Lin-shan Lee (ICASSP 2009), Jon McElvain (IDSP SC), Pathipati Srihari (DIET SBC), Christopher Wyatt (BISP TC), and Avinash L. Varna (Student Correspondent).

 

About the Inside Signal Processing E-Newsletter

Since April 2007, the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine has introduced a new form of publication - the Inside Signal Processing E-Newsletter.  This monthly electronic newsletter will complement the bi-monthly Magazine to serve the members in the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS).  Through email notification and expanded coverage on its website, the E-Newsletter will provide members with timely updates on:

• society and technical committee news,

• conference and publication opportunities, new books, and Ph.D. theses,

• signal processing related research opportunities, and

• activities in industry consortiums, local chapters, and government programs.

The Inside Signal Processing E-Newsletter is a gateway to reach out to signal processing professionals around the world.  We invite you to contribute and share your news with tens of thousands of SPS members through this monthly electronic publication with fast turn-around cycle. IEEE members may manage their subscription of the email notification of the E-Newsletter and related SPS announcements at this page.  Please bookmark <http://enews.ieee-spm.org> for current and archived issues of the Inside Signal Processing E-Newsletter.

Submission Instructions  - Contribution for the next issue is due June 5, 2009

Visit the web submission site to provide your input. Make sure that you include your name, affiliation, email and phone contact information. Contributions submitted by June 5, 2009 will be considered for inclusion in the next issue of the Inside Signal Processing E-Newsletter. Please contact the Associate Editors of the corresponding sections as listed below if you have questions. Your comments and suggestions on the new submission system are welcome.

Contact Information of the E-Newsletter Team

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     Conference and publication news (including new books)

  Pascal Frossard, Associate Editor, EPFL, Switzerland (pascal.frossard AT epfl.ch)
     News and activities of SPS Technical Committees, industry consortiums and international standards

  Alessandro Piva, Associate Editor, University of Florence, Italy (alessandro.piva AT unifi.it)
     News and activities in local chapters and research groups (including new Ph.D. theses & research opportunities)

  Nitin Chandrachoodan, Digital Production Editor, Indian Institute of Technology – Madras (nitin AT ee.iitm.ac.in)
     Online submission and production system

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  * Please replace "AT" in the email addresses with @.

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2009:  April'09      March'09      February'09      January'09

2008:  November-December'08    October'08     September'08     July-August'08      June'08

          May'08        April'08         March'08         January-February'08  

2007:  December'07  November'07  October'07  August-September'07  July'07  June'07  May'07  April'07
 

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In-Depth E-News Article

Exclusive In-Depth Report on ICASSP 2009:  A Grand Celebration of SP Advances and Achievements with an Oriental Touch by Avinash L. Varna (Student Correspondent)     Lin-shan Lee  (General Chair - ICASSP 2009)

The 34th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) was held in Taipei, Taiwan on April 19-24, 2009. ICASSP is the flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) and is the premier venue for showcasing research in signal processing and related areas. This year’s conference was the second time that ICASSP was physically held in Asia and was attended by over 1700 participants from over 40 different countries.

The conference venue was the Taipei International Convention Center located close to Taipei 101, the current official holder of the title “The Tallest Building in the World”. ICASSP 2009 featured 1261 papers selected from 2703 submissions through a peer review process. The technical program featured diverse topics including 4 plenary sessions, 12 special sessions, 60 lecture sessions, 72 poster sessions, 4 panel discussions, 4 overview talk sessions, 2 show and tell sessions, and 17 tutorials. The four plenary talks highlighted emerging research areas, industrial views, and new trends in signal processing.

A new feature at ICASSP 2009 was the creation of Thematic Symposia consisting of a group of multiple technical sessions of different types (tutorials, plenaries, panels, special and regular sessions) sharing a common theme. An overview talk session was also added to each Thematic Symposium to make it more accessible to a general audience and promote cross-disciplinary collaboration. Four Thematic Symposia on the topics of “Signal Processing for 4G Wireless”, “Network Distributed Signal Processing”, “Immersive Communication”, and “Multimedia Search and Retrieval” were organized and were very well received.

Another important new effort for the technical program is the Online Presentation Service. All plenary sessions and most of the overview talks and special sessions were recorded and made available online, password protected, to conference participants until 3 weeks after the conference, so that attendees can view the presentations which they could not listen to in real time, or they wished to listen to again. Three weeks after the conference, the total access count was close to 4800 with a total access duration of approximately 815 hours.

The conference was inaugurated with a traditional Taiwanese welcome song and a concurrent presentation that highlighted the cultural richness and natural beauty of Taiwan, also called Formosa - “the beautiful island”. The opening and awards ceremony held on April 21 honored winners of major SPS awards and SPS members who were elevated to the status of IEEE Fellow Class of 2009. Winners and finalists of the student paper contest were recognized in the welcome reception on the previous day, which also presented lanterns of butterflies and Taiwanese rare birds, a martial arts demonstration (including Chinese Kung-Fu) and a Taiwanese puppet show. Traditional oriental dishes highlighting the local cuisine were served as part of the welcome reception and the lavish daily complimentary breakfast. The latter was the first time in ICASSPs offering to all attendees.

