Professor Irwin has been Editor-in-Chief of the IFAC Journal, Control Engineering Practice, and currently chairs the IFAC Publications Committee, serves on the IFAC Publications Management Committee and the IFAC Executive Committee.

He has wide experience on the programme and organising committees of many international conferences, most recently co-chairing the 2006 International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Kunming, Yunnan, China and is co-chair of the 2007 International Conference on Life Science Modelling in Shanghai.

He sits on the IFAC technical committees on 'Fuzzy and Neural Systems' and 'Networked Control Systems'.

Professor Irwin is the immediate past chair of the executive committee of the UK Automatic Control Council and is a College member of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, where he has both chaired and served on grant review panels.