News from the SPCOM-TC

by Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo (SPCOM Liaison to E-Newsletter)

As the new TC chair, I am very excited about the Signal Processing for Communications and Networking (SPCOM) and the opportunities to serve this research area. Our TC covers research topics at the intersection of signal processing, communications, networking and information theory. With the explosive growth of data communication, our area is full of vitality, characterized by both the great progress that has been made and the number of research challenges that still remain.

Let me take this opportunity to share with you some recent news and work related to our TC. Early this year, several TC members stepped down after finishing their terms. They include Holger Boche, Pierre Duhamel, Mounir Ghogho, Robert W. Heath Jr., Visa Koivunen, Marc Moonen, Phillip A. Regalia, Philip Schniter, and Xiaodong Wang. In addition, Geert Leus has steped down as the TC Chair and assumed his current position as the TC’s Past Chair, while Tim Davidson and I were elected to the Vice Chair and the Chair of our TC. I would like to thank all of the retiring members and Geert for their valuable contributions in the past years.  Ten new TC members have been elected, after multiple rounds of voting. The newly elected members are: Paolo Banelli, Chong-Yung Chi, Geoffrey Li, Roberto Lopez-Valcarce, David Love, Matthew McKay, Alejandro Ribeiro, Milica Stojanovic, Wolfgang Utchick, and Sergiy Vorobyov. These new members bring a lot of expertise to our TC and are eager to serve our research community. The level of interest in joining our TC was very strong this year; many well-qualified candidates did not make it due to the limited open slots. For those who aspire to be a SPCOM TC member, we suggest you stay engaged as there are always future opportunities to serve.

Our next TC meeting will take place in Prague during ICASSP. During this meeting, we will review and discuss many issues related to our TC including the ICASSP paper reviews/submissions, student members, affiliate members, newsletter, future SPAWC, etc. Also, our TC will feature an expert session during this year’s ICASSP meeting. Robert Heath and Shuguang Cui will present a summary of SPCOM related papers in this year’s ICASSP and identify trends of SPCOM research. Be sure to check it out!

The flagship conference of the SPCOM TC is the IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC). This year's SPAWC will be held June 26-29, 2011, in San Francisco, CA, chaired by Prof. Hamid R. Sadjadpour from the University of California, Santa Cruz. The workshop has lined up several prominent plenary speakers as well as a great technical program. We very much encourage you to join us in the SPAWC11 in San Francisco.

The SPCOM TC has started a jobs website. If your organization has some job openings or postdoc openings, please consider submitting a post to our website. The submission process is painless. Check out our website SPCOM TC's webpage for this and other information.