Election of Regional Directors-at-Large and Members-at-Large

Ali H. Sayed
SPS Past President and Chair, Nominations and Appointments Committee

It is my pleasure to announce that the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) annual election will commence on 17 August! This year, all eligible SPS Members will now vote for the Regional Directors-at-Large for Regions 1-6 and 8 (term 1 January 2021 through 31 December 2022), and Members-at-Large (term 1 January 2021 through 31 December 2023) of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Board of Governors (BoG).

Ballots will be mailed to SPS members. The ballot includes a diverse slate of candidates for all elections, which were vetted by the SPS Nominations and Appointments Committee, as well as a space for write-in candidates. This year’s election offers SPS members the opportunity to cast their votes via the web at https://eballot4.votenet.com/IEEE for up to one Regional Director-at-Large for your corresponding Region: Regions 1-6 (USA) and Region 8 (Africa, Europe, Middle East), and four Member-at-Large candidates. This year, an additional Member-at-Large candidate will be elected due to the elevation of a current Member-at-Large to Society Officer.  The candidate receiving the fourth highest votes will fill the remaining term of the elevated Member-at-Large, which is 1 January 2021-31 December 2021. Ballots must be received at the IEEE no later than 1 October 2020 to be counted. Members must meet the eligibility requirements at the time the ballot data is generated to be eligible to vote. To be eligible to vote in this year’s Society election, you had to have been an active SPS Member, Affiliate, or Graduate Student Member as of 30 June 2020. This is the date when the list of eligible Society voting members was compiled.

The 2020 candidates for Regional Director-at-Large (presented in alphabetical order) appear below. Candidate biographies will be included in the ballot.

Regions 1-6:

Iola Moccagatta

Hamid Palangi

Region 8:

Adel Belouchrani

Alejandro Frangi

Maria Sabrina Greco

The 2020 candidates for Member-at-Large (presented in alphabetical order) appear below. Candidate biographies will be included in the ballot.

Magdy Bayoumi

Fulvio Gini

Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo

Petros Maragos

Jean-Christoph Olivo-Marin

Bhuvana Ramabhadran

Gaurav Sharma

Namrata Vaswani

Brendt Wohlberg

The BoG is the governing body that oversees the activities of the SPS. The SPS BoG has the responsibility of establishing and implementing policy and receiving reports from its standing boards and committees and comprises 22 Society members: the President and President-Elect who are elected by the voting members of the Society, five Vice-President officers of the Society who are elected by the BoG, nine Members-at-Large elected by the voting members of the Society, four Regional Directors-at-Large elected locally by Society voting members of the corresponding region, as well as the Awards Board Chair. The seven officers are the President, President-Elect, the Vice President-Conferences, Vice President-Education, Vice President-Membership, Vice President-Publications, and Vice President-Technical Directions. The Executive Director of the Society shall serve ex-officio, without vote.

Regional Directors-at-Large are SPS members who are elected locally by Society voting members of the corresponding Region via the annual election to serve on the Society’s BoG as nonvoting members and voting members of the Society’s Membership Board.

Members-at-Large represent the member viewpoint in the Board decision making. They typically review, discuss, and act upon a wide range of items affecting the actions, activities, and health of the Society.

More information on the IEEE SPS can be found on Signal Processing Society website.