This article continues the series of ten interviews with the Officers of the IEEE ComSoc Member and Global Activities (MGA) Council for the term 2024–2025, which will be published every month in the Global Communications Newsletter.

In this series of articles, I introduce the Vice-President and the six Directors of the MGA Council (namely: Member Services, Industry Outreach, and AP, NA, LA, and EMEA Regions), as well as the three Chairs of the Women in Communications Engineering (WICE), Young Professionals (YP), and Sister Societies Standing Committees. In each interview, one by one they present their sector activities and plans.

In this issue, I interview Javier Berrocal, IEEE ComSoc Director of the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) Region.

Javier Berrocal is an associate professor at the University of Extremadura (Spain), currently habilitated as a full professor. He is also the Vice-rector of Digital Transformation at the same university. The main research areas of Javier Berrocal are cloud computing, edge computing, cloud-to-thing computing, Digital Twin, and Mobile computing. In these areas, he published more than 60 papers in indexed journals, and more than 100 papers in highly prestigious conferences. Javier Berrocal is also co-founder of two different companies: Global Process and Product Innovation S.L. (Gloin), and Health and Aging Tech S.L. (HAT). In addition, he is leading projects with different companies to help them in the transition to Industry 4.0/5.0. Finally, he is serving/served as TPC Co-Chair in a number of IEEE ComSoc conferences and he is also currently involved in the Communications Systems Integration and Modeling (CSIM) Technical Committee.

Stefano: Hello Javier! Would you like to begin by introducing the Europe, Middle East, and Africa Region to our readers? What are its main characteristics?

Javier: The EMEA region covers a very large geographical area that extends over three different continents: Africa, Europe, and part of Asia. Concretely, it stretches from Cape Town (South Africa) in the South, Lisbon (Portugal) in the West, through Hammerfest (Norway) in the North, to Vladivostok (Russia) in the East.

The region is served by 53 local chapters having together more than one-fifth of the ComSoc members worldwide. Chapters provide a local connection for our society members. This large land area and number of chapters brings with it a great cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as a very diverse set of problems to be addressed, needs to be met and activities to be organized from different perspectives.

In addition, while the distance between Chapters can be seen as a problem, it is an advantage to foster a greater information exchange and enhance the complementarity between Chapters.

This is your first time serving as IEEE ComSoc EMEA Region Director. How was your first impression when you were appointed? And on the first days, after you started serving in your new position? What was the first difficulty you faced?

To be honest, it was a great surprise and an honor. For the past few years, I have been serving ComSoc in different programs, such as the Internet for All, and the EMEA region as part of the Board, but being Director of the region is a dream come true.

The biggest difficulty I found as a regional director is the number of activities I have to manage and coordinate, but I have a great team that helps me every step of the way: Claudio Fiandrino, who helps me with the definition of new services; Saud Althunibat who coordinates the DLT/DSP program; John Vardakas who manages the award program; Niko Mäkitalo who is focused on the membership development; Marwa K. Qaraqe who is our social media manager; and Diomidis Michalopoulos in charge of fostering the cooperation between the industry and the academia. Thanks to them, and the advice of the former Director Luca Foschini, the difficulties are fewer and easier to overcome.

What is the best news of this year?

A few weeks ago, we re-launched the EMEA Award Program. Usually, this program recognizes the outstanding work of young researchers, who have been very active in IEEE ComSoc through publication and conference activities over the last three years, and senior individuals who have significantly contributed to the development of IEEE ComSoc activities in the EMEA Region.

This year, we defined a new award focused on honoring individuals who were/are industry employees and have achieved major industrial accomplishments that are of substantial benefit to the public in the field of communications. We are really excited about this new award, as it allows us to cover an important area for members in the EMEA region.

The Distinguished Lecturer Program (DLP) and the Distinguished Speaker Program (DSP) are particularly appreciated by our Members. What are the activities of your EMEA Region under these ComSoc Programs?

DLTs provide the means for ComSoc chapters to identify and arrange lectures by renowned experts on communications and networking-related topics. ComSoc’s DSPs enable current and past distinguished lecturers as well as ComSoc officers, IEEE Fellows, and prominent speakers to schedule lectures while traveling on business trips. DLTs and DLPs give invaluable networking and socializing opportunities to our members and the opportunity for ComSoc to advertise its activities.

During the last few months, we have been working on increasing the number of DLTs in the EMEA region, easing the acceptance of these activities, and increasing the expenses that are covered. This allowed us to increase the number of DLTs in different parts of the region.

What are the most difficult challenges, which you face in the EMEA Region?

We have three important challenges: strengthening existing chapters, improving the industry-academia cooperation, and increasing the number of female members in the region. Currently, there are some chapters with vacancies, we are working on motivating members to fill these positions.

Regarding the second challenge, we are working on an initiative, launched by Christos Verikoukis and continued by Luca Foschini, to close the gap between industry and academia in our region, engaging people from industry to actively participate in our activities.

Finally, to increase the number of female members, both Virginia Pilloni and Anna Maria Vegni are working on organizing different activities focused on promoting the advancement of women in communications.

And what about Students? Do you organize regularly any specific activities for them?

We organize different activities for students. For instance, at the end of the year, we usually organize a panel. In this panel, students can present their work to panelists remotely. The panelists analyze their work and provide valuable feedback. This initiative was highly appreciated by our students, and we will open a call for participation in October, so, stay tuned!

In addition, as a new activity, this year we promoted the IEEE Region 8 Student and Young Professional Congress 2024, held in Grenoble. This event gathers both students and young professional members. SYP’s main goal is to enhance and foster the engineering sense and capabilities through different activities both technically and culturally. Concretely, in this event, we organized a workshop to promote IEEE ComSoc.

To conclude, what are the most serious challenges that you are coping with?

The extension of the region together with the cultural diversity is a fascinating challenge. We are being innovative and imaginative to promote IEEE ComSoc activities in all parts of the region so that we can all be enriched by the knowledge of chapters in other areas.