SPM

Many ask me what signal processing should be doing in the age of big data. My answer is clear: signal processing should continue to generate big ideas. Big ideas for big data.

Our discipline has always advanced ingenious methods and theories, irrespective of the size of the data: small or big. Many of these ideas permeate disciplines far and wide, ranging from imaging to video; speech processing to coding and communications, forensics, security, and privacy; and also social media, machine learning, and data science.

Industry involvement is a significant area of interest for the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). It is also a frequent topic of conversation at the SPS Board of Governors meetings. According to the SPS’s website (https:// signalprocessingsociety.org), 42% of our 19,000 members are from industry. Yet the number of attendees from industry of our flagship conference, the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, is much lower, based on my best estimate from the sessions I attended.