Communication Theory Technical Committee (CTTC)
29 November 2005
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. CTTC Service Award is in place and ready to receive nominations.
The scope of the CTTC Service Award Committee has been enlarged and
the committee renamed the CTTC Award Committee. The goals are
a. to recognize a Service Award recipient at CTW'06
b. to make a "Best Paper Award" for the CT Symposium at ICC'06.
2. Conference and Workshop reports: two scheduling conflicts have
occurred (one with CTW'05 and the other with ICC'07).
3. A "Best Practices" or "Symposium Chair/TPC Member Guidelines"
document is to be created. The goal is to assist new Symposia chairs
and new TPC members understand the expectations and responsibilities
by documenting past experiences so each new volunteer does not have
to learn the entire process anew.
DETAILED MINUTES
Meeting called to order at 6:30 PM
Costas Georghiades, Chair, conducting.
Attendees introduced themselves.
C. Georghiades explained that more volunteers are needed and encourged
all to volunteer
A. Goldsmith explained that the CTTC executive committee is seeking
input on ways to make the CTTC more dynamic and responsive to the
members needs.
C. Georghiades described the CTTC Awards Committee and the CTTC Service
Award.
+ At the moment the Awards Committee is only tasked to handle the
CTTC Service Award, but this scope will be expanded in the future.
+ An email will be sent soliciting nominations for the Service Award.
The nomination deadline is 15 January.
C. Georghiades outlined a proposal to make a "Best Paper Award" for the
CT Symposium at ICC'06.
+ Guidelines for the award will be generated and emailed to the committee members.
+ Issues raised by committee members:
- One award per year or one award per symposium? We intend to make one
award per symposium.
- Will the award be made by a new committee? No, the award will be
handled by the newly formed CTTC Awards Committee.
- The paper review process has a provision for identifying potential
award winning papers.
- If the CTTC Awards Committee will be responsible for a Best Paper
Award, one of the Symposium co-chairs should also serve on the
CTTC Awards Committee.
- Will the Best Paper Award be presented at the same conference or
the following conference? This point generated an engaging discussion.
If the Best Paper Award is to be presented at the same conference,
then the Award has to be based solely on the written paper and not
on the presentation. If the presentation is to be a factor, then the
Best Paper Award must be made at the following conference. Preferences
for both options were expressed.
- Will there be a "Best Student Paper" award in addition to the "Best
Paper" award? At this point no, since identifying a student paper from
regular paper is tremendously problematic.
- A discussion regarding the paper review process, as it relates to the
Best Paper Award ensued. There appeared to be questions about the
availability of the papers prior to the conference. This impacted both
the nature of the Award review process and the timing of the Award
(this returned us to the issue two above this one). The opinion at the
moment is that the papers will be available for review by an awards
committee after they are submitted and acceptance decisions have been
made and that the reviews together with evaluation by the CTTC Awards
Committee will be the basis for making the award.
M. Win passed out the CFP for the next UWB Conference.
The number of attendees at the committee meeting should be included in the
minutes and documented as part of the 2006 recertification process.
While on the subject of recertification, a link to all conferences
sponsored/supported by the CTTC should be included on the CTTC website.
ICC 2005 Report: M. Babich (via email)
It was good. Thanks to all who helped.
GLOBECOM 2005 Report: S. K. Wilson
49 TPC members
209 papers submitted
100 papaers accepted (48%)
4~5 papers per TPC member
STC/MIMO and LDPC were most popular topics
Poster session consisted of 20 papers: "smorgasbord" of topics.
ICC 2006 Report: S. Benedetto
269 papers submitted
61 TPC members
108 papers accepted (40.1%)
90 for oral presentation in 18 sessions (5 papers each)
18 for poster presentation
all papers accepted have an average score greater than 3.53
(The orginal report showed a 32.8% acceptance rate. After our meeting, the ICC TPC incresed the acceptance rate by about 10% by increasing the number of papers per session. In the meeting, the numbers were 90 accepted: 72 for oral presentation in 18 4-paper sessions and 18 for poster session.)
S. Benedetto recommends publication of a list of guidelines for TPC
members to help the TPC members understand their responsibilities
such as
a. reviewing the paper reviews to see if the reviews are reasonable
b. obtaining more reviews in the event submitted reviews are not
reasonable.
GLOBECOM 2006 Report: H. Jafarkhani
Symposium web page has been completed and posted.
1 March 2006 is paper submission deadline
TPC is in place.
ICC 2007 Report: M. Uysal
15 Sept 2006 is submission deadline
10 Jan 2007 acceptance notification
28 Feb 2007 camera-ready manuscripts due
TPC has 48 members
200~250 paper submissions are expected
12 full sessions (96 papers) are expected
The conference dates are the same as ISIT in Nice, France.
A great deal of consternation was expressed regarding the schedule conflict.
The prevailing opinion is that this is a one-time occurrence rather
than a pattern of things to come.
CTW'05 Report: M. Rice
The technical program was good
The venue was good.
The attendance was poor.
The workshop lost ~$25,000.
There was a schedule conflict with another conference in Maui.
CTW'06 Report: E. Erkip and B. Aazhang (via email)
We have all the session topics in place. Here are the topics with the
session organizers we invited.
1) Network information theory: Gerhard Kramer (not yet confirmed)
2) Network coding: Michelle Effros (not yet confirmed)
3) Cooperative communications: Hesham El Gamal (confirmed)
4) Cross-layer design: Andrea Goldsmith (confirmed)
5) Sensor networks: Venu Veeravalli (we got a positive response, will
confirm this week)
The sessions in items 1-3 will have 5 speakers of 25 minutes each, plus
a panel with 4 panelists and a moderator. The session organizer will be
the moderator. The sessions in items 4-5 will have 6 speakers of 25
minutes each.
We are planning to have 3 plenaries, one every morning. As plenary
speakers, we have P.R. Kumar (confirmed), Tony Ephremides (indicated
interest, still needs to sort out some details), David Tse (not yet
confirmed).
We will also have an evening poster session for contributed papers
accepted from an open call. The deadline for contributions is March 1,
2006. We have contacted Robert Heath and Sriram Viswanath to be the
poster chairs, no confirmation yet. We are planning to ask Jeff Andrews
to handle publicity.
The web site http://www.ece.rice.edu/ctw2006/ contains the session list
and call for posters.
A "Best Practices" Document needs to be produced to help committees
understand their responsibilities.
+ Ubli generated such a document when she was symposium co-chair.
+ We should start with Ubli's document and solicit input from other
past symposia co-chairs.
+ The revised document will be posted on the CTTC website so that
comments/suggestions from CTTC members can be provided.
+ S. Benedetto agreed to generate a "first cut" document from Ubli's
document.
The CTW'05 presentations should be posted on the CTTC website. M. Rice
was tasked to do this.
A. Goldsmith recommended a program to provide student resources such as
panel discussions at ICC/GLOBECOM, website with tutorials, website with
"how to" suggestions, leads for academic positions, etc.
The decision was made to place this item on the "back burner" for now.
A location for CTW'07 needs to be identified.
+ The possibility for holding it in Australia was discussed. It was felt
that this location is too inaccessible for the majority of attendees
and would not be a wise choice for a 2.5 day workshop.
+ Volunteers for a Western USA location were sought. No volunteers
came forward.
+ Volunteers for any USA location were sought. No volunteers came
forward.
+ The CTTC executive committee will work to identify a location and
workshop committee.
Volunteers are needed for
GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington, DC)
ICC 2008 (Beijing, China)
GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans, LA)
ICC 2009 (Dresden, Germany)
Attendance: 56