What Made the Las Vegas Lights Shine Brighter? -- ESPA 2012

Lavish food and access to spa?

Practical demonstrations and insightful talks by experts?

Easy access to the world’s largest consumer electronics show (CES)?

These highlights of ESPA 2012 made the bright lights of the Las Vegas strip shine brighter.  The IEEE International Conference on Emerging Signal Processing Applications (ESPA) held last month treated attendees to the luxury of the Caesar’s Palace Hotel, while experiencing some of the hottest technology at CES and coming into contact with the latest signal processing applications.

ESPA is a new conference for the IEEE Signal Processing Society and is intended to bring to light new and emerging technologies to practicing engineers while, at the same time, exposing academics to the commercial world of applications.  The conference was a great success for all who attended and those who presented.  Because the conference overlapped the tail end of CES, attendees were able to take advantage of the excitement of a world class trade show, which greatly enhanced the exchange of ideas.

The first day of the conference was dedicated to six tutorials focusing on topics, such as optimization of DSP applications, and hands-on introduction to TI DSP chips.  The tutorials were presented by leading practitioners whose enthusiasm and knowledge made these tutorials a must see for most attendees.

The main technical program of ESPA took place over the next two days.  A single track of oral presentations on topics, such as embedded signal processing and cloud computing.  The single track made it easy for all attendees to participate in all of the presentations.  Two distinguished highpoints of the conference were the keynote speakers, Gene Frantz from Texas Instruments and Raj Talluri from Qualcomm.  There presentations were both enlightening and captivating.  Frantz spoke on DSP applications in healthcare.  And Talluri told the story of signal processing in mobile computing.  All of this activity was punctuated by several presentations by experts covering many different areas of signal processing.

With ESPA located just down the road from CES, we were able to bring together some very high-level technical people from industry as panelists.  They generated interesting discussions at two panel sessions, one on 3D imaging and the other on the future of wireless applications.

The technical papers accepted into the proceedings of the conference were selected for their orientation towards applications.  The papers were presented in three poster sessions and were scheduled to overlap with two Show & Tell sessions featuring remarkable demonstrations.  The Show & Tell program, a key feature of ESPA, gave the attendees the opportunity to have a close, in-person look at prototypes and new ideas of signal processing applications.  The show & tell demonstration from SMU on pushing the limits of digital imaging using structured illumination gave everyone the chance to see something that even those invited to CES didn’t get to see.  A small, but much-appreciated touch, was the break area next to the posters and Show & Tell session.  The availability of hot coffee, made the visits to the posters and demonstrations very comfortable.

The ESPA 2012 attendees experienced a very exciting, illuminating, and entertaining conference that beat all expectations.  We look forward to welcoming you to the next ESPA.