For our February 2016 issue, we cover recent patents dealing with range image formation and processing.

Welcome to the Spring 2016 edition of the IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee's Newsletter! This issue of the newsletter includes 5 articles and announcements from 6 contributors, including our own staff reporters and editors. Thank you all for your contributions!

The Information Forensics and Security Technical Committee (IFS TC) reports on the 2016 Signal Processing Cup, the election of societal awards and the organization of the next WIFS'16 workshop.

The Audio and Acoustic Signal Processing (AASP) technical committee reports on augmented reality devices, 3D acoustic localization, binaural recording and rendering and spatial audio processing technologies.

The Sensor Array and Multichannel (SAM) technical committee reports on the upcoming IEEE SAM workshop in Rio de Janeiro, an announcement of the 2017 IEEE CAMSAP workshop, new SAM members and award nominations.

The IEEE Biometrics Council reports on a cloud-based multi-biometric service, the development of the iris recognition market and biometric transactions with Apple Pay

Big data has burst into public awareness over the past few years as people have become more and more aware of the massive amount of data being produced by social and scientific activities, and its potential utilization for good or harm. This special issue on "Big Data: Theoretical Aspects", published in Proceedings of the IEEE Jan. 2016, highlights a number of algorithmic approaches that are fundamental to data analysis, both in formulating and solving problems.