会长的话
我非常荣幸能担任电路与系统（CAS）学会2018年至2019年的会长一职。首先，我要感谢为学会奠定了牢固基石的前辈们，CAS学会的发展离不开他们在技术和财务方面的支持，感谢他们的高瞻远瞩以及为学会所投入的时间和做出的贡献。
过去的两年中，在Franco Maloberti的领导下，CAS学会取得了许多令人瞩目的成就，这些成就在前任会长的发言中便能获悉。今后，我将极力支持历届会长的倡议，提升我们每一位成员的价值。因此，我的发言将主要阐述如何把协会提升至下一个层次，接下来我将为大家描绘这一蓝图。在执行委员会志愿者、理事会、主编和编委、各大IEEE会议和CAS学会的代表人、技术委员会（TC）的成员、当地的CAS分会委员以及CAS卓越讲师（DLP）的支持下，我相信我们团队能付出更多的努力来实现我们每一个成员的展望。在我详细阐述计划之前，有必要回顾一下学会的主要使命和发展愿景。
主要使命：
我们的任务是通过构思和解决电路和系统中的基本问题和应用问题，来培养CAS学会成员，以解决人类的重大挑战。
愿景：
IEEE CAS学会认为，21世纪的重大工程挑战只能以多学科和交叉学科的方式加以解决。协会在电路、系统、信号、建模、分析和设计方面都具有独特而深厚的专业知识，而这些专业知识对当下很多重要问题的各个方面都具有决定性的影响，例如可持续能源、生物健康、绿色信息技术、纳米技术、可扩展信息技术系统等。
协会的使命和愿景都表明，多学科和交叉学科有助于协会稳步向前迈进。很明确的是，CAS学会不仅仅只有关于“电路”和“系统”，信号、建模、分析和设计也是实现愿景必不可少的关键。CAS学会领导层的作用是为不同学科的成员们创造协作的机会，并在CAS领域产生一定影响。所有成员都应该有平等的机会在我们的期刊、会议和研讨会上展示他们的研究成果。工业界成员应该能够利用CAS学会的突破研究和创新方案来解决实际应用中的问题。为此，本协会需要找到新的促进交叉互动的机制，以加强我们的技术领导力，为成员创造价值。这是我在未来两年想要完成的目标。
加强技术领导
电路与系统学会从本质上来说是一个具有不同研究兴趣领域的多学科学会。 它曾是一些新领域的孵化基地，这些领域从电路与系统协会中逐渐成长并脱离出来形成自己的协会。 然而最近，当影响因子（IF）成为质量指标时，我们遇到了前进的阻力，这在我们的出版物上表现得尤为突出，多样性使得引用被分散，降低了影响因子，因此我们的多样性反而成为了一项弱点。但我们应该抓住电路与系统的多学科性质，踏上新一轮技术浪潮，在多个新战线上崛起成为领导者，而不是通过缩小我们的专注领域来解决“弱点”。 因此，我会对协会进行结构性的改变，促进技术合作的互动，为多学科的活动提供支持。 具体来说，我会做以下几点：
1）创建多学科集群：多学科集群是独立于现有技术的一个单元。 任何技术成员都可以加入集群。 每个集群的目标是一个新兴的领域。 我们会为每个集群提供资金支持来鼓励他们的活动。
2）为新兴领域建立新的专题研讨会：集群领域可以在ISCAS，BioCAS等电路与系统顶尖会议开展的前后组织研讨会。 例如在BioCAS2016和BioCAS2017之后组织的BrainCAS和FoodCAS。 随着活动的增加，将来可以开展多主题会议。
3）促进多学科研究：JETCAS是发布多学科研究的理想场所。每个集群领域都可以在JETCAS中发布一个特殊问题或联合特刊来宣传他们的领域。
加强技术引领是CAS学会所需要承担的最重要任务。信息技术、材料和生命科学的发展对CAS产生了深远的影响。同时也为CAS提供了一个绝佳的机会，将其技术产品扩展到大脑计算、高能效大数据信号处理技术、物联网的不可见感知，嵌入式人工智能等新兴领域。通过创建新的集群领域和多主题会议来抓住这些机遇，CAS学会可以成为多学科研究和国际合作的基地。 这必定会提高协会的声望和影响力， 也将有助于加深我们的团队关系。
为成员创造价值
为成员创造价值一直都不是一件容易的事。因为这需要创新，奉献和承诺。我将尽力在以下方面使得社会服务满足成员的需求和期望：
1）价值：提升分会活动水平。分会场是连接我们会员的焦点。更多的分会活动意味着给我们的成员提供更多的服务。协会将激励分会组织更多的成员活动。协会将在平台和工具上进行投资，以促进多学科研究、国际合作、专业人员的成长和职业发展。
2）机会：让更多的成员担任编委，会议组委会成员和审稿人。同时将建立一个网站为成员们记录他们的研究兴趣所在 。
3）表彰：以奖励和证书表彰我们的志愿者，并且为申请IEEE高级会员的成员提供支持。
协会还将通过会议、当地CAS分会活动、实习机会和招聘会来加强学术界和工业界的联系。青年专家将获得更多的机会和额外的预算来组织与青年专家之间的活动。此外，CAS学会将为未来的领导者创造一个可施展身手的舞台，并为他们提供培训和指导。
创造价值的新举措之一就是快速出版。从ISCAS2018开始，ISCAS提交的论文将直接发布在TCAS-I，TCAS-II和TBioCAS的特刊中， 而TCAS-II特刊将在ISCAS2018之前发布。这便意味着从会议发表到期刊出版的为期8个月的周转时间。另一个典型例子是2018年国际集成电路与系统研讨会（ISICAS 2018）的开展，这是第一个仅有期刊论文的会议。收录的论文将在TCAS-I和TCAS-II上发表。在我们的网站上可以找到新的举措和活动： http://www.ieee.cas.org。也可以访问新推出的“资源中心” （http://resourcecenter.cas.ieee.org）下载免费的书籍和视频。
我期待着为大家服务，并与大家共事。我期望听到大家对改进协会的想法和建议。有了大家的支持，我相信我们可以将CAS学会发展到新的高度，同时还能为每一个人创造价值。祝愿大家及家人在2018年幸福顺利！
连勇
IEEE 电路与系统学会会长 (2018-19)
President’s Message
I am extremely honored to serve the Circuits and Systems (CAS) Society as 2018-2019 President. At the outset, I must thank my predecessors who built great foundation both technically and financially for the Society. I am grateful to them for their dedication, vision, and time invested for the Society.
Many notable achievements of past two years under the leadership of Franco Maloberti can be found in the Past President’s Message below. I will endeavor to build upon the initiatives set by our past Presidents to enhance the value of our members. Thus, my message will focus on the blueprint that elevates the Society to next level. With the support from volunteers in the Executive Committee, the Board of Governors, the Editor-in-Chiefs and editorial board members, the CAS Representatives to various IEEE Councils and Initiatives, the Technical Committee (TC) members, the local CAS Chapter Committee members, and the CAS Distinguished Lecturers, I am confident that we as a team can do much more to meet the expectation of our members. Before I elaborate the plan, it is worth reviewing the mission and vision statements of the Society.
