IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - April 2018 - 5

led by members of our technical committee on the topic. For this year's annual flagship conference (IEEE SMC 2018)
to be held in Miyazaki, Japan, 7-10
October 2018, our yearly BMI Workshop is being organized to include the
participation of leaders affiliated with
active brain and BMI-related initiatives around the world. It will once
again host a Brain Hackathon involving students from a wide spectrum
of academic majors, working with
professionals having diverse expertise, on challenge problems of BMI
systems. This is fitting for SMCS, as
our international membership broadly
spans multiple fields and disciplines
representing expertise not only on
trending technology areas (e.g., modelbased systems engineering, systems
biology, BMI and shared control systems, awareness computing, artificial
intelligence, and machine learning)
but also on their integration into the
engineered systems that they enable.
In many ways, and for many of today's engineering endeavors, SMCS is
where it all comes together!

For our members and nonmember
students and professionals who are
involved with or have strong interest
in the intersections or integration of
our three technical pillars, it is important to appreciate the relevance of
our Society in this regard. Those who
identify with the interdisciplinary
aspects of SMC, including sociotechnical issues and related future directions, will find a solid home in SMCS
as members. To more clearly promote
this aspect of our identity, SMCS
has created a new ad hoc committee within its leadership to focus on
promotion and branding. This ad hoc
committee, chaired by Christopher
Nemeth, will undertake a focused effort to articulate and promote the
Society's identity, its emphasis on
interdisciplinary aspects of SMC, and
its value to current and prospective
members and collaborators.
Until next time, I thank all members and friends for your contributions and support to the IEEE SMCS.

IEEE connects
you to a universe
of information!
As the world's largest professional association
dedicated to advancing technological innovation and
excellence for the benefit of humanity, the IEEE
and its Members inspire a global community through its
highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards,
and professional and educational activities.

Visit www.ieee.org.
Publications

/

IEEE Xplore

®

/

Standards

/

M Ap
e mri lb2018
e r s hIEEE
i p SyStEmS,
/ C o man,
n f e r&eCybErnEtICS
n c e s / magazInE
Education 5

IMAGE LICENSED BY INGRAM PUBLISHING

As a related update, SMCS is now
a member of the Council of Societies
of the American Institute for Medical
and Biological Engineering with Dmitry Goldgof of the University of South
Florida, Tampa, appointed as the SMCS
representative. With this collaboration,
we join a forum for weighing in on issues and policy affecting the medical
and biological engineering field and coordinating related member-society activities with those of academia, industry, and government, the health-care
sector, and biomedical communities.
Such relationships are aligned with the
SMCS mission to promote interdisciplinary aspects of systems science and
engineering, human-machine systems,
and cybernetics and the appreciation
of the transdisciplinary nature of today's complex problems and associated systems.
An exemplar of our current activity along this line is our strong participation in technical events and dialog
focused on the transdisciplinary topic
of brain-machine interface (BMI) systems, where we are represented and
http://www.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - April 2018
