The President's Page

From IEEE Communications Magazine March 2013

At the IEEE TAB Meeting in Austin, Texas 

The first meeting of the IEEE Technical Activities Board (TAB) this year was held in Austin, Texas during 14-16 February, and I would like to share some items of interest to you. But before doing so, I would like to inform you about the IEEE ComSoc 60th Anniversary Video contest.

The contest was very successful. Through all of the communications channels, especially social media, ComSoc has drawn record responses from around the world. Special thanks to Samsung for their sponsorship. Four winners have been announced, and you can view their video submissions at:

http://www.comsoc.org/60th-anniversary-video-contest
Three of the winners received Samsung Galaxy products and one received the cash prize.

Returning to the TAB meeting, several new periodicals were approved. Of interest to ComSoc members are the following periodicals, which are scheduled to be launched in 2014:

IEEE Journal on Internet of Things
IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering

Much progress was reported on Open Access (OA). All IEEE owned society publications are able to accept OA paper (hybrids and OA topical journals). Four new OA journals have been launched and paper submissions are flowing well.

The IEEE Future Directions Committee (FDC) is chaired by well known ComSoc volunteer Roberto Saracco. The FDC presented its list of top 10 items: Cognitive Radio; Collective Intelligence; Future Internet; Beyond CMOS; 3-D Printing; Smart Living, Smart City; Electrical Vehicles; Brain Machine Interface; and Cloud Computing. Within each item there are several topics and many of them are within the field of interest to the IEEE Communications Society.

The IEEE Conference Committee reported that in 2012, IEEE sponsored 1394 conferences. Of these, 76% were held outside the United States of America in about 80 countries. These conferences were estimated to have over 410,000 attendees. Big conferences are going to US-Europe-Asia on a three-year cycle. With this growth, some quality issues have arisen: inadequate review process; content outside of conference or IEEE technical scope; and pay-to-publish behavior (e.g., mostly no-shows). This has evoked a response from the IEEE.

As I finish writing about the highlights from the TAB meeting, I find myself getting ready to visit the Communications and Signal Processing Societies joint Chapter of the IEEE Hyderabad Section in India. There I will be delivering the Third Alexander Graham Bell Memorial Lecture. The lecture is always held around March 3, Dr. Bell’s date of birth, and was launched in 2011. It is especially aimed to benefit young students of science and technology and the general public. 

From 1888 to 1922, Bell and his wife Mabel spent a considerable amount of time at their estate known as Beinn Bhreagh (meaning “beautiful mountain” in Scottish Gaelic) near the village of Baddeck in Nova Scotia, Canada. Bell constructed a laboratory on this property and conducted many experiments there. These include his ground breaking work on hydrofoils and aeronautics. It is now Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, a museum maintained by Parks Canada.