Mission:
Our mission is to foster CASS members across disciplines to address humanity’s grand challenges by conceiving and pioneering solutions to fundamental and applied problems in circuits and systems.
Vision:
The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) believe that the Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st century can only be addressed in an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary manner. The Society’s unique and profound expertise in Circuits, Systems, Signals, Modeling, Analysis, and Design can have a decisive impact on important issues such as Sustainable Energy, Bio-Health, Green Information Technology, Nano-Technology, and Scalable Information Technology Systems.
Both Mission and Vision statements indicate that interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches are instrumental for the Society to move forward. It is also vivid that the CAS Society is not only about “Circuits” and “Systems”, where Signals, Modeling, Analysis and Design are essential to achieve our vision. The role of the society’s leadership is to create opportunities for members from different disciplines to collaborate and make impacts in the field of circuits and systems. All members should have equal opportunities to present their results in our journals, conferences, and workshops. Industry members should be able to leverage on breakthroughs and innovative solutions from the CAS Society to address issues in applications. To this end, the Society needs to find new mechanisms to facilitate cross-fertilization in order to strengthen our technical leadership and create value for member. This is what I want to accomplish in the next two years.
Strengthen Technical Leadership
CASS, by nature, is an interdisciplinary community with diverse field of interests. It used to be a breeding ground for new fields, from which some of these fields spun out to form their own societies. But, we lose the momentum recently when Impact Factor (IF) becomes the indicator of quality. As a result, our diversity was reflected as a weakness, especially for our publications where diversity dilutes citations resulting low IF. Rather to address the “weakness” by narrowing our focus, we should embrace the interdisciplinary nature of CAS, ride on the new wave of technologies, and emerge as leaders in multiple
new fronts. Therefore, I would make structural changes to the society to promote interactions among TCs and provide support for interdisciplinary activities. Specifically, I will do the followings:
- Creating interdisciplinary cluster: an interdisciplinary cluster is a unit independent from existing TCs. Any TC member can join a cluster. Each cluster aims for an emerging area. We will provide funding support for each cluster to boost their activities.
- Establishing new satellite workshops for emerging areas: clusters can organize workshops before or after CAS flagship conferences such as ISCAS, BioCAS. Examples were BrainCAS and FoodCAS organized after BioCAS2016 and BioCAS2017. With the increase of activities, it is possible to initiate a multi-theme conference in future.
