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On behalf of the Awards Board and the Board of Governors of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), it is my great pleasure to congratulate the following SPS members who will receive the Society’s prestigious 2009 awards during ICASSP 2010 in Dallas, Texas.
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SOCIETY AWARD:

Rama Chellappa, “for pioneering and fundamental contributions to image and video-based analysis and understanding.”
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TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD:

Alan S. Willsky, “for originality and innovation in stochastic mutliresolution modeling in statistical and graphical modeling, and in probabilistic control-driven signal processing.”

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K. J. Ray Liu, “for pioneering and outstanding contributions for the advances of signal processing in multimedia forensics, security, and wireless communications.”

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MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD:

Arye Nehorai “for exceptional and dedicated service as a leader in a broad range of activities for the Society and profession.”

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Isabel Maria Martins Trancoso, “for outstanding service and leadership to the worldwide community in the field of speech processing.”

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EDUCATION AWARD:

Robert M. Gray, “for outstanding contributions to education and mentoring in signal processing.”

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IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE BEST PAPER AWARD:

• Neal Patwari, Joshua N. Ash, Spyros Kyperountas, Alfred O. Hero, III, Randolph L. Moses and Neiyer S. Correal, for the paper entitled, “Locating the Nodes: Cooperative Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks,” published in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Volume 22, Number 4, July 2005.

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE BEST COLUMN AWARD:

• Richard G. Baraniuk, for the paper entitled, “Compressive Sensing [Lecture Notes],” published in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Volume 24, Number 4, July 2007.

BEST PAPER AWARD RECIPIENTS:

• Zhou Wang, Alan Conrad Bovik, Hamid Rahim Sheikh, and Eero P. Simoncelli, for the paper entitled, “Image Quality Assessment: From Error Visibility to Structural Similarity,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Volume 13, Number 4, April 2004.
• Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo and Shuzhong Zhang, for the paper entitled, “Dynamic Spectrum Management: Complexity and Duality,” published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Volume 2, Number 1, February 2008.
• Quentin H. Spencer, A. Lee Swindlehurst, and Martin Haardt, for the paper entitled, “Zero-Forcing Methods for Downlink Spatial Multiplexing in Multiuser MIMO Channels,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Volume 52, Number 2, February 2004.
• Chul Min Lee and Shrikanth S. Narayanan, for the paper entitled, “Toward Detecting Emotions in Spoken Dialogs,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing, Volume 13, Number 2, March 2005.
• Jan Lukáŝ, Jessica Fridrich, and Miroslav Goljan, for the paper entitled, “Digital Camera Identification From Sensor Pattern Noise,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Volume 1, Number 2, June 2006.
• Genyuan Wang and Moeness G. Amin, for the paper entitled, “Imaging Through Unknown Walls Using Different Standoff Distances,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Volume 54, Number 10, October 2006.

YOUNG AUTHOR BEST PAPER AWARD RECIPIENTS:

• Tomoki Toda, for the paper co-authored with Alan W. Black and Keiichi Tokuda entitled, “Voice Conversion Based on Maximum-Likelihood Estimation of Spectral Parameter Trajectory,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, Volume 15, Number 8, November 2007.
• Florian Luisier, for the paper co-authored with Thierry Blu and Michael Unser entitled, “A New SURE Approach to Image Denoising: Interscale Orthonormal Wavelet Thresholding,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Volume 16, Number 3, March 2007.

The Director-Membership Services is responsible for identifying value/benefit/services to members, as well as recommending policy/mechanism for recruiting members. The Director is a voting member of the Membership Board and a non-voting, ex-officio member of both the Conference and Publications Boards. The Director-Membership Services chairs the Membership Services Committee.

The Director-Industrial Relations is responsible for identifying value, benefit, and services to attract and retain industrial members. The Director is a voting member of the Membership Board and a non-voting, ex-officio member of both the Conference and Publications Boards. The Director-Industrial chairs the Industrial Relations Committee.

