11th Tunisian Student and Young Professional Congress (TSYP 2023): IEEE ComSoc Fosters Students and Young Professionals in Tunisia

By Habib Kammoun - IEEE Tunisia Section Chair and Sonia Zouari - IEEE ComSoc Tunisia Chapter Secretary

In the 3rd week of December each year, hundreds of IEEE students and young professionals in Tunisia have the opportunity to improve their skills, network, and meet IEEE leaders and speakers during a 3-day congress called TSYP (Tunisian Student and Young Professional Congress). The 11th edition of the TSYP congress was organized from 18 to 20 December 2023 in the Medina congress center, Yasmine Hammamet.

Students presenting their activities and projects to the IEEE Leaders Maurizio Bozzi and Deepak Mathur.

In front of about 1200 participants, the opening ceremony highlights the workshops, challenges, panel discussions, distinguished speakers, and social activities organized during the congress. It was also an opportunity to present the impact of IEEE activities and projects in Tunisia, and the involvement of more than 7000 IEEE students in Tunisia to keep the Tunisia section (established in 2008) as one of the most active sections worldwide. At the end of the welcoming speech of the Tunisia section chair, he took this opportunity to congratulate the first life member in Tunisia: Amor Dhaoui who presented in a few words his long journey as an IEEE member and encouraged the students to continue their memberships after their graduation.

Students from the ENET’Com student branch celebrating their challenge award achievement.

Following the recorded speech of the 2023 IEEE President Saifur Rahman, an amazing panel discussion was very helpful to the participants to better understand and discover the IEEE opportunities that may help the students to succeed in their professional careers. The panel was moderated by Seif El Hajjem (IEEE Region 8 YP committee) with the distinguished panelists:

  • Khaled B. Letaief (IEEE Division III Director and 2018-2019 ComSoc President)

  • Deepak Mathur(IEEE MGA Board Chair-Elect)

  • Mike Hinchey (IEEE Region 8 Director-Elect)

  • Abdulatif Aliyu (IEEE Region 8 Student Activities Committee Chair)

A second-panel discussion was organized with more focus on the IEEE Technical Activities and the IEEE Humanitarian Activities benefits and sharing with the attendees the impactful volunteering experiences of the following IEEE leaders:

  • Nita Patel (IEEE Computer Society President)

  • Antonio Luque (IEEE Industry Electronics Society Vice-President, Memberships)

  • Maurizio Bozzi (IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society President-Elect)

  • Lwanga Herbert (IEEE Humanitarian Technologies Board Chair)

  • Laura Meyer (IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society, Ocean Decade initiative Co-chair)

The congress was also a great opportunity for the student branches and the student chapters to present their 2023 IEEE successful activities in the exposition hall. The expo was merged with the setup of booths for well-known companies in Tunisia that were interested in meeting our IEEE student members and discussing internship and job opportunities.

Habib Kammoun, IEEE Tunisia Section Chair, welcoming attendees at the opening ceremony The biennial 2022–2023 was a very fruitful period for the ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer Program in Latin America. The main goal of the Distinguished Lecturer Program is to provide world-level lectures to IEEE members around the world. In Latin America, it is also an important vector to attract new student and professional members to ComSoc highlighting the technical and professional values of being an IEEE ComSoc member. The organization of a DL lecture (different lectures in an in-person tour or a virtual session) starts based on the interest from local chapters in one or more topics presented by Overview of the IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer Program in Latin America (2022–2023) by Fabrício Braga Soares de Carvalho, ComSoc LA Region DLT/ DSP Coordinator, Brazil DISTINGUISHED LECTURER Distinguished Lecturer

The second-day program includes several parallel technical and soft skills workshops, as well as technical and humanitarian challenges. Furthermore, the participants enjoyed the distinguished talks (DL) about:

  • Advancing 5G technology innovations into the 6G Era, by Fawzi Behmann (IEEE ComSoc DL, USA)

  • Machine Learning for Detecting Internet Traffic Anomalies, by Ljiljana Trajkovic (IEEE SMC Society DL, Canada)

  • Virtual Graduate Study Consortium Initiative, by Hamadou Saliah-Hassane (IEEE Education Society DL, Canada)

  • Empathic AI: Human Factors, System Assessment, and Standardisation, by Aladdin Ayesh (IEEE Computer Society DL, UK)

  • Electronic Control Development and Testing: The V-Cycle, Tarak Lahdhiri (IEEE Region 4 PA, USA)

The congress was also an opportunity to elevate the technical skills of the participants through other panels and forums, such as:

  • IEEE Blockchain — Around the World & Africa Highlight, by Ramesh Ramadoss (IEEE Blockchain Technical Community chair, USA), Gora Datta (IEEE Blockchain Technical Community vice-chair, USA), Dominic Damoah (Valley View University, Ghana), OludeleAwodele (Babcock University, Nigeria), Mohamed Hamdi (Cybersecurity Expert, Tunisia), Tarek Kammoun (K2LIS, Tunisia).

  • IEEE EMBS North Africa Forum on Healthcare Innovations, where we explored the exciting intersection of engineering and technology with healthcare advancements that have reshaped the scientific landscape in recent decades. The program included 10 plenary talks and the following 2 keynotes:

  • Pursuit of Precision Health: The Digital Twin Opportunity, by Roderic Pettigrew (Inaugural Dean, School of Engineering Medicine, TAMU, USA)

  • MHealth4Africa: Co-designing an integrated solution for resource-constrained environments, by Paul Cunningham (IST Africa Institute, Ireland)

In addition, 11 challenges organized by some IEEE Tunisian technical chapters and affinity groups during the event spanned across different technical domains, provided the students the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills in practical scenarios, fostering a spirit of innovation and problem-solving, for:

  • IoT and Industry 4.0 (Tunisia CAS and RFID chapters)

  • Bridging Knowledge Gaps for Rural Women and girls (Tunisia WIE affinity group)

  • Printed Circuit Board Design - Particulate matter (Tunisia SSCS chapter)

  • Power and water outages (Tunisia SIGHT affinity group)

  • Deep-fake Forensics Challenge (Tunisia Computer chapter and Tunisia YP affinity group)

  • Human Exploration Rover (Tunisia AESS chapter)

  • HealthTech Innovations for Enhanced Remote Patient Care (Tunisia EMBS chapter)

  • Innovate Safe Road (Tunisia RAS chapter)

  • Digital Sustainability (Tunisia IAS chapter)

  • Understanding Student Well-being (Tunisia SMCS and Education chapters)

  • Optimizing and Enhancing the Educational Robot (Tunisia PES and IES chapters)

  • An award and recognition ceremony was organized in the evening to acknowledge and honor the amazing efforts done and to express gratitude and appreciation for the hard work, talent, and dedication of the participants and the teams.

The closing ceremony was so vibrant with the big SB challenge that allowed the winning student branch to host the next edition in December 2024. Three student branches of ENET’Com, ENIS, and ESPRIT reached the final stage. Following a Q&A session and voting, the IEEE ENET’Com student branch won the challenge and became the host of the TSYP Congress 2024.

As TSYP2023 concluded, participants left with enriched perspectives, new skills, and a deeper understanding of the technological advancements shaping our world.

Further details about the complete list of speakers and program are available via the website https://tsyp.ieee.tn/ and shared on social media via FB: https://www.facebook.com/ieee.tsyp

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