- Promoting interdisciplinary research: JETCAS is an ideal venue for publishing interdisciplinary research. Each cluster can produce a special issue or joint special issue in JETCAS to promote their area.
Strengthen technical leadership is the most important task that CASS would undertake. The advancement in IT, material, and life science had a profound impact to CAS. It creates a golden opportunity for CAS to extend its technical offerings to emerging areas such as brain-inspired computing, energy efficient signal processing techniques for big data, invisible sensing for IoT, embedded AI, and much more. Seizing these opportunities by creating new clusters and multi-theme conferences, CAS could become a home for interdisciplinary research and international collaboration. This will definitely increase recognition, prestige and impact of our society. It will also help to grow our membership base.
Create Value for Member
Creating value for member is never an easy job. It requires innovation, dedication, and commitment. I will try my best to match member’s needs and expectations with society’s services in following areas:
- Value: to lift up the level of chapter activities. Local chapters are the focal point for connecting our members. More chapter activities mean more services to our members. The society will provide incentives for chapters to organize more activities for members. The society will make investment on platforms and tools to promote interdisciplinary research, facilitate international collaborations, and support professional growth and career development.
- Opportunity: to involve more members as editorial board member, conference organizing committee member, and reviewers. A website will be created for members to register their interests.
- Recognition: to recognize our volunteers with awards and certificates, provide support for our members to apply for IEEE Senior and Fellow grades.
The society will also strengthen links between academia and industry through conferences, local CAS chapter activities, internship opportunities, and career fairs. Young Professionals (YP) will receive more opportunities, and extra budget to organize YP related activities. Furthermore, the society will create a stage for our future leaders to emerge, and provide them with training and guidance.
A good example of value creation is the new initiative of fast publication. Starting from ISCAS2018, the selected papers from ISCAS submissions will be published directly in Special Issues of TCAS-I, TCAS-II, and TBioCAS. The TCAS-II Special Issue will be published before ISCAS2018. This means an 8-month submission to publication turnaround time for conference presentation and journal publication. Another example is the launch of 2018 International Symposium on Integrated Circuits and Systems (ISICAS 2018), the first journal-paper only conference. The accepted papers will be published in TCAS-I and TCAS-II. You can find new initiatives and activities at our website: http://www.ieee.cas.org. You may also want to visit newly launched “Resource Center” (http://resourcecenter.cas.ieee.org) to download free books and videos.
I look forward to serving you and working with you. I eager to hear your ideas and suggestions for the improvement of the Society. With your support, I believe we can bring CAS to next level while creating value for you. I wish you and your family a happy and prosperous 2018.
Yong Lian
President, IEEE CAS Society (2018-2019)
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Past President’s Message
The two years of my term as president of the CAS society have been a great and rewarding personal experience. I think I have also kept almost all the promises I made at the beginning of my term and in particular to treat the CASS members as customers. This is an important aspect for me because I think this is the correct attitude of a person who works as a volunteer.
As you know, in January 2016, at the beginning of my term, I worked for the publication of the book "A short history of Circuits and Systems". With the help of fifty colleagues, we managed to get the book available in May to be offered for free to ISCAS participants in Montreal. The book was also offered to participants of other CASS Conferences and is now available free of charge in the e-book format for CASS members.
Other initiatives that I have supported are the seasonal schools with slide-based books and the Industrial Distinguished (I-DL) program. The CAS Society contributes partially to the seasonal schools to allow a reduced participation fee. Furthermore, the slides of the presentations are assembled two-per-page for a book available in paper format and as an e-book. The e-book versions of the first two books can be downloaded free of charge for the CASS Members, other books will come shortly. There is a specific site, the CASS Resource Center accessible from the main CASS Web site. The CASS Resource Center also offers other resources freely available for CASS members.
One of the specific problems of our Society is a marked academic characterization. This is positive but for an optimal activity of our members, it is necessary to favor interactions with the industrial world. The I-DL Program that I have proposed aims at such an object. It is a joint venture between Chapter and local industries. The industries provide an industrial speaker and the chapters receive support from the CASS for the local organization. The goal is to determine benefits for both the participating industry and the young designers and researchers of the chapter.
We also worked to increase the CASS visibility with an improved version of the website and information on social media. The work done by the society’s administrator was a great help for this goal.
The activities described above are, in my opinion, those that mainly characterize the activity carried out. Obviously, there was also the management and work of VPs and administrative support without the precious help of which the Society would not be able to provide services to the members.
I hope you appreciated the work done by me and the VPs who have worked, in my opinion, very very well and to whom I sincerely express my gratitude. I will continue to serve the community as Past President and hope to meet many of you in future CASS events.
Franco Maloberti
Outgoing President, IEEE CAS Society (2016-17)