Sergio Benedetto
Candidate's Statement
In over 30 years of activity in telecommunications, I have always valued ComSoc as an environment providing excellent publications and conferences, forming enthusiastic volunteers and being run by capable officers. In recent years, though, the great challenges/opportunities imposed and offered by the explosion of the Internet to the general society have not spared ComSoc. Papers are freely and timely available through the Internet, concurring to the fast obsolescence of papers because of the long delays involved in the review/publication process. The large number of conferences, the need to increase the acceptance rate for budgetary reasons, and the lack of a sufficient number of reviewers pose a serious problem to the archival value of conference papers. The largely available access to IEEE Xplore has reduced the appeal of our offerings to members. A serious revision of the service package is required to attract new members, especially in the industry and practitioners segment.
In its life, ComSoc has evolved from a mainly US-based to a truly international Society, which, however, needs to expand its presence in strategic areas rich with potential members such as India, China, Russia and others. In my multiform service to ComSoc, I came to appreciate its dedicated members in their volunteer work. If elected, I will strive to spread ComSoc’s presence geographically and thematically, to reinforce the practical content of our journals, magazines and conference to enhance the value to our members from industry and professions. I will emphasize the role of new technologies within ComSoc to offer just-in-time services to our members.
As Vice President-Technical Activities, I always listened to members and tried to respond timely to their questions/requests. Fully convinced that the strength of ComSoc lies in the number of capable and disinterested volunteers from all parts of the world, who form a free, open community valuing the merit above all and recognizing it wherever it sprouts irrespectively of race and nationality, I will launch a recruiting campaign to attract new forces and to inject new blood in ComSoc veins, so as to form a large basis for the future Society officers in all positions.
Biography
Sergio Benedetto is a professor at Politecnico di Torino. Active for more than 30 years in the field of digital communications, he has coauthored 4 books and over 250 papers in leading journals and conferences. He has received several scientific awards, the most prestigious being the 1998 Italgas Prize for Scientific Research and Innovation and the 2006 Cristoforo Colombo International Communications Award. He has been Chair of the Communication Theory Technical Committee, was instrumental in organizing many IEEE conferences, was TP Chair of the Communication Theory Symposium at ICC 2000 and ICC’06, and General Chair of the Communication Theory Workshopin 2004. An IEEE Fellow, Sergio has been Area Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications and a Distinguished Lecturer of ComSoc. He has been Vice President of Technical Activities of the IEEE Communications Society in 2006-07, and is the Vice-President for Publications in 2008-09.
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