Nominations should be submitted to Michael D. Zoltowski, SPS Vice President-Awards and Memberships, via <mikedz AT ecn.purdue.edu>. When making your nomination, please provide the following information: Name of candidate, contact information, brief background, information about current SP, IEEE, or Other Society, as well other volunteer activities. Nominations must be received no later than 15 February 2010. The call for nominations can be found on the Society’s website at this link.

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As many of you are aware of, THEMES (Thematic Meetings in Signal Processing) is a new joint initiative of the Conference Board and the Publication Board of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (cf. eNews July 2009). The first THEMES will be held on March 15, 2010 in Dallas. This event’s theme is “Signal and Information Processing for Social Networking.” On behalf of the Conference and Publication Boards of the Society, we would like to invite you to attend THEMES this year. You can find more information on THEMES at www.ieee-themes.org.

As you consider the allocation of limited resources to decide on the conferences you attend this year, we have made every effort to make your investment in attending THEMES worthwhile. First, THEMES is co-located with ICASSP 2010, and if you are attending ICASSP, the extra cost of attending this one-day event is minimal. If you attend both events, you will even get a discount on the registration fees.

One of the goals of THEMES is to bring to the Signal Processing Community the best technical work on topics of current relevance in a one-day format. For this year’s event, we received over forty submissions. These full-length papers underwent a thorough review process similar to those of papers that are submitted to IEEE Transactions and Journals. The best eight papers were selected for presentation at THEMES and inclusion in a special issue of the IEEE Journal of Special Topics in Signal Processing. The list of papers to be presented at THEMES can be found online. The presentations will be of sufficient length to provide a clear understanding of the materials, and will be made by a senior author of the paper. The policy of the meeting requires that the papers be presented by an author who is not a student unless all the authors are students.

Finally, if you are not able to travel to Dallas, you can still attend THEMES virtually. We plan to live-stream the conference to those registering for virtual attendance of the meeting.

We look forward to seeing you at IEEE-THEMES in March. You can now register online and take advantage of discounted rate by 15 February 2010.

The first IEEE International Conference on Signal and Image Processing Applications (ICSIPA09) was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on November 18 -19, 2009. Kuala Lumpur is a vibrant city situated in the heart of peninsular Malaysia surrounded by scenic mountains with tropical weather suitable for vacation.  ICSIPA09 was a unique conference that brought members of the IEEE Signal Processing Society together with researchers from allied fields such as remote sensing, communications and bioinformatics. The conference theme focused on the theory, methods and algorithms, and applications of signal processing and image processing covering the following topics: Feature Extraction, Pattern Recognition, Storage & Retrieval, Communication, Coding & Transmission, Computer Graphics, Biomedical Signal Processing, Speech, Audio and Video Processing.

The keynote speech delivered by Prof. Wee Ser from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore was on “Smart Space for Human Behavior Monitoring enabled by Sensor Array Signal Processing and Content Based Signal Analysis” covering wide ranging topics related from real-time video processing to intelligent pattern recognition. The best paper award has been awarded to Aurelien Ducournau, Sofian Rital, Alain Bretto and Bernard Laget for their paper on “A multilevel spectral hypergraph partitioning approach for color image segmentation” during the conference dinner. A total of 241 papers were submitted to ICSIPA 2009, out of which 105 papers were accepted and presented in 21 sessions over two days. The majority papers and participation from international delegates show the success of launching this international event and the hard work of young and active IEEE Signal Processing Society Malaysia Chapter. IEEE Signal Processing Society Malaysia Chapter looks forward to host the second ICSIPA conference in 2011.

Both Transactions are co-sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing Society. The nominee must be a member in good standing of IEEE and of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.  He/she must have served as an associate editor or in a management capacity for an archival journal.

The duties include the identification of associate editors to serve across the scope of the journals, management of the day-to-day operations of the journals; identification of areas that require strengthening and working with the sponsoring societies to achieve that goal.

