Exploring Paths Ahead in the Science of Information and Decision Systems

In November 2009, a Symposium on "Paths Ahead in the Science of Information and Decision Systems" was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The meeting was organized by the MIT's Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS)

, which has played and continues to play a major role in the development of this field.

The science of information and decision systems encompasses a substantial and exceptionally pervasive set of interrelated disciplines, ranging from signal and image processing; to embedded control systems; to the analysis, design, and optimization of complex distributed systems and networks. Thanks both to the richness of the challenges throughout engineering and the physical, biological, and social sciences, as well as the continuing developments of the foundations of our disciplines, the information and decision sciences stand today as an exciting, continually evolving, and critical domain of intellectual inquiries.  The meeting attracted 340 registrants and consists of several panel-oriented sessions, providing both context and history as well as a look across disciplines for challenges and opportunities for the future.

Learn more about this inspiring meeting from the "In the Spotlight" column article in the March 2010 issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.  This in-depth report was contributed by Alan Wilsky, the Symposium General Chair and LIDS Director, who also received at this month's ICASSP 2010 the IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Achievement Award.