The IEEE ComSoc Romania Chapter has most of its members and activities concentrated in four major academic and industrial cities of Romania: Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, and Iasi. The activities of the chapter in 2015 were focused on the following main directions:

• Organizing or contributing to the organization of international conferences on communications or related topics.
• Organization of scientific symposia dedicated to students’ research activities.
• Organization of presentations, short courses, and seminars offered by specialists from well known companies, which are dedicated both to students and other communications specialists. IEEE BlackSea Communications & Networking 2015 and

Other International Conferences

Chapter members contributed to the organization of international conferences on communications or to conferences organized jointly with other chapters of the IEEE Romania Section, by organizing sessions that pointed out the link of the respective field to communications.

The most important event of the chapter’s activity in 2015 was the IEEE BlackSea Communications & Networking 2015 Conference (http://blackseacom2015.ieee-blackseacom.org/). Organized by IEEE ComSoc, chaired by Prof. H. Sari, vice president of IEEE ComSoc, and by dr. Al. Gelman, the conference was held at the Maritime University in the city of Constanta, the greatest Romanian city on the Black Sea coast. The conference patron was Orange Romania.

Members of the Romania IEEE ComSoc chapter had important roles in organizing this event. On the scientific side, Prof. V. Bota from Technical University of Cluj-Napoca was Technical Committee Program (TPC) co-chair, and twelve other members of the chapter were TPC members and reviewers. Moreover, Prof. O. Fratu was Operations Chair, coordinating the local organizing team from the Politehnica University of Bucharest (PUB) and Maritime University of Constanta.

The conference had three main tracks: regular technical papers, special sessions, and work-in-progress papers. Out of the 110 eligible papers submitted in the regular papers and special sessions tracks, 53 were for oral presentation, while another 15 papers were selected in the work-in-progress track.

The conference’s technical program included two keynote presentations, the patron presentation, two tutorials, seven regular technical sessions, three special sessions, one poster session, and one demos session.

The keynote presentations, offered by Dr. M. Kontouris from Supelec (France) and Prof. A. Polydoros from the University of Athens (Greece), dealt with very hot research topics in the field, i.e., “Scientific Challenges of 5G” and “Opportunistically Cooperating Radios in Action”, respectively.

The two half-day tutorials, namely “Green Heterogeneous Networks” offered by Dr. M. Z. Shakir, Texas A&M University at Quatar, and “Network Infrastructure for IoT and M2M Communications”, offered by Dr. B. Sikdar, National University of Singapore, also covered current research topics. The keynote speeches and tutorials were highly appreciated, being watched by local and remote attendees, due to their broadcasting to PUB.

The seven regular technical sessions contained 42 high quality papers, while the three special sessions included another 11 selected papers. The poster session, and the demos session, with eight presenters, completed the program.

The TCP offered two awards: the Best Paper Award, which went to G. Montorsi and F. Kayhan from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and the Best Student Paper Award, which was won by G. Ricciutelli, M. Baldi, N. Maturo, and Fr. Chiaraluce from the Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy.

The technical program also included two panels, discussing “5G Mobile System: Is It Just New Frequency Bands or Did We Miss Something Crucial in Earlier Generations?” moderated by Prof. M. Latva-Aho, University of Oulu (Finland), and “Internet of Things: How to Break the Barriers for Business Development?” moderated by prof. R. Verdone, University of Bologna (Italy).

The conference was attended by authors from 22 countries, from Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, and by some 150 attendees, specialists, and students, and by the remote attendees at the Politehnica University of Bucharest, which shows the interest aroused by the conference.

The chapter members also contributed to two other conferences organized jointly with other chapters of IEEE Romania Section. Chapter members from the PUB, coordinated by Prof. V. Coitoru, contributed to the “9th International Symposium on Advanced Topics in Electrical Engineering: ATEE 2015” held in Bucharest on May 7–9, 2015, by organizing a seven-paper special session on “Communications and Information Technology & Electric Circuits”. They also contributed to the organization of the “8th International Conference on Speech Technology and Human-Computer Dialogue 2015”, which took place at the Politehnica University of Bucharest between 14 - 16 October.

Organization of Scientific Symposia for Students

The second direction of activity was the organization of scientific symposia dedicated to the research activities of the students in telecoms. Such symposia were organized in the academic centers. As an example, the yearly one-day Symposium of Electronics and Telecommunications organized by the Communications and Applied Electronics Departments of the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (TUCN) was an opportunity for the students to present the results of their research or of graduation theses. It had a section on communications that is structured on two levels: research results of M.Sc. and Ph.D. students, and the graduation projects for bachelor students. The 2015 edition offered best paper awards and prizes, and the best papers were published in the TUCN review “Novice Insights”. The symposium was of great interest among students, academic staff, and representatives of the local IT&C industry.

Activities Aimed at Local Industry

Another area of the chapter’s activities was to build liaisons with industry. To this end, the chapter members from the technical universities of Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, and Iasi, organized seminars, presentations, and intensive courses for students and staff that were offered by telecomm companies. Such a seminar on “Satellite Communications” offered by Dr. Jens Krause from SES Communications, Luxembourg, took place at PUB. A workshop on “Wireless Communications & Real Time Concept” with participation of Rohde & Schwartz Romania, was organized at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca.

The telecom companies are also involved in the students’ development by means of training courses and support for the elaboration of the graduation projects or M.Sc. dissertations. As an example, we mention the Orange Educational Program at PUB, where students in communications are offered training stages and internships to develop their graduation projects.