Rabab K. Ward

Volunteerism Makes a Positive Difference [President's Message]

Happy New Year! The onset of a new year is an exciting time filled with renewal, opportunity, and possibility. As we close the book on 2016, it’s only natural to reflect on our progress, celebrate our successes, and learn from our failures. But the beginning of a new year is also empowering—it reignites your fire to try something new, to set goals, to be open to change and embrace new challenges. The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) hopes to invoke these principles and nimbleness into 2017 and for many years to come. We hope that you’ll continue to work with us through this exciting time! I would be remiss to not mention that 2017 marks the expiration of a valued member of the SPS Executive Committee’s term. In 2013, the SPS Executive Committee divided the role of vice president, Awards and Membership, establishing a newly individualized role of vice president, Membership, to better examine, understand, and serve SPS’s growing and diverse membership. Dr. Kostas Plataniotis was chosen as to fill this position. His vision and innovation were essential to not only proving the role’s necessity but to driving its purpose and setting the course for future member services and activities. We thank him for his effective and incredible service and are excited to welcome Dr. Nikos Sidiropoulos to his new position at SPS vice president, Membership. This past year brought about a lot of exciting changes—in June, we launched the new SPS website, accompanied by the SPS Resource Center; http://rc .signalprocessingsociety.org. With these, a new era began for the Society, looking toward and acting on a rapidly changing future. Our organization is changing. Our Society is changing. And, most notably, our membership is changing, and we have to find new and effective ways to keep members of all ages, career stages, professions, and fields engaged and involved with the SPS and its activities. Volunteerism is a great way to encourage early involvement, building loyalty across a diverse member body with varying interests, availability, needs, and expertise. Volunteerism has evolved in itself, and SPS is working toward building a strong volunteer base, with roles to suit the growing needs for the Society and its members alike. The nature of “volunteering” used to be immersive and intimidating, with excessive time commitments that made volunteerism seem like too much to juggle among other activities. Now, with the help of technology and the evolution of workplaces, a volunteer has new flexibility and freedom to choose his/ her level of involvement, from demanding high-profile leadership roles to “microvolunteering” opportunities that spark interest and action without consuming as much from our already busy schedules. Over the past couple of years, the SPS has expanded its volunteer roles to encourage diverse involvement opportunities. You can choose a position that best fits your lifestyle whether you’re a student, young professional, in the middle of your career, or your career is winding down —or even if you are retired but want to stay active. The SPS relies on its dedicated volunteer base—more than 1,000 members strong—to develop and manage Society activities, products, and services. Decision makers who sit on our boards and committees play an integral role in the Society and its operations. These highlevel roles cover a wide array of Society needs in the areas of conferences, publications, membership, education, and more. Sitting on boards and committees, while timeconsuming, can be incredibly rewarding and prestigious. Many high-ranking board members move on to become decision makers in broaderscale positions within the IEEE. Even among publications, conferences, education, and membership, there are a multitude of opportunities of varying levels of involvement. You can be a reviewer or editor of one of our Society publications, form a committee to propose and host a conference or a meeting in a desired area, or propose a seasonal school workshop near you. Want to get involved locally? Form an SPS Chapter, or attend an event of an existing local Chapter to strengthen connections with other signal processing professionals Rabab Ward | SPS President | rababw@ece.ubc.ca

Your Work Powers Life [President's Message]

am honored to begin the position of president of our IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you why. As an SPS volunteer these past 20 years or so, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a large number of volunteers and collaborating closely with many of you on various committees and tasks. I have learned so much from acclaimed leaders in industry and academia, as well as young professionals and students. Your energy, creativity, and intelligence inspire me every day. It’s been a privilege to work closely with our past presidents—Alex Acero, Ray Liu, José Moura, Mostafa Kaveh, Alfred Hero, Fred Mintzer, and Richard Cox. These colleagues have been true statesmen with visionary long-term goals for the future well-being of our Society. Their selfless devotion has propelled the Society to higher ground, and I’m humbled to be counted as a member of such a league of extraordinary people. Presently, and for the last couple of years, I have also worked with members of our past and present SPS Executive Committee: Mari Ostendorf, Kostas Plataniotis, Charlie Bouman, Thrassos Pappas, Alex Kot, Wan-Chi Siu, and Carlo Regazoni. These colleagues are extremely wise, energetic, and dedicated leaders in their fields, and it’s always a pleasure to work with them. I am grateful that, due to the hard work of our staff and volunteers, our Society is in top shape both financially and from a management perspective. I am proud of the work of all of our members. Our publications continue to have a high impact in our field, our conferences and workshops continue to thrive, and many of our Chapters are making great strides in industry and academia. In recent years, several new initiatives have proven successful. Alex Acero, SPS’s past president, touched on some of these achievements in the previous issue of this magazine [1]. These include the IEEE Signal Processing Cup, the seasonal schools, the growing numbers of Chapters around the world, increased student memberships, and the various types of travel grants available. There has also been the introduction of two new publications; two new conferences ChinaSip and GlobaSIP; the paper repository, SigPort and the video tutorial online library SigView; two public relations videos about signal processing; and the newly introduced awards for industry members. In 2014, our five-year Society review and five-year periodical review passed with stellar results—so much so that the review committee said they’d be passing our Society’s best practices to other Societies. Three special interest groups (SIGs) have been introduced in the last three years; these SIG are provisional groups created to promptly address emerging technical areas. The three SIG are on big data, Internet of Things, and computational imaging. All of these fabulous achievements owe their great success to the dedication of our Society volunteers. Your innovations and foresight have born the ideas, but the successful implementations of these ideas also required a lot of novelty, persistence, and devil-in-thedetails hard work. I am excited to be working with you during these interesting times, as we watch signal processing theories and applications grow and broaden. It’s astounding to see the ever-increasing abstractions of the signal processing discipline and its applications to a vast number of fields and to technical and societal needs. You anticipate and tackle these demands and develop innovative solutions that have influenced the world. Ours is a highly dynamic, ever-evolving Society, as evidenced by the increased capacity and scope of our technical committees, that take leading roles in fostering the development of new technologies, as new fields and theories emerge. Signal processing has become a fundamental science. It not only deals with signals captured by instruments, it’s also essential for processing a wide range of information and data. In many ways, it is the science behind our digital life. It is the science that powers essential aspects of everyday life. While I see a bright future for our Society and I’m excited to take a leadership role, I am aware of the many current and future challenges we face. I will discuss that in my next president’s message in the May issue of the magazine. But, first and Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2015.2512658