The Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) group at the University of Sydney currently has a vacancy for an experienced researcher in the field of optical signal processing for coherent communication systems working in the Terabit per Second (Tb/S) flagship project.

The University of Texas at San Antonio is seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral fellow to be part of an interdisciplinary research alliance (Cognition and Neuroergonomics Collaborative Research Alliances (CNACTA)) working to develop data analysis and management methods and tools for mobile brain/body imaging data in support of a research program in neuroergonomics (the study of the brain and body at work).

Smart cities have been around for some time now, but the IEEE has gotten involved in the creation and upkeep of smart cities very recently through its Future Directions Committee. Roberto Saracco, an important volunteer of the IEEE Future Directions Committee, explains what a smart city is, how a city can become a smart city, why smart cities are so important today, and how the IEEE is working to create more smart cities in all of its ten regions.

For our September 2014 issue, we cover recent patents granted in the area of compressed sensing. The section below covers patents granted recently for contributions to image enhancement, tomography, image and video compressing & decompressing, signal reconstruction and augmented reality gaming.

The annual election ballots were sent to all eligible voting members via postal mail on 15 August. You can access and return your ballot electronically or use the postage-paid reply envelope included in your ballot package. Ballots must be received by 12 noon CST (17:00 UTC) on 1 October.

The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) invites nominations for the position of Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks (TSIPN) for a 3-year term starting 1 January 2015. TSIPN is a new journal co-sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing Society, Communications Society and Computer Society, launching in 2015, and the EIC is expected to play a major role in the start up.

The 9th annual Student Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge–Europe (SAUC-E) will be held at the Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), from 20 September to 26 September 2014. Held since 2006, SAUC-E challenges the next generation of engineers to design and build an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) capable of performing realistic missions.