[president’s MESSAGE]
José Moura, 2008–2009 SPS President
[email protected]
A Positive Future
T
his column serves as a halfway mark in my two-year tenure as president of your professional society, the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). Since my last column, we attended the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) in San Diego. ICIP continues running strong in its 15th edition (kudos to Rama Chellappa and Bernd Girod, general cochairs, B.S. Manjunath and Antonio Ortega, technical cochairs, and the ICIP 2009 team for a very successful meeting.) At ICIP, the Society engaged in its long-range planning exercise—brainstorming about the visibility of signal processing by the public-at-large and how to make our Society publications and services more relevant and attractive to our members, in particular, our industrial members. Visibility is a perennial issue for which there are no simple answers. The IEEE as a whole is currently engaged in increasing the public’s awareness on technology and engineering and the role IEEE plays in improving our lives. Our Society is working on a pilot project aimed at educating the public in an entertaining way. Part Matrix and part CSI, it will go behind the curtain, with imagery that makes clear what signal processing is all about, while spiking the viewers’ interest and imagination. How do we reach out to our industrial constituencies? Ideas include launching more focused symposia (the space between a workshop and a full-scale, four-day conference) that will be organized around a small number of parallel tracks and providing an opportunity for industry, academia,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2008.931110
and government agencies and laboratories to come together and discuss signal processing from a systems point of view, beyond the theory and algorithms, to signal processing in action in the real world. Another idea is launching a new magazine (a good model would be
AS YOU READ THIS, I HOPE YOU WILL LOOK FORWARD TO THE MANY CHALLENGES THAT WE HAVE TO RESOLVE THIS YEAR AND IN THE YEARS BEYOND.
Spectrum-like but focused on signal processing). If you have other ideas, let me hear from you. In an earlier column (in the May 2008 issue), I discussed open access. The IEEE Publication Services and Products Board recently launched a program on IEEE access alternatives that includes promoting authors self-posting their own IEEE published journal and conference papers as well as instituting voluntary, “author pays” publishing fees to provide open access to these journal papers. IEEE will continue developing a variety of purchase options and educating the community about the realities of publishing economics. These are not insignificant steps; it is estimated that more than 30% of the IEEE Electronic Library is available through authors’ personal Web sites. It’s November and the snow here on the East Coast of the United States is beginning to fall! While I look to future challenges, it’s also time to acknowledge the outstanding work of some of our volunteers who are reaching the ends of
IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE [4] JANUARY 2009
their terms: Vice Presidents for Conferences and for Publications Athina Petropulu and K.J. Ray Liu, respectively; retiring Editors-in-Chief Shih-Fu Chang, Alex Gershman, Pierre Moulin, Mari Ostendorf, and Alle-Jan van der Veen; and departing members-at-large of our Board of Governors Ahmed Tewfik, Isabel Trancoso, and, again, Alle-Jan van der Veen. I take the opportunity to welcome two members of our staff in Piscataway: Lisa Schwazbek, manager, Conference Services; and Linda Cherry, manager, Publications. Both Lisa and Linda will work in close collaboration with our incoming VicePresidents John Mathews (Conferences) and Ali Sayed (Publications) to continue supporting our many volunteer-lead activities. As you read this in January 2009, I hope you will look forward to the many challenges that we have to resolve this year and in the years beyond. As engineers, we will continue to play a significant role in helping the world to recover from its economic woes and social missteps. It is a great source of satisfaction that comes with making life better through the many applications of our science and technology. Engineers also hold significant leadership positions in industry and government. There is no time to rest on our laurels. We are agents of positive change, and we need to heed the call to action. Let us not just hope for the best, but use our skills to work toward it. As usually, feel free to share your thoughts. All the best for a chal[SP] lenging and rewarding 2009!
