On behalf of ComSoc Central Texas Joint Chapter Leadership, members, and community we wish to express our appreciation and thanks to ComSoc Awards Committee, Ana Garcia, VP Membership Development, and Sherman, President of ComSoc, for the 2023 Chapter Achievement Award (CAA) for North America and received during the Awards and Luncheon ceremony held on December 5th as a part of 2023 IEEE Globecom conference held in Kuala Lampur Dec. 4–8th, 2023. Fawzi Behmann, Chair of CTS ComSoc Joint Chapter, has accepted the CAA on behalf of Chapter Leadership consists of Norma Antunano, Semih Aslan, Daniel Lewis, Nitin Garg, and Francis Scott. This award represents chapter achievement among 95 chapters in North America. Recent awards by the chapter for CAA were in 2021, 2020, 2017 and 2015.

The ComSoc CTS Chapter has also previously won the Chapter of the Year Award (CoY) in 2015, 2017, and 2020. The CoY award is a global award over a total of 222 ComSoc chapters worldwide. This award represents the significant efforts expended by the officers and ComSoc members in Austin.

Austin is a technology hub with multiple high tech companies, famous universities (e.g. University of Texas and San Marcos University), multiple research, and innovation centers. This maddest challenging to variate theme from one year to the next. The theme of 2023: Smart Ecosystems empowered by enabling technologies, such as 5G/6G, IoT/Edge Computing, Cloud/AI, Security/Blockchain driving smart networking solutions and innovative use cases. Variety of activities were conducted to drive greater vitality and growth. These include:

• Strengthen local chapter for membership development by holding high-quality technical events that totaled 32 with relevant topics given by domain experts, and leveraged Distinguished Lecturer/Speaker program and multihost feature to expand coverage.
  
  Some of the key topics included: The world of Exascale High performance Computing, “6G, XR and the Metaverse – A Silicon Valley View,” “A Dual-Blind De convolution Perspectives of Integrated Sensing and Communications,” “5G/6G Enable Edge Computing and Edge Intelligence,” “Distilling AI,” “Solving Global Grand Challenges with High Performance Data Analytics,” and others.

• Initiate/support several students activities for membership development by inviting several Distinguished lectures. Examples having Mr. Scott Atkinson on March 30th to address the students on Space Communication (see photo), having Dr. Fabrizio Granelli from Italy on September 25 that talked about Digital Twins and Dr. Majid Butt on IEEE Day October 4 who talked about AI in wireless. These series of special sessions supported by collaterals about student membership and benefits and leveraging one doll membership and IEEE Future 50 have generated great attendance and interest by students and many have signed as new member ComSoc members.

• Outreach activities: Participate and support ComSoc students activities including having more chapter members participate at ComSoc Student Competition (Sep.-Nov.) in judging, ComSoc Atlanta School (September 21-23) in having several talks, participate in student resume evaluation, and establish joint activities between Austin and Atlanta as sister chapter, and Student Leadership Summit (November 13-15) at Baltimore Future Networks World Forum. The summit was organized and led by Ashutosh Dutta and Fawzi Behmann the chairs of ComSoc Baltimore and Austin, offering three days training on Python offered by Dr. Semih Aslan, mentoring and interactive session between IEEE seniors and YP moderated by Fawzi Behmann and panel session on use case on agriculture along with diverse talks by distinguished speakers aimed at sharpening student soft skills, show potential market opportunities.

• Collaborate and support ComSoc Industry Board in building strong program to attract industry. Supported Texas State in building Industry Advisory Board and establish common set of activities.

• The chapter has been active with other major outreach activities, such as being part of Big 5G Panel and Event by Light Reading in Austin May 17, 2023, ICC 2023 supporting student career fare (Rome, May 27-29), being part of Reuters Momentum AI Summit held in Austin July 11-12, Section Congress networking with other leaders (Ottawa August 11-13), participate and support PIMRC as Sponsorship chair and engaged on a panel Future Networks INGR Roadmap (Toronto, September 5-8), mobile world Congress promoting ComSoc among industry (Las Vegas September 26-28), Fawzi also contributed to Future Networks Technical Communities and Forum, managed finance and education working groups, and contributed to advance INGR Roadmap for security and applications and services working groups.

• Collaborated with Central Texas Section and affinity groups for LM and Consulting Networking in joint events in Austin leveraging DL program and increase awareness of the brand (March 23)

• Outreach and support IEEE in multiple areas, such as being MGA Conference Committee voting member and sharing best of practices, contribute to Conference Committee - Adhoc committee on finance for next generation of tools, and being part of Convene on series of meetings on conference planning and sharing best of practices.

As a distinguished Lecturer, I participated in several VDL and DLT sessions that were held virtually and physically, such as a VDL session held at Rode Island April 20, San Marcos April 21; DLT San Antonio, Denver, and Atlanta on September 19–23; and several sites at Tunis, December 13–18.

I’m pleased to report that I was along with 22 newly inducted IEEE HKN Eta Chapter Professional Members of IEEE-HKN Board of Governors. Later on, I participated Eta Kapa Nu Students Leadership Summit and interacted with many students inviting them to joint activities with ComSoc and Future Networks.