Ahmed Tewfik
It is my pleasure to announce that the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) annual election will commence on 15 August, and your vote is more important than ever! This year, all eligible SPS members will vote for the next President-Elect (for a term from 1 January 2024 through 31 December 2025) in addition to the Regional Directors-at-Large for Regions 7&9 and 10 (for a term from 1 January 2024 through 31 December 2025) and Members-at-Large (for a term from 1 January 2024 through 31 December 2026) of the SPS Board of Governors (BoG).
Ballots will be mailed to SPS members. The ballot includes a diverse slate of candidates for all elections, who were vetted by the SPS Nominations and Appointments Committee, as well as a space for write-in candidates. This year’s election offers SPS members the opportunity to cast their votes via the web at https://eballot4.votenet.com/IEEE for up to one President-Elect, one Regional Director-at-Large for your corresponding Region—Regions 7 and 9 (Canada and Latin America) and Region 10 (Asia and Pacific)—and three Member-at-Large candidates. Ballots must be received at the IEEE no later than 2 October 2023 to be counted. Members must meet the eligibility requirements at the time the ballot data are generated to be eligible to vote. To be eligible to vote in this year’s Society election, you must have been an active SPS member, affiliate, or graduate student member as of 30 June 2023. This is the date when the list of eligible Society voting members was compiled.
The 2023 candidates for President-Elect (presented in alphabetical order) and their candidate statements appear next.
The SPS has been my professional home since 1991, and I have always cherished the opportunity to continue serving our community. The nomination for the post of SPS President-Elect humbles me. Within the term of office, I envision addressing the following priorities:
For more information about Konstantinos (Kostas) N. Plataniotis, please visit https://www.plataniotis.com.
I have served the SPS in leadership roles for many years. Among the various efforts I have undertaken, I’m particularly pleased with the following:
In recent years, many of us have turned our attention to ML, and this has created a strong current within the SPS. Non-IEEE/SPS venues are growing in job market value. Our answer should be multipronged, but a key point should be to renew our vows to offer quality reviews and insightful and authoritative editorial decisions in a timely fashion. I was pleased to see the ICASSP submission and reviewing process move to the Microsoft CMT platform, which hosts the major AI/ML conferences, and the presence of big AI/ML industry players at ICASSP 2023. We should up the ante and turn ICASSP into a major AI/ML recruiting event for our students.
Open access has been something that we have been struggling with for years now. While we have taken steps to mitigate its short-term impact, we have failed to embrace it. We should offer open access for our flagship transactions and conferences at a reasonable (US$1,000) open access fee, further reduced for members in developing economies. We can compensate for the revenue loss through targeted IEEE Xplore advertisements and the increased visibility/hits/citations/impact that come from open access.
Promoting diversity and fostering inclusive excellence and respect for individual differences should be high on our agenda. We have made progress, but much remains to be done. There are underserved parts of the world that are a significant source of underrepresented SPS talent, and we should focus more on those communities to recruit, mentor, and elevate future SPS leaders. Another grand challenge we must reckon with is the rapidly emerging transition to a more divided multipolar world. As an international scientific society, we should stand united to foster pathways for scientific exchange and better understanding of each other.
I will be honored to serve the SPS if elected.
For more information about Nicholas Sidiropoulos, please visit https://sites.google.com/virginia.edu/sidiropoulosforsps-pe?usp=sharing
The 2023 candidates for Regional Director-at-Large (presented in alphabetical order) appear next. Candidate biographies will be included in the ballot.
The 2023 candidates for Member-at-Large (presented in alphabetical order) appear next. Candidate biographies will be included in the ballot.
The BoG is the governing body that oversees the activities of the SPS. The SPS BoG has the responsibility of establishing and implementing policy and receiving reports from its standing boards and committees and comprises 23 Society members: the President and President-Elect, who are elected by the voting members of the Society; five Vice President officers of the Society, who are elected by the BoG; nine Members-at-Large, elected by the voting members of the Society; four Regional Directors-at-Large, elected locally by the Society voting members of the corresponding Region; the Awards Board chair and Young Professionals Committee chair. The seven officers are the President, President-Elect, Vice President of Conferences, Vice President of Education, Vice President of Membership, Vice President of Publications, and Vice President of Technical Directions. The Executive Director of the Society shall serve ex officio, without vote.
The President-Elect is an SPS member elected by the Society’s membership via the annual election to serve as an officer and as a voting member on the Society’s BoG, Executive Committee, Conferences Board, Education Board, Membership Board, and Publications Board. The President-Elect position automatically succeeds to President.
Regional Directors-at-Large are SPS members who are elected locally by Society voting members of the corresponding Region via the annual election to serve on the Society’s BoG as nonvoting members and voting members of the Society’s Membership Board. Members-at-Large represent the member viewpoint in the BoG’s decision making. They typically review, discuss, and act upon a wide range of items affecting the actions, activities, and health of the Society.
More information on the SPS can be found on the SPS website at https://signalprocessingsociety.org/.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2023.3299372