Borhan M. Ali, IEEE Chapter Chair, Malaysia, animras@yahoo.co.uk
DISTINGUISHED LECTURE TOUR (DLT)
Malaysia has been fortunate enough to host two eminent speakers under the Distinguished Lecture Tour (DLT) program, within the space of 2 months. They were namely Dr. Salah Aidarous from NEC USA, and Dr. Justin Chuang from Mobilink Telecom, Inc USA.
Dr. Salah Aidarous gave a talk titled “IP Impact on the Evolution of Telecommunications Networks” at Universiti Putra, Malaysia, on July 4, 2001. About 60 people attended this talk, comprising of members from the academia and telecommunications professionals. The major interest of the audience was on the evolution of core and access networks to 3G, the impact of IP on society, and the type of new services expected in the future.
Dr. Justin Chuang’s talk, on the 13th of August, was organized in conjunction with his tutorial presentation in the ISSPA Conference in Kuala Lumpur held on the same day. The topic of his talk was “Wideband CDMA for 3G Wireless Communication” held at the Multimedia University, in the new Cyber Jaya high tech park. This half-day talk, organized as a revenue-generating event, attracted about 25 people from universities and industries. Justin talked about the WCDMA standards, implementations in some countries, comparisons with other technologies, and issues and problems.
Generally, the two talks raised the profile of ComSoc in the country, and we hope, as a result, this will lead to an increase in ComSoc membership. The audience was able to see first-hand the added value that ComSoc is able to bring to them for their professional growth, in the form of DLT, conferences, publications, and the like.
MICC2001
ComSoc Chapter Malaysia is now making final preparations for the staging of our 5th Malaysia International Conference on Communications (MICC). This conference is held every odd-numbered year and alternates between venues in Kuala Lumpur and other outlying cities.
The programs will be filled with Symposia and Plenary sessions in the morning on three important hot topics, 3G Systems and Migration Issues, the Next Generation Internet and Ipv6, and Photonics and Optical Networks.
This will be followed by technical paper presentations in the afternoon. About 60 papers have been accepted for presentation in the technical sessions. Topics are primarily from the themes of Wireless and 3G, Optical Networks and Photonics, and Advances in Internet technologies. Presenters are expected to come from countries far and wide including Latin America, Europe and the Far East.
Several eminent speakers have been confirmed to talk in the symposia. Among them are Prof. Ramjee Prasad from Aalborg University, Denmark; Prof. Ian F Akyildiz from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA; and Prof. Frietman from Delft Technical University, Netherlands. A series of panel discussions have also been planned. They will focus on, among other things, the technical and business perspectives of the technology, which should be of interest to local professionals and practitioners alike.
Several tutorials have been proposed for the first day preceding the conference proper. Topics range from Photonics Techniques, 3G, Ipv6, and Video Coding. These areas have been selected based on the interest and feedback from universities and industries in Malaysia. It is hoped that these tutorials will be able to attract responses from specific groups of professionals who are looking to enhance their knowledge in their particular areas.