IEEE Signal Processing Society Information

Signal processing is the key to success for the efficient storage, transmission, and manipulation of information. The liveliness of signal processing relies on having a large number of students who undertake this research and embark on this career path. Signal processing is part of the curriculum in many undergraduate engineering programs. Some of the students also do their capstone or final-year projects on signal processing. To increase students? interest in signal processing and to get them to better appreciate its applications in real life, the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) has created an undergraduate competition, referred to as the Signal Processing Cup (SP Cup) [1], which provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to form teams and work together to solve a challenging and interesting real-world problem using signal processing techniques and methods. The first competition was held at the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2014. Based on its success, it has now been instated as an annual event at ICASSP conferences.

It will be March when you receive this issue of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (SPM), and it has been almost four years since the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS)'s Inside Signal Processing eNewsletter (eNews) was first launched in April 2007, as the latest addition to SPM. When spring begins, flowers blossom and a new start brings new hopes. As the old Chinese saying goes, “A year's plan starts with spring.” This is precisely what we are doing for the bimonthly SPM and the monthly eNews that complements the magazine.

Since its inception in 1948, the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) has evolved in pace with the many technological changes and advancements in our field. In its early days, our Society- the first and oldest among the IEEE's Societies-was known as the Professional Group on Audio of the Institute of Radio Engineers. Over the course of four decades, our name has changed few times from Audio to Audio and ElectroAcoustics and then to Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, and then to Signal Processing to reflect the field's growth and diversity, becoming the IEEE Signal Processing Society in 1989. Since then, our scope of interest has been revised twice to reflect new theories and applications, and many SPS technical committees have also changed their names. Our Society has also developed many new workshops, conferences, specialized publications, journals, periodicals, and outreach programs in an effort to celebrate the achievements of our members, strengthen our industry networking opportunities, and also increase public awareness about signal processing.

Signal processing (SP) is a “hidden” technology that has transformed the digital world and changed our lives in so many ways. The field of digital SP (DSP) took off in the mid-1960s, aided by the integrated circuit and increasing availability of digital computers. Since then, the field of DSP has grown tremendously and fueled groundbreaking advances in technology across a wide range of fields with profound impact on society. The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) is the world’s premier professional society for SP scientists and professionals. Through its high-quality publications, conferences, and technical and educational activities, the SPS has played a pivotal role in advancing the theory and applications of SP. It has been instrumental in promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers, practitioners, and students in the field. This article highlights the SP advances between 1998 and mid-2023 and the evolution of the SPS to empower the growth of SP.

I am excited to start my service as the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) president. I should note that I am the first SPS president directly elected by the SPS membership, due to the SPS Board of Governors (BOG) urging a stronger member voice in elections. This is a big honor for me and I would like to express my thanks to SPS members for their trust. I write this article to introduce myself, acknowledge key volunteers and staff for their service, outline the activities I will lead over the next two years, and invite your comments and suggestions.

The author announces the creation of the Signal Processing Repository (SigPort), an online repository of manuscripts, reports, technical white papers, theses, and supporting materials. Created and supported by the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), SigPort collects technical material of interest to the broad signal and information processing community, with categories covering each of the Society's technical committees. Much like arXiv, SigPort hosts material to help individuals obtain early and broad exposure to their work. SigPort provides a time stamp for each uploaded document; a unique URL is assigned to the document, designating it as part of the IEEE SPS SigPort as well as for easy referencing. Also similar to arXiv, SigPort papers are not peer reviewed. Authors retain all the rights to their documents and can submit them later to journals, conferences, books, etc., since submissions to the SigPort repository are not as restricted as formal publications. We expect a majority of the e-prints to be submitted to one of the Society's journals for publication, but some works may remain purely as eprints and will never be published in a peer-reviewed journal. SigPort documents can be accessed for free at http://www.sigport.org.

The paper reports on the evolution of one of the IEEE society - the Signal Processing Society (SPS). With its developments, Signal Processing will continue to adapt and serve these new advances, as it has so admirably done in the past.

It has been a great privilege to have served as the president of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) over the past two years (2010–2011). According to the Society's Bylaws, I was an ex-officio member of all SPS boards and committees, in addition to chairing the Board of Governors and the Executive Committee. Therefore, I have become well aware of the incredible energy, creativity, and dedication of the Society's volunteers in moving SPS to greater heights of success and leadership, scientifically and professionally. The SPS is blessed with V2: volunteers with verve. The Society's future is, indeed, bright.

First IEEE symposium on biomedical imaging.

When I began writing this 75th anniversary article celebrating women in signal processing (SP), I reread the 1998 editorial titled "Fifty Years of Signal Processing: 1948–1998" <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[1]</xref> . At that time, IEEE had more than 300,000 members in 150 nations, the world's largest professional technical Society. Within the IEEE umbrella, there were 37 IEEE Societies and technical groups, and the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) was the oldest among its many Societies.

Rapid advancement of our information society necessitates prompt update and expansion of the technical scope and focus of interest of our IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). Compared with just some years ago, the current focus of signal processing as an enabling technology has been significantly broadened. Now it encompasses theories, architectures, algorithms, implementations, and applications for the transformation of information contained in many different physical, symbolic, or abstract formats that we broadly designate as "signals." Methodology wise, signal processing uses mathematical, statistical, computational, heuristic, and/ or linguistic representations, formalisms, and techniques for sensing, acquisition, extraction, representation, modeling, analysis, synthesis, compression, detection, recovery, decomposition, enhancement, rendering, display, learning, recognition, un derstanding, securing, authenticating, and communicating of information and signals. Such diverse "processing" tasks are accomplished by either digital or analog devices or algorithms, and in the form of either software, hardware, or firmware.

Promoting Diversity in Signal Processing (PROGRESS) is a new initiative of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS), aiming to motivate and support women and underrepresented minorities to pursue academic careers. Reports on the goals and mission of SPS PROGRESS.

The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) is an international organization whose purpose is to advance and disseminate state-of-the-art scientific information and resources, educate the SP community, and provide a venue where people can interact and exchange ideas. To achieve its mission, the SPS relies heavily on volunteers working in the area of SP, governed by collaborative organizational practices in decision making that are transparent and fair. By bringing volunteers together, the SPS catalyzes advances in the field of SP in its pursuit of excellence.

The Bio Image and Signal Processing (BISP) Technical Committee (TC) of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) promotes activities within the broad technical field of biomedical image and signal processing. Areas of interest include medical and biological imaging, digital pathology, molecular imaging, microscopy, and associated computational imaging, image analysis, and image-guided treatment, alongside physiological signal processing, computational biology, and bioinformatics.

As I am writing this article, I am wrapping up a trip as IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) president to Doha, Qatar (9–11 January), to speak at the 2022 IEEE Spoken Language Technology (SLT) Workshop, and India (12–16 January), for technical talks and meetings with local signal processing researchers and SPS local Chapter chairs.