presentations. Therefore, SusTech 2020 will become a virtual conference held over two days – Friday & Saturday April 24-25th 2020. We feel this is the best decision based on the current situation. After all we are the Sustainable conference!

Related Events:

• The SusTech Sustainability Forum and the Automated Vehicle Workshop will be postponed, currently to July 31 and August 1; these will be best as face-to-face and hands on meetings.

• The SusTech Student Poster Contest will be held virtually on Thursday April 23 starting at 5:00 pm and ending by 9:00 pm. The poster presenters will have the opportunity to present their poster within a ten (10) minutes period and up to five (5) additional minutes for QA. All sessions will be recorded for judges to review.

Paper presentations:

Our Technical Program Committee will be exploring the best technology option for authors for delivering their conference paper presentations in timeslots that are least inconvenient for our international authors.

ALL paper presentations will be by prerecorded Voice over PPT with online (live) Q&A. We will announce how to upload these recordings. Recordings will need to be uploaded by April 20. If you want a template you can download one here: SusTech2020 PPT Template

Each time-slot for paper presentations will be 20 minutes max. We strongly recommend that authors create their recorded presentations for 12-15 minutes. There will be an up-to 5-minute live Q&A session after each paper presentation. If you have questions regarding how to record your presentation, comments and/or concerns please email the Technical Program Chair at isayan@ieee.org.

Virtual Program Schedule:

We have scheduled all the papers into sessions a single-track for this online event. The schedule of the sessions for paper presentations has been posted on the website at https://ieee-sustech.org/conference/program/

Please note that it is imperative to confirm your spot in the program that you have completed these steps: a) filing your copyright; b) naming the presenter and submitting your final manuscript (at this point by email) if the reviews had requested revisions; and c) registering to attend. Early registration runs until April 15. At that time we will publish the final schedule based on which papers have a registered presenter.

Please check the SusTech website for additional posts on the program.

Having spent the past year preparing for the show with our technical planning committee, speakers, exhibitors, and event partners, we’re genuinely upset and disappointed not to be able to host a face-to-face conference but having a virtual conference is best for all. We want to thank all our customers and partners for their support, open discussions and encouragement. As everyone has been reminding us, great things happen when the community, government and industry comes together and connects at SusTech.