Signal Processing Society 2013 Accomplishments

K. J. Ray Liu, 2012-13 President
IEEE Signal Processing Society

Many seize a new year as a new beginning, a clean slate. While these sentiments offer necessary guidance and inspiration to some, we choose to reflect and celebrate our triumphs – and even our failures – to continue to learn, grow, and apply for the future. Thankfully, 2013 was a year of many accomplishments for the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), and we have a lot to celebrate. SPS is experiencing steady membership growth and our increase in new membership activities is a reflection of this. In September, we officially launched SigView, an open-access portal of online tutorials in various emerging signal processing topics. We’re expecting that as participation in SigView rises, it will become a valuable resource to keep our members on the cutting edge of the latest signal processing developments. Creating SigView tutorials is strongly encouraged as a vehicle to exchange ideas with your fellow members. If you’d like to submit a presentation or register as a reviewer or editor, please e-mail ed.sigview@ieee.org. We’ve also made tremendous headway on our new open signal processing document database, SigPort. Authors will have the ability to, for a small fee, submit manuscripts, reports, theses, and supporting materials, while preparing for possible formal peer-reviewed publication. This helps the author secure his/her copyright in a timely manner and grants researchers access to read and cite current research. Additionally, SigPort enables social media sharing and provides author contact information to encourage an open educational dialogue. The testing phase for SigPort will begin around March, gradually expanding for a projected launch at ICASSP 2014. We’re also making strides toward facilitating knowledge and engagement among our Student members. In 2013, we announced the establishment of the first annual Signal Processing Cup (SP Cup). The SP Cup is a student competition in which graduate and undergraduate students work in groups to solve real-world problems using signal processing methods and techniques. Three final teams will be selected to present their work at ICASSP in Florence, where they will compete for a $5,000 grand prize. 2013 marked the launch of the Student Career Luncheon at ICASSP. More than 150 students attended and networked with representatives from 16 companies that included Texas Instruments, Amazon, and Microsoft Research. Students had the opportunity to learn about each company and discuss job opportunities. Participating companies conducted on-site interviews and recruitment activities. We’re thrilled with the success of the event and the Student Luncheon will return to ICASSP this May. Signal Processing conferences, in general, were quite successful. ICASSP achieved record-setting numbers in paper selection, attendance, and financials. Papers published in our IEEE Signal Processing Letters were also allowed to be presented at either ICASSP or ICIP for the first time. We introduced two successful new conferences in 2013 – the IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP) in Austin in December and the IEEE China Summit and International Conference on Signal and Information Processing (ChinaSIP) in Beijing this past July. The expansion of SPS conferences is imperative to the growth and visibility of our society and our field. We’re proud to have produced some of the highest quality conferences last year. We established Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to quickly and efficiently address topical technical areas in signal processing. SIGs act the same as Technical Committees in structure and function but have a life span of up to three years, ensuring that relevant topics are tackled in a timely manner. In 2013, we approved the creation of two new SIGs – Big Data and Internet of Things. If you’re interested in creating a SIG, please e-mail Charlie Bouman at bouman@purdue.edu. Our publications are flourishing, as well, with a record-setting 20,300 pages published in our periodicals in 2013. With all of these pages, though, we maintain our high selection standards and increased impact factor throughout most of our fully-sponsored transactions. We teamed up with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to jointly publish the Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing beginning this month. We also have two new journal proposals on the horizon and established three new awards. In 2013, we approved and selected the new Signal Processing Letters Best Paper Award. This year, we’ll be adding Overview Article and Sustained Impact awards. After a period of uncertainty, the hiring of Executive Director Richard Baseil and Conferences and Publications Senior Manager, alongside Operations Senior Manager Theresa Argiropoulos and the SPS staff, brought renewed energy into the SPS office and created a positive atmosphere with strong commitment to our members. The teamwork between the SPS staff and our dedicated volunteer leaders has laid a solid foundation to build upon last year’s successes and continue providing excellent services to our members through 2014. Many volunteers have worked together and individually for the betterment of the Society. We welcome everyone to participate in Society activities and volunteer to help make the Society even more vibrant and representative of member interests.