MESSAGE FROM THE 2010 CAS SOCIETY PRESIDENT*

Taking this into account, the 3.6% decrease in 2009 which brought CAS members to around 9900 should not be interpreted as entirely unsatisfactory data. On one hand, it downperforms the 1% membership drop experienced on average by all IEEE Societies. On the other hand it appreciably overperforms what experienced by its top-level sister societies, such as Solid-State Circuits (–6.8%), Communications (–7.4%) and Computer (–5.1%).

This had in my view twofold explanation. On the one hand, the CAS Society is doing a very good job in providing excellent journals and transactions and (co–) organizing a variety of high level workshops and prime conferences such as ISCAS and BioCAS, as well as a plethora of successful activities through its 70 chapters worldwide. On the other hand, CASS is well serving its members by providing a friendly community where they can express and expand their technical skills and build a link of professional relationships to help them progress through their career.

If we wish to make CASS a better place for each of us we certainly need to continue along these directions and not to stop at the current achievements. This is certainly what I plan to do during this year. To be more concrete, let me consider a few examples, by starting from the current status to arrive to describe some concrete possible actions to be undertaken in 2010.

Publication

Currents Status: Thanks to the hard work of all the Editorial Teams in the past few years, all CAS-sponsored Transactions have reached a very high level in terms of both technical quality and community recognition. A partial measure of this is the overall increase in their Impact Factor (IF) which has reached its largest value ever for both the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems—Part I: Regular Papers (TCAS-I, IF = 2.043) and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems—Part II: Express Briefs (TCAS-II, IF = 1.436) and the second largest value ever for the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (TCSVT, IF = 2.951). It is worth underlining that this corresponds, for TCAS-I, to entering for the first time in the first quarter of the journal ranking in the area of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and, for TCSVT to almost reaching the top 20. Additional highlights for 2009 are represented by the introduction of the CAS Magazine (which you all receive with you CASS membership) among the set of journals for which ISI computes an IF, which is, by itself, a recognition of quality. Last but not least, the newly introduced IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (TBioCAS) has successfully completed its 3-year review by IEEE with a full satisfaction of the evaluation committee.

Future Plans: It is certainly challenging to improve an already good situation, but I feel that we should focus our activity on finding a way to take advantage of the unique ability that CASS has to embrace and foster core developments in new emerging technical areas. As just two possibilities, consider that it is currently under study the creation of a new journal (possibly on-line only) publishing focused issues on selective and emerging topics or, maybe in alternative, of a new Transactions on System Biology.

In the above generally quite good situation of our publication, there are unfortunately some shadows, such as the relatively large backlog of TCAS-I and the non-inclusion of TBioCAS in the MeDline database. You may rest assured that I will put all my effort to improve the situation from this point of view.

Conferences

Currents Status: For the interest of conciseness, I will focus only on CASS Flagship conference, the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS). As you have most likely personally experienced, its quality and perception has, in fact, been steadily increasing since 2004, both in terms of regular technical program (for which the conference reached an acceptance rate of less than 45%), as well as, in more recent years, of depth and breadth of the tutorials offered and vision of the keynotes presentations. Most of this success was due to the increasing support that CASS offered to the organizers to help maintain, year after year, continuity in the conference organization and management.

Future Plans: Assuring continuity is the key issue for ISCAS and all CASS conferences. We plan to follow the example of very successful conferences such as DAC, ISSCC, . . . and explore the possibility to do so in a formal and coherent way by offering for an extended number of years the same paper submission management tool, and/ or providing additional professional management support for the conferences organizers.

Value for CASS Membership

Currents Status: As I mentioned before, CASS is certainly a very friendly and welcoming Society for its members and this has a paramount value in itself. However what does the Society tangibly offer to you, the CASS members? For the time being, the most concrete answer is the journal you have in your hands! We can certainly do more, especially to make an effort to reach younger scientist and Graduate from the Last Decade (GOLD) members.

Future Plans: We will try to take some small but concrete action. As a first possibility we will work to introduce a reduction of the registration fee at some CASS-sponsored conferences, for which CASS members will be eligible in addition to those which applies to IEEE members. In addition to this, to help our younger student member to access the technical information they need to progress in their career, we will explore the possibility of giving them a free on-line access to all journals and CASS-sponsored conferences. Finally, relying on the familiarity younger scientists may have with modern social networks (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter . . .), we will pursue their use to increase CASS outreach towards them, making them known all our events and initiatives, and increase their involvement in CASS activities and governance.

Let me conclude by saying that it is for me a true honor and a great privilege to serve as the 2010 CAS Society President. When I joined CASS as a student member in 1988, I would have never imagined to arrive to guide it someday, and I feel both humbled and pressured by the obligations and the responsibility that this office represents. From this point of view, I am however very fortunate to have served under the leadership of extremely skilled volunteers who held this position in the recent past: starting from Prof. Georges Gielen in 2005 to arrive to Prof. David Allstott in 2009, any single CASS President has set a clear path or, at least, has indicated some directions for me to follow. But my luck does not end here, since I will have the privilege in 2010 to rely on the many very dedicated and capable colleagues serving in both our Executive Committee and Board of Governors, whose names and contact point are reported in the CAS-S web-site at http://www.ieeecas.org. No President could dream of a better group of people to work with.

Of course, the help, guidance, and suggestions from you all will always be welcomed. As such, in addition to being involved in the Society from a mere technical point of view, by submitting your research contribution to our journals and/or participating to our conference and workshops, I certainly encourage you to send your feedback to us by contacting the most appropriate CASS staff or ExCom and BoG member.

With all this support, during 2010, I hopefully aim at completing a few of the initiatives mentioned above (leaving the rest to the most capable hands of my successor, Prof. Mani Soma) and, more important to provide you, our members, with additional technical content, services and increased sense of community.

I wish you and all your families a happy and prosperous 2010.

Gianluca Setti

2010 President, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society

*This article has been published in the 2010 first issue of the IEEE CAS Magazine.