Brief report on the first New-ACE workshop The first workshop was held at the Department of Electrical Eng. & Electronics, University of Liverpool from 27th to 28th May, 2008, hosted by Dr Q.-C. Zhong. About 40% of the 52 members (22) registered for the workshop and 20 of them attended the two-days workshop. The programme was intensive, including 7 keynote speaks (two about career development, two about general control engineering and four about power electronics and renewable energy). Six speakers are from academia and one from industry. These talks were well attended and highly appraised by most of the participants. There were three networking sessions, including a get-together session (dinner+networking), a poster session and group discussions. Some commonly interested topics, such as first grant proposals, were discussed. Some members have started thinking of putting forward joint proposals.