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.

This is our sixth and final issue of 2024. It is hard to believe that a year has gone by since our term as the new editorial team started in January. In our first year, in addition to our usual array of technical overviews and Society news, we addressed a number of topics of significance for our community in the hopes of starting a discussion.

Multichannel acoustic signal processing is a well-established and powerful tool to exploit the spatial diversity between a target signal and nontarget or noise sources for signal enhancement. However, the textbook solutions for optimal data-dependent spatial filtering rest on the knowledge of second-order statistical moments of the signals, which have traditionally been difficult to acquire.

Multichannel acoustic signal processing is a well-established and powerful tool to exploit the spatial diversity between a target signal and nontarget or noise sources for signal enhancement. However, the textbook solutions for optimal data-dependent spatial filtering rest on the knowledge of second-order statistical moments of the signals, which have traditionally been difficult to acquire.

I am writing this short note as I am about to board a plane to Abu Dhabi to join those of you who are attending the 2024 edition of the International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 2024). The team organizing ICIP 2024 has put together an outstanding technical program that includes world-class plenary speakers discussing research and industrial trends.