The conference banquet was held in the iconic “Grand Hotel”, famous for its distinctive Chinese architecture. The vermilion columns, imposing roof and prominent location contribute to the grandeur of the “Grand Hotel” making it one of the most recognized landmarks in Taipei. The cultural performance or entertainment during the banquet was also unique. Music from all parts of the world were produced by oriental instruments. A brief film entitled “Adventures in the National Palace Museum” was played, which personified some 50 famous treasured items housed at the museum as cartoon characters using real images of the treasures and computer graphics technology, and was the recipient of the Grand Prize at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2008. A ribbon dance then demonstrated the beauty of traditional Chinese culture. The diabolo masters finally showed their unbelievable skills of flying, spinning and tossing the diabolos between the stage and the banquet tables. The performance was ended with a toast by the general chairs of four Asian ICASSPs (Tokyo 1986, Hong Kong 2003, Taipei 2009, Kyoto 2012) and leaders of the signal processing community on the stage.

This year was the first time that the ICASSP proceedings was stored and distributed in an USB, which was further integrated in a 3-in-1 USB/Laser Pointer/Pen. A photo gallery has also been established on the ICASSP 2009 website capturing some of the memorable moments of the conference.

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Activity Updates from Industry Digital Signal Processing Technology (IDSP) Standing Committee by Jon McElvain (IDSP Chair)

The Industry Digital Signal Processing Technology Standing Committee (IDSP SC) was formed in 1999 to promote industry participation in the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). Fields of interest span those covered by the Technical Committees of the SPS but special emphasis is placed on practical industry applications of signal and image processing. For specific areas of interests, readers may check out the ICASSP Industry Technology Track (ITT) EDICS, which cover 10 broad categories and 36 subcategories.

The IDSP SC is organized similarly to a technical committee. Committee members are elected from SPS membership in industry, government, or academia (with strong industry involvement). The Chair and Vice Chair are elected from among the membership for one year terms. Currently, Jon McElvain (Digital Imaging Systems) chairs the IDSP Standing Committee, and Fa-Long Luo (Element CXI) serves as Vice Chair; there are 12 active members, all of whom are from industry. Since January 1, 2009, two new members have joined the committee, Alexandr Kuziminskiy (Alcatel-Lucent, UK) and Rajesh Narashimha (Texas Instruments). Although most members are from the US, nominations are being actively sought from other geographies. Member responsibilities include reviewing for conferences (including ICASSP ITT and others), organizing and advocating SPS activities related to industry, promoting papers with strong content on industrial application, and organizing special sessions and workshops on industrial DSP technologies.

The IDSP SC recently organized the Industry Technology Track at ICASSP 2009, held in April 2009 in Taipei, Taiwan. Selected from 48 submitted papers, the Industry Technology Track at ICASSP 2009 consisted of 1 lecture session and 2 poster sessions.  The IDSP SC also administered "Show & Tell" sessions at ICASSP 2009, where a total of 39 proposals were reviewed and 30 were accepted to showcase their technologies; these "Show & Tell" sessions provided ICASSP participants a unique opportunity to see new SP technologies in an interactive environment. In addition, since its inception, the IDSP SC has organized two special industry-related issues for the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

If you would like to get involved in the work of the IDSP SC, want to contribute ideas, suggestions, or would like to learn more about IDSP activities, please contact Jon McElvain at <jon.mcelvain AT disimage.com>.

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Activity Report from Bio Imaging and Signal Processing (BISP) Technical Committee by  Christopher Wyatt  (BISP TC Liaison to E-Newsletter)

The Bio Imaging and Signal Processing Technical Committee (BISP TC) of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) promotes activities within the broad technical areas of biomedical and biological signal and image processing. Specific fields of interest include but are not limited to: molecular and medical imaging, microscopy, signal processing in computational biology and biological networks, signal processing of physiological signals, and bioinformatics.

In December 2008, Jean-Christophe Olivo-Marin of Institut Pasteur, France, was elected Chair of the BISP TC, succeeding Jelena Kovačević of Carnegie Mellon University; Clem Karl of Boston University was elected Vice-Chair. Four new associate members were also elected to the BISP TC: Amina Chebira, Gowri Srinivasa, Deniz Erdogmus, and Tolga Tasdizen.

The BISP TC is cosponsoring (with the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society) the upcoming 2009 International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), to be held in Boston from June 28 to July 1, 2009. The meeting will feature three outstanding plenary speakers: Thomas Miller, CEO, Siemens Workflow and Solutions Division; Ralph Weissleder, Director of the Center for Molecular Imaging Research and the Center for Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School; and Xiaowei Zhuang, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Physics at Harvard University. There will also be six invited special sessions on topics of great current interest, a special clinical workshop on Current and Future Challenges in Clinical Imaging featuring three clinical research leaders from Massachusetts General Hospital, and four tutorial short courses taught by area experts in emerging technologies across the spectrum of biomedical imaging, along with an outstanding program of oral and poster papers from leading international authors. Register now for this exciting meeting!

A BISP related education activity to highlight is a new Master in Computational Biology by Nice Sophia Antipolis University on the French Riviera, including several image processing courses. All the courses will be given in English and some funding is available for outstanding international students. Interested readers can visit this page for more information.

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