2015 IEEE Signal Processing Society Accomplishments

2015 was an exciting year for the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). We launched several new initiatives that will lay the foundation for many years of growth, establishing a renewed vision and sense of purpose and look towards the future of our Society and our field. First and foremost, 2015 marked the launch of the SPS visibility campaign. We’ve been working closely with a public relations firm, Stern Strategy Group, to launch a multi-faceted publicity effort to attract a broader audience to the signal processing field and to the Society, as well as better engage our current member base. In the coming months, you can look forward to a new SPS website, interesting technical content, expanded service and resources for SPS volunteers, and more. In addition, we’ll be working with Stern to promote signal processing and its applications to external media outlets to disseminate its value and importance to consumers, students, industry professionals, and more. In addition, with Stern’s help, we will introduce our new tagline: “Signal Processing: The Science Behind Our Digital Life.” You’ll see this phrase woven through SPS website copy, promotional materials, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, and more. The phrase, while simple, communicates the importance and prevalence of signal processing and the technology it enables. We aim to demonstrate its vital role across disciplines, making it approachable as a viable area of study and career path for future generations of engineers. In a continued effort to attract those future innovators, SPS launched its first Free Student Membership Campaign in January with great success.  The campaign resulted in the addition of 1,491 new Graduate Student Members and 993 new Student Members. SPS volunteers and staff have made a conscious effort to keep these new members engaged with the Society through periodic email blasts and social media posts, keeping them informed about relevant student activities, offers, and opportunities. The success of the SPS Free Student Membership Campaign resulted in a membership surge from last year. SPS ended 2015 with 19,683 members, strengthening our global community by 12.2% from 2014. While we are cautious about the retention rates of these members, we are hopeful about the future and of Student interest in continuing their involvement with the Society. We’ve also expanded services tailored to SPS Students, Graduate Students, Women, and Young Professionals. For the first time, the SPS Student Career Luncheon was expanded and held at ICIP 2015 in Quebec City, Canada. The Women in Signal Processing Luncheon was held at GlobalSIP 2015 in Orlando, Florida, USA. Both of these events had only taken place at ICASSP in previous years. The SPS Young Professionals held their inaugural networking event with industry professionals in conjunction with ICIP 2015. We plan to expand all of these events to all major SPS conferences beginning with ICASSP 2016. Earlier this year, we launched the first of what will become a series of videos produced by and for our Technical Committees. The video, Signal Processing and Machine Learning, has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from members and nonmembers alike, introducing key machine learning concepts in an informative-yet-engaging way. These introductory videos will be essential to increasing awareness and understanding of signal processing to a broader, non-technical audience. In addition, we’ve translated this video and our previous introductory video, What Is Signal Processing?, into Mandarin, Arabic, and Spanish versions for international audiences. They’re available on our YouTube channel and we encourage you to share them with your colleagues, students, and Chapters. We made significant progress on SigPort, our forthcoming repository for signal processing manuscripts, reports, technical white papers, theses, and supporting materials. SigPort aims to help researchers get early exposure and rights to their work, encouraging feedback and collaboration among colleagues in the early stages of publication. We’re excited to share this long-awaited benefit with you and expect a launch date in the first quarter of 2016. We began publication of two new journals in 2015, IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging and IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks. Both publications are accepting submissions now. We published more than 26,000 pages in 2015, and received more than 8,500 original submissions. In conjunction, we also established a new Special Interest Group (SIG) on Computational Imaging to address this emerging technical area. This gives SPS a total of three SIGs, alongside the Big Data and Internet of Things SIGs, to remain on the cutting edge of popular topics in signal processing. None of this would have been possible without the hard work of our dedicated volunteers and society leadership. Approximately 1,000 individuals donate their time to ensure the highest caliber of service, benefits, opportunities, and resources across SPS conferences, publications, and membership.  Thank you for your service and for a successful 2015, and we look forward to what the future holds!