Each Editor-in-Chief reports to the Steering Committees of the respective journal.  He/she chairs the Editorial Board for the publication. The terms of service will be from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2013.

Please submit nominations to Ali H. Sayed, Vice President-Publications, IEEE Signal Processing Society, via sayed@ee.ucla.edu by February 28, 2010.  Your nomination must include a brief biography (of no more than one page).  The biography should include the web address that contains the candidate’s CV (do not send complete curricula vitae with the nomination). Also include a statement of the candidate’s experience as an associate editor or other publication management position.  Should the nominee so desire, a statement of interest of up to 500 words may be included stating the nominee’s interest and special qualifications for the position.

Desirable qualities:  Solid technical accomplishments, leadership, integrity and ethical standards, organizational and management skills, and eagerness to continue to move the journals forward to higher levels of accomplishment.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF for [Name of the journal]

1.        Names of candidate and nominator
2.        A short IEEE-style biography
3.        A narrative supporting statement from the nominator
4.        A personal statement by the candidate (optional, limited to 500 words)

The Industry Digital Signal Processing Technology (IDSP) Standing Committee was formed in 1999 to promote industry participation in the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) and particularly in ICASSP.  It was officially recognized as a standing committee of the SPS Conference Board in May 2002.

The IDSP SC has organized the Industry Technology Track (ITT) at ICASSP since 1999.  Fields of interest span those covered by the Technical Committees of the SP Society but special emphasis is placed on practical industry applications of signal and image processing.  Please see the ITT EDICS for specific areas of interest which cover 10 broad categories and 36 subcategories.

The IDSP SC is organized similarly to a technical committee, with committee members elected from SPS membership in industry, government, or academia (with strong industrial involvement).  According to the recently-adopted SPS by-laws, the Chair and Vice Chair are elected from among the membership for one-year terms.  Currently, Jon McElvain (Digital Imaging Systems) is Chair and Fa-Long Luo (Element CXI) is Vice-Chair.  At this time, there are 15 active members, with 12 of those from industry, two from academia, and one from U.S. government research. Since the fall of 2009, the IDSP SC added three new members: Marie-Jose Monpetit (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Ling Shao (University of Sheffield, UK), and Raghuveer Rao (U.S. Air Force Research Labs).

The charter of IDSP is in general to serve the industrial sector of the SPS membership, and member responsibilities include: reviewing papers for conferences (including ICASSP ITT and others), promoting activities in the Signal Processing Society related to industry, promoting papers with strong industrial application content and nominating them for awards, and organizing special sessions and workshops on industrial DSP technology.

The IDSP SC recently completed reviews for the ITT track of the 2010 ICASSP conference to be held in Dallas, TX. A total of 40 papers were reviewed, and the ITT will have one lecture and one poster session with papers focusing on industrial applications of signal and image processing. Since its inception, the IDSP SC has organized a special session at ICASSP, as well as special industry-related issues of the Signal Processing Magazine;  another special issue is being planned for 2010.

Individuals interested in involvement with the Industry DSP Technology Standing Committee can contact Jon McElvain; new ideas and perspectives are welcome, and we are always looking for ways to enhance the services available to the SPS, particularly for those with an industrial affiliation.

• Wonyong Sung – Design and Implementation of Signal Processing Systems Technical Committee
• Gaurav Sharma – Image, Video, and Multidimensional SP Technical Committee,
• Mauro Barni – Information Forensics and Security Technical Committee
• Philip Chou – Multimedia Signal Processing Technical Committee
• Wayne T. Padgett – Signal Processing Education Technical Committee
• Abdelhak Zoubir – Signal Processing Theory and Methods Technical Committee

Wonyong Sung (DISPS)

G. Sharma (IVMSP)

Mauro Barni (IFS)

Philip Chou (MMSP)

W. T. Padgett (SPE)

A. Zoubir (SPTM)

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Other SPS Sponsored Publications