CONFERENCE NEWS

A Magnificent NOLTA in Sapporo, Japan!

The 2009 International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NOLTA 2009) was held during October 18-21, 2009, at the Chateraise Gateaux Kingdom Sapporo Hotel & Spa Resort, Sapporo, Japan. As you know, Sapporo city is located in Hokkaido which is the second biggest island and most northern prefecture of Japan. The nature of Hokkaido, in October, the changing colors of autumn leaves in the mountain welcomed us.

The objective of the symposium is to provide a forum for exchange of the latest results related to nonlinear theory and its applications. The symposium technical program covers many major and emerging areas in the nonlinear theory and applications. The Technical Program Committee selected 170 papers to be presented in 41 technical sessions including 21 special sessions. These papers were submitted from 19 countries. The program was highlighted by three plenary talks: “Smart behaviors of a living cell based on nonlinear dynamics” by Prof. Toshiyuki Nakagaki (Hokkaido University), “Exploiting noise in computation” by Dr. Ferdinand Peper (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) and “Tensor factorizations and decompositions for modern massive data sets and their potential applications” by Dr. Andrzej Cichocki (RIKEN). Participants were listening attentively to these talks which presented latest research topics.

The conference banquet was held at the the Cabernet Hall in the conference venue. People really enjoyed the dinner; Japanese food such as Sashimi (very fresh raw seafood), Sushi, Tempura, Udon, Ramen (Japanese noodle) and so on.  On the last day, a ceremony of NOLTA 2009 student paper award was held in the NOLTA 2009 closing ceremony. Two students received the “Best Student Paper Award (Gold Prize)” and eight students received the “Student Paper Award (Silver Prize)”.

The conference of NOLTA 2009 had the high level of technical program and fulfilling social events. It was a big success!! More photos and the list of student paper award are available at NOLTA 2009 Website: http://lalsie.ist.hokudai.ac.jp/nolta2009/

The next NOLTA is scheduled to be held in Krakow, Poland, in September 5-8, 2010. http://nolta10.is.tokushima-u.ac.jp/

Yoko Uwate, UZH/ETH Zurich, Switzerland (Email: yu001@ini.phys.ethz.ch)

IEEE PrimeAsia 2009, Shanghai, China

The First Asia Pacific Conference on Postgraduate Research in Microelectronics & Electronics (IEEE PrimeAsia 2009) was held in Shanghai Olympic Hotel, Shanghai, China, from November 19 to 21, 2009. This conference was jointly organized by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Shanghai Chapter, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and sponsored by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. The city of Shanghai, the largest city in China, is now preparing to hold the World Expo 2010. An outstanding technical program was assembled for IEEE PrimeAsia 2009, which comprises of 4 Keynotes, a Plenary Talk, and 120 presentations spanning three full days.

The conference opened with Professor Enrico Macii, Vice President for Publications of the IEEE Circuits & Systems Society and Vice Rector of Politecnico di Torino, delivering a talk on the most recent design and synthesis techniques in reducing run-time temperature in the future generations of CMOS integrated circuits.

The second day’s events began with Professor Chang Wen Chen, the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology and Empire Innovation Professor of State University of New York at Buffalo, on recent development and challenges in mobile multimedia and handheld digital TV. In the afternoon, Prof. Chen delivered a two-hour Plenary Talk on Writing an Excellent Paper for Technical Publication: An Editor-in-Chief’s Perspective.

The third day’s Keynote speakers were Professor Tor Sverre Lande, the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems and Professor of University of Oslo, and Professor Yoshifumi Nishio, Professor of Tokushima University. Prof. Lande’s Keynote, Listen to Technology – What Digital can Offer?, described some innovative ways of designing systems in silicon. Prof. Nishio’s Keynote, Solving Combinational Optimization Problems Exploiting Neural Network and Chaos, discussed how chaos can be exploited to enhance the ability of neural networks.

This conference was also a meeting ground for researchers in various fields, such as VLSI, signal process, communication, biology, computer and so on, to exchange and share their new results and experiences. At the same time, a very important character of this conference was that it offered a wonderful opportunity for young researchers to present and participate in an international forum.

For more information please see the IEEE PrimeAsia 2009 website at: http://www.primeasia.org/.

Di He, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China (Email: dihe@sjtu.edu.cn)