K. J. Ray Liu

IEEE Activities and Accomplishments

Launch financial transparency initiatives at TAB/IEEE

It has not been well understood that IEEE has a very high overhead, which makes us less competitive with membership, publications, and services. What even worst is that overheads are not visible due to outdated accounting systems and lack of understanding of its significant implication on IEEE’s ultimate survivability. As a TAB member while serving as President of Signal Processing Society and Division IX Director, I overtook the leadership role in forming a financial transparency group consisting of 70+ past/current volunteer leaders by articulating the significance of the issues, educating the community with data/facts, and spearheading with motions to establish committees and efforts to tackle the problem with perseverance. Now the financial transparency issues have been well received and some solutions have been proposed and jointly tackled by volunteers and IEEE staff.

Lead IEEE DataPort development

In research, industry and in the global society as a whole, there are growing needs of data, without which research cannot be carried out and products cannot be designed. Many data repositories cannot or will not support the storage of very large datasets. Some available data repositories are not trusted and there is fear of data misuse. Academic institutions and other entities cannot support long-term data storage and data access needs of researchers for cost reasons. Scientists cannot easily meet government requirements to make data easily accessible and open to the public at no cost. I proposed and led the development effort of IEEE DataPort, under the Big Data Initives, which is a trusted, valuable and easily accessible web-based repository which enables engineers, researchers and members of industry to share datasets and data analyses; locate and utilize datasets to further research; perform analysis on all sizes and types of datasets leveraging integration with AWS Cloud; host and facilitate Data Competitions; and support research reproducibility. Most importantly, DataPort will be an important IEEE future product that can augment Xplore, which is a content center, as a data resource.

Develop major initiatives to engage and serve the community

As President, through my long-range planning and follow-up implementation, I articulated the establishment of new membership board to offer more values and benefits. I proposed a Chapter of the Year Award; developed Seasonal Schools; embarked a new online tutorials/educational program called SigView; created a “Signal Processing Cup” to engage students into competitions; started a new flagship conference called GlobalSIP to address newly emerging topics; developed ChinaSIP initiative as an outreach to China; championed a new initiative to provide technical repository services called SigPort; permanently established student travel fund into the operating budget; and launched a visibility effort to gain more prominence for signal processing work.

Establishment of Membership Board in SPS

As chair of the major revision of SPS Bylaws in 2009, I envisioned and articulated the establishment of new membership board in SPS to address membership service and create more values and benefits to attract and retain membership. Since the membership was created in 2010, SPS saw the first upward trend in membership since its steadfast decline from 1997.

Develop new journals and process/management for high quality publication

As Vice President-Publications, I developed processes and management structure for high quality publications; started the SPS e-newsletter; reduced SPS journals backlogs to zero; enforced fast turn-around time in manuscript reviews; established AE training during flagship conferences, and developed an AE nomination process. I was the prime architect of IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security and IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing. I drafted the proposal for IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. As President of SPS, I initiated and oversaw the successful development of approval of IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging and IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks.

Bring Signal Processing Magazine to top one ranking in citation impact

As EiC of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, I enlarged the scope, restructured the Magazine into three areas including special issue, features, and column/forum, and significantly strengthened the editorial board. The Magazine reached to top one ISI journal citation ranking the first time under my leadership, out of 250 journals in EE area, and ever since maintained and enjoyed very high impact factors and ranking.