Activity Report from the SPTM-TC

by Xiaoli Ma (SPTM Liaison to E-Newsletter)

The Signal Processing Theory and Methods (SPTM) TC has elected 12 new members starting from 2011: Hing Cheung So (City University of Hong Kong), Aleksandar Dogandžić (Iowa State University), Gregori Vazquez (Technical University of Catalonia), Hongbin Li (Stevens Institute of Technology), Jean-Christophe Pesquet (Universite Paris-Est), Henrique (Rico) Malvar (Microsoft Research), Ana Perez-Neira (Technical University of Catalonia (UPC)), Sergios Theodoridis (University of Athens), Hamid Krim (North-Carolina State University), Danilo Mandic (Imperial College London), Venugopal V. Veeravalli (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Peter Händel (Royal Institute of Technology).

The following SPTM TC Members have been elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow in Class-2011: Holger Boche, Maria Greco, Jonathon Chambers, and Stephen McLaughlin. Patrick Flandrin is a successful nominee of SPTM TC for Distinguished Lecturer for 2011-2012.

ICASSP-2011 features expert summaries of current trends, presented by each of the Technical Committees. The trends in SPTM will be moderated on Thursday, 26 May 2011, 11:45 - 12:15 (Panorama) by the Chair, Abdelhak Zoubir where the two TC members, Vikram Krishnamurthy and Ali Sayed will present their expert opinion on the most significant advances and upcoming trends within the TC area over the past year. We would like to invite you to this session which promises to spark a stimulating discussion on emerging areas.

The 2011 IEEE Workshop on Statistical Signal Processing (SSP2011) will be held in Nice, France, over 28-30 June, 2011. The workshop will feature regular contributed paper sessions, special invited paper sessions and five plenary lectures, covering theoretical topics in statistical signal processing and applications. The general chairs are Cédric Richard and André Ferrari. The technical chair is Petar M. Djuric. The plenary speakers are: Yaakov Bar-Shalom, Michael Jordan, Vikram Krishnamurthy, Stephane Mallat, and Pramod Varshney. A total number of 284 submissions have been received. Around half of these will be accepted. Nice is one of Europe's top tourist destinations and is thus a great venue for SSP2011. The city boasts gorgeous coastlines, a charming old town, great shopping venues and sumptuous local cuisine.

The 2011 IEEE Digital Signal Processing (DSP) & Signal Processing Education (SPE) Workshop, held at Enchantment Resort, Sedona, Arizona, January 4-7, 2011, brought together 140 engineers, researchers, and educators in signal processing from around the world to discuss novel signal processing theories, methods, applications, and education.

Three and half (3-1/2) days of intense technical presentations and discussions were orchestrated around four (4) plenary speakers and four (4) invited talks. Ninety four (94) contributed papers presented in eighteen (18) technical sessions, discussions by a panel of international experts, and seven (7) training sessions that were offered or supported by the workshop’s industrial partners completed the program. The attendees represented the international elite of researchers in signal processing and its wide variety of applications.

The workshop activity served to establish norms for existing capabilities in the subject areas, and to identify and quantify research frontiers that deserve focused effort over the immediate time. While it is difficult for even the most accomplished specialist to achieve a grasp of all facets of the subject fields, the aggregate presentations provided every attendee with a snap-shot of current capabilities and of the major research challenges that have reasonable prospects of practical success. In particular, the workshop activity delineated the frontier boundaries of the fields. This emphasis and demarcation is particularly valuable for advanced students aiming to make research thesis contributions to the fields.

While the greater number of attendees were mature, seasoned, experienced researchers, a number of these mentors bought their students (count for approximately 20% to 25% of the attendees) to the workshop. This year, the DSP/SPE workshop’s technical program featured two oral lecture sessions in which twelve (12) first student authors competed for the Best Student Paper Award. They were ranked by a panel of judges based on the presentation quality and the significant of the technical contributions. The winners of the DSP Workshop Best Student Paper Award are Thomas Baran (MIT) and Piya Pal (Cal Tech), and the winners of the SPE Workshop Best Student Paper Award are Geoffrey Herman (Univ. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Steve Essinger (Drexel Univ.).