Usually some of the things are better in pairs. In the case of the IEEE Spanish Signal Processing and Communications Joint Chapter, the last two years have been awesome.

First, in 2021, we collaborated in the organization of IEEE Globecom in Madrid. Just some comments on it to remember that IEEE Globecome finally arrived to Madrid in 2021!

7–10 December 2021. It is holidays in Spain but we are very busy these days in Madrid. The IEEE Globecom opens its doors. This time, the event is hybrid due to COVID situation. Hopefully, it is the beginning of December and Omicron has not exploded yet. One more week, and the event would probably have had to be cancelled. The event is hybrid as explained but, for the first time ever, it is in person, synchronous online and asynchronous online. That imposes to the organization all the constraints of all the scenarios, what it a great challenge.

The numbers are impressive: 2072 registered, 516 in person attendees (some of them just showed up even when they had remote registration), 1556 remote attendees. 905 accepted papers (38% rate), 31 tutorials, 27 workshops, 15 industry presentations, 8 industry panels, 9 spotlight talks, 14 stands, 7 keynote speakers, more than 20 parallel activities. We also collaborated with some of them such as YP activities.

The event attract to the most relevant researchers and professional in the field of communications all around the world. Behind this event, there are a huge work and illusion.

Was that effort worth? Definitively, YES. The most listened word during the event and at the end was “THANK YOU.” Thank you for the organization of the wonderful event, thank you for the possibility to join everyone again, thank you for the opportunity of interaction, thank you for the hospitality, thank you for…

This is the best indicator of success.

We also want to thank the organizing committee of the event and to the people that joined IEEE Globecom 2021 either in person or remotely.

After an exhausting year 2021 we needed to relax a bit, however, the show must go on.

We started on January supporting the 10th IEEE Spanish workshop on signal Processing, Communications