First, I would like to request all women members reading this article to submit their information to the new Women in Signal Processing Directory. The WISP Directory aims to increase and promote visibility and recognition of women in signal processing fields, positioning them for awards, leadership roles, and more.

Starting in 2017, the Women in Signal Processing Subcommittee became a standing committee of the Membership Board, rather than a subcommittee of the Member Services Committee, meaning the WISP Chair now holds a seat on the Membership Board.  Much has happened in 2017, and we look forward to an even more productive 2018.

The IEEE Signal Processing Society congratulates the following SPS members who will receive the Society's prestigious awards during ICASSP 2018 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Advisor: Caylor, Kelly K.

Smallholder farms dominate in many parts of the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa. These systems are characterized by small, heterogeneous, and often indistinct field patterns, requiring a specialized methodology to map agricultural landcover. In this thesis, they developed a benchmark labeled data set of high-resolution satellite imagery of agricultural fields in South Africa. 

In accordance with the provision of Bylaw 303, the Nominations and Appointments Committee hereby solicits your nominations for the following position: Vice President-Technical Directions.  Please send your nominations to Theresa Argiropoulos, SPS Senior Manager, Operations, via t.argiropoulos@ieee.org. 

For our January 2018 issue, we cover recent patents granted in the area of applications of medical MR or CT data segmentation.

The invention no. 9,659,370 relates to a method for segmenting MR Dixon image data. A processor and a computer program product are also disclosed for use in connection with the method. The invention finds application in the MR imaging field in general and more specifically may be used in the generation of an attenuation map to correct for attenuation by cortical bone during the reconstruction of PET images.

Engineering safety and computer security have traditionally been viewed as separate fields: safety concentrates on the avoidance of physical harm; security protects information and privacy. When computers and physical plants did not interoperate, separation of safety and security was both reasonable and prudent. Given the advent of CPSs, we can no longer consider these problems as separate.

We are very pleased to announce that the 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Wireless Communications and Networking in Extreme Environments (IEEE WCNEE) will be held on April 16, 2018, in Honolulu, HI, USA (with IEEE INFOCOM 2018). The workshop website is available at http://wcnee.eng.buffalo.edu/.