Fractional programming (FP) is a branch of mathematical optimization that deals with the optimization of ratios. It is an invaluable tool for signal processing and machine learning, because many key metrics in these fields are fractionally structured, e.g., the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) in wireless communications, the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) in radar sensing, the normalized cut in graph clustering, and the margin in support vector machine (SVM).

With the advent of large language models (LLMs), the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) agents capable of decision making and action execution has gained prominence, particularly as LLMs demonstrate increasing proficiency in tool use and task planning. Following these advancements, the established methods used for task-oriented dialogue (TOD) systems have undergone a paradigm shift by integrating LLMs’ revolutionary language understanding and reasoning skills with enhanced instruction following and response generation abilities.

The Golden Jubilee edition of the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s (SPS’s) flagship conference, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), was held on 6–11 April 2025 at the Hyderabad International Convention Center in Hyderabad, India. This was the first time an ICASSP was organized in India. Here, we provide a brief summary of the event. The goal of the organizers was to provide an affordable, inclusive, memorable, and sustainable (AIMS) event that lived up to the lofty technical standards of an ICASSP.

The tutorial “Introducing Information Metrics for Statistical Signal Processing,” [A1] provided the inspiration for our cover in this issue. In their “Lecture Notes” column, Steve Kay and Kaushallya Adhikari invite us to “a leisurely stroll through the garden of the beautiful information-theoretic flowers that have blossomed over the years.” This ends up being not only a pleasant stroll, but also an enriching one with useful insights into these measures and their interrelationships recounted with precision.

One year has passed since I began my term as the editor-in-chief (EiC) of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (SPM). It has been a busy first year, with a rich set of challenges that go beyond those I have experienced in previous volunteer positions. This is welcome: with giving back to our community comes the desire to grow through new challenges and experiences, especially for those of us approaching our wiser years.

As we enter the new year, I would like to take a moment to reflect on our achievements from the past year and celebrate our successes. I am naming this “President’s Message” column the “State of the Society,” which will serve as a platform to share updates about our Society, including our activities, successes, and challenges.

As wireless technology begins to utilize physically larger arrays and/or higher frequencies, the transmitter and receiver will reside in each other’s radiative near field. This fact gives rise to unusual propagation phenomena, such as spherical wavefronts and beam focusing, creating the impression that new spatial dimensions—called degrees of freedom (DOF)—can be exploited in the near field.

After nearly a century of specialized applications in optics, remote sensing, and acoustics, the near-field (NF) electromagnetic (EM) propagation zone is experiencing a resurgence in research interest. This renewed attention is fueled by the emergence of promising applications in various fields, such as wireless communications, holography, medical imaging, and quantum-inspired systems.