Content Gazette - March 2020 - 1

members across the globe to organize
It is remarkable how a step that may
their own technical meetings under
appear trivial to some can have such a
the sponsorship of the IEEE Signal
sizable impact. In the short span of 12
Processing Society. Just like Summer
months, our student membership has
Schools, financial support is available
more than doubled, increasing by 104%.
to assist you in promoting signal proThis was largely driven by increases
cessing in your geographical areas. We
in Regions 9 and 10, while our overhave close to 18,000 members. Unfortuall Society membership has increased
nately, a large numby 9.6% (one of the
ber of them cannot
highest increase rates
We are a global
within the I EEE).
organization representing attend our flagship
conferences for variWe have also capped
a sophisticated discipline ous reasons, namely
all student tutorial
that reaches all corners
financial ones. Our
fees at IEEE Signal
of the world.
motto is simple: "If
Processing Society
you cannot come to
conferences at the
us, we will go to you." You can now apnominal value of US$25. As a result, I
ply to organize technical meetings,
was informed that the number of stusummer or winter schools, and industry
dents attending our 2019 ICASSP meetforums with Society sponsorship and
ing in Brighton increased sixfold over
financial support at your local univerthe previous ICASSP held in Calgary,
sity, local Chapter, local industry, or
Canada, from 128 to 750. This influx of
city. Be proactive and take advantage of
interested students has helped ICASSP
these opportunities.
exceed 3,000 attendees for the first time
In 2019, we have argued for and
in its history! I am grateful to my colpromoted the need to move our major
leagues, Vice-Presidents Nikos Sidiconferences to new corners to reach reropoulos and Fernando Pereira, who
gions where there is significant interest
have helped make these efforts a reality.
in signal processing but are underserved
We continued our outreach to memby our professional activities. For the
bers in 2019. In particular, we have
first time, our flagship conferences will
decided to reduce the Society membe held in India and Southeast Asia.
bership fees by 50% to members from
Specifically, the IEEE International
low-income economies and developConference on Image Processing (ICIP)
ing nations. We have also reduced the
will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
registration fees at conferences for our
in 2023 while ICASSP will be coming
IEEE Life Members to the same level as
to Hyderabad, India, in 2025. I am also
student rates. Moreover, we have estabhappy to report that we have elected our
lished a flat rate for student registration
first vice-president for the Society who
of US$200 at our flagship conferences.
is physically located in India, our colWe have been working to reduce entry
league K.V.S. Hari from the Indian Inbarriers to our Society. Like I mentioned
stitute of Science in Bangalore.
in one of my previous editorials on how
Also in 2019, we created a new vice"Science Is Blind" [1], there should be
president of education position to help
no walls to our Society. Your science
develop and strengthen our educational
pushes you forward. We have also esoutreach efforts and educational matetablished awards to honor our younger
rial. We also elected our colleague Shri
members and the exceptional teachers
Narayannan to serve as the first viceof signal processing in different parts
president of education for the Society.
of the world. We launched a Best Ph.D.
Under the supervision of our colleague
Dissertation Award to honor our excepMaria Sabrina Greco, we continued to
tional graduating students, as well as an
enrich our Resource Center in an effort
Early Career Technical Achievement
to evolve it toward an e-learning cenAward to honor our younger researchers
ter. In addition to recorded plenaries,
during the early years of their career.
seminars, and tutorials, the objective is
In 2018, we launched a brand-new
to generate recorded courses, webinars,
concept of regional meetings to enable
6

interviews with luminaries of our discipline, historical content, and more.
We continued to support and promote our female members. The number
of Society members in the IEEE Women
in Engineering organization has increased by more than 150%. In 2019, the
BoG put forward two candidates for the
position of president-elect, one of them
female. She was successful and won the
election and will be serving as our president in 2022-2023. In the same year, the
number of elected female BoG members
reached five out of a total of nine: Abeer
Alwan, Beatrice Pesquet-Popescu, Athina Petropulu, Ana Perez-Neira, and Zhi
Tian. Our Awards Board is led by Rabab
Ward and our vice-president for technical activities is Tulay Adali. Three of
our journal editors-in-chief (EICs) are
female: Lina Karam for IEEE Journal
of Selected Topics in Signal Processing,
Dilek-Hakkani Tur for IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language,
and Mari Ostendorf for IEEE Open
Journal of Signal Processing.
We promoted open science and
an open model for our publications. I
published an article on this topic titled
"Galileo, Fourier, and Openness in Science" [2], where I expressed the view
that the IEEE can and should do more
in this domain. We created an entry for
"Signal Processing" under the arXiv
platform and launched an open access journal with reduced fees. Future
plans will consider adding notable features, such as promoting reproducible
research features and allowing the upload of videos, software, and data. I am
grateful to Vice-President, Publications
Sergios Theodoridis for making this
plan a reality, and for the support from
then President-Elect Ahmed Tewfik
and EIC-designate Mari Ostendorf during the planning and launch phases. It
is a strong effort in the right direction.
In my opinion, the future of the publication enterprise will be very different
from what we practice today. Our Society needs to push forward with conviction and lead the way in open science
and open publications.
We also created uniform branding
for our awards. Our major awards are
now named after distinguished scholars

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE | January 2020 |
www.signalprocessingsociety.org [1] MARCH 2020

http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org

Content Gazette - March 2020

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