Dear colleagues from the modelling and simulation community:

It is a great pleasure for me to write to you as the new president of EUROSIM. This decision of the EUROSIM Board is a great acknowledgement for the Dutch Benelux Simulation Society (DBSS) as one of the oldest simulation societies in the world. DBSS is now 37 years old and it is promoting the active participation of academic scientists, government and industry for providing solutions to challenges that the Dutch society faces actually and in the future.

In recent years, Modelling and Simulation has been getting more and more demand and attention in diverse sectors. This is because it is the only technique that is able to consider the complexity of the systems together with the variability inherent to diverse systems. For this reason different approaches are applied in diverse systems, discrete, continuous, agent-based, formal methods and hybrid approaches. We have witnessed the use of M&S in diverse areas like finance, supply chain, information technology, disaster management, security and many more apart from the traditional ones of manufacturing, transport or engineering. Also some firms are using it as value provider for different end-users, new software firms have entered to the market providing novel solutions that combine simulation with other techniques. All these developments increase the demand of experts with M&S knowledge and related skills worldwide and in all the sectors. For the previous reasons, organisations like EUROSIM have a fundamental role in the current and future society to set the framework and arena for knowledge exchange, dissemination of new knowledge and contact between the academic institutions, government entities and industry.

In the next period of 2019-2022 until the congress in Amsterdam, I plan to keep promoting all the activities of the different societies so that the EUROSIM federation acts as an organic organization that evolves during three years towards the most important and relevant activity which will be the EUROSIM congress. The congress will be the maximum event in Europe where simulation scientists, government participants and firms get together in Europe to exchange innovative ideas, applications and discuss the necessities and requirements of innovative applications and areas of study where the use of M&S will make a difference.

In order to achieve this, the executive board will start new activities that encourage a more active participation of the societies for satisfying the necessities that actors of society require from EUROSIM.

Finally on behalf of the new EUROSIM Board and all the EUROSIM societies I would like to thank Prof. Emilio Jimenez and all the members of EUROSIM Board for their past efforts. I hope that the new board will continue their good work. I would also like to thank everybody who was active in the organization of the very successful EUROSIM Congress in La Rioja.

Dr. Miguel Mujica Mota