Chapters are important activity centers within the IEEE. It is in the chapters where the technical and scientific daily life takes place for our members. To this end, on the IEEE ComSoc Sweden VT/COM/IT joint chapter board, we have focused on creating value for our members via networking opportunities in Sweden in conjunction with high quality technical/scientific seminars and workshops, and by catalyzing important information flows from IEEE to our members. There are only about 9.6 million people in Sweden, so we are proud of our 599 unique VT/COM/IT members (797 memberships: VTS-117, Comsoc- 583, ITS-97).
In 2014 we organized 13 IEEE Technical seminars by distinguished speakers: Dr. Nicola Marchetti (Trinity College Dublin); Prof. Linda Doyle (Trinity College Dublin); Prof. John Thompson (The University of Edinburgh); Prof. Ali H. Sayed (University of California); Prof. Maïté Brandt-Pearce (University of Virginia); Dr. Matthieu Bloch (Georgia Institute of Technology); Prof . João Hespanha (University of California–Santa Barbara); Assoc. Prof. Serdar Yuksel (Queens University); Prof. Virgil Gligor (Carnegie Mellon University); Prof. Gene Tsudik (University of California–Irvine); Prof. Ness Shroff (The Ohio State University); Prof. Merouane Debbah (Supelec); and Dr. Laurent Schmalen (Alcatel-Lucent Stuttgart). The seminars were hosted by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Chalmers University of Technology, and Linköping University.
We have initiated two annual Swedish workshops. The Swedish Communication Technologies Workshop (Swe-CTW) was first organized in 2011; the Workshop on Wireless Vehicular Communications was first organized in 2010. The Swe-CTW brings together researchers and research students in the general area of communication technologies and related areas. It is a three day workshop that provides an opportunity for researchers and research students in Sweden to gather in a largely informal setting to share ideas, make contacts, and foster new collaborative links for their future careers. The 2014 edition of Swe-CTW was organized June 2-5 2014 in Västerås in collaboration with Mälardalen University. In addition to the poster presentations by young researchers, there were two tutorials: “Sparse Systems” presented by Dr. Saikat Chatterjee (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), and “An Introduction to Wireless Sensor Networks,” presented by Dr. Carlo Fischione (KTH Royal Institute of Technology). Swe-CTW’2014 attracted 62 attendees. The 2014 edition of the Workshop on Wireless Vehicular Communications was organized, as traditionally, in Halmstad, this year on Nov 11 2014. There were 40 participants listening to seven presentations, including the invited speech on “Dependable Vehicular Communications in Non-Stationary Propagation Conditions,” given by Thomas Zemen, FTW Telecommunications Research Center, Vienna.
We are also acting as technical sponsor for IEEE conferences and workshops organized by others in Sweden, where we help to advertise the event in our online media (our IEEE web site, LinkedIn and Facebook, see links below). In 2014 we sponsored The 18th International Conference on Optical Networking Design and Modeling (ONDM’2014), and the IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, (SPAWC) 2015.
To promote the visibility of young talented researchers, we have initiated two annual best paper awards for young researchers in Sweden: the IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter Best Student Journal Paper Award, and the IEEE Sweden VTCOM- IT Joint Chapter Best Student Conference Paper Award. These awards are given to the winners during the annual Swe- CTW. We are also catalyzing nominations to awards programs within our societies, such as the ComSoc EMEA Regional Young Researcher of the Year Award.
It seems that we do a couple of things right. On the board we are proud to have received six awards: the IEEE Communications Society Chapter Achievement Award 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2015, and the Chapter of the Year Award 2013 from the IEEE Information Theory Society. In addition, we received the IEEE Communications Society Special recognition award “For long-time achievements in chapter activities and ongoing excellence serving its members” in December 2013. We think that the composition of our board is an important enabler, comprising very committed persons who span competencies across our technical/scientific areas within the scope of the Vehicular Technology, Communications and Information Theory Societies; academia and industry; senior and younger professionals; as well as a geographical span in Sweden. We have been quite efficient in creating activities for our members. We think the key there is to distribute responsibilities among the board members, taking opportunities when they appear, and working with minimal administrative overhead. For instance, we promote individual initiatives, and we meet using regular telephone conferences (around once per month) where we try to sort out most things, to avoid lengthy email discussions. We also store all our documents on a common server, so that all board members can always be up-to-date even if they cannot attend a telephone meeting.
We are proud of our achievements so far, but there are important grand challenges for the future, such as improving the quality of life for all people, sustainability, and maintaining the interest for engineering among young people. IEEE is a fantastic organization of talented and knowledgeable people! Together we can tackle these challenges. In the IEEE Sweden section we are currently discussing suitable initiatives that could address these important future challenges.
http://sites.ieee.org/sweden-vtcomit/
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/ IEEE-Sweden-VT-COM-IT-5070706
https://www.facebook.com/IeeeSwedenVtcomit
http://www.ieee.se/chapterindex.php?code=vt_com_it
http://www.es.mdh.se/swe-ctw2014/Welcome.html
http://www.hh.se/english/schoolofinformationtechnology/ eventsandseminars/ workshoponwirelessvehicularcommunications2014.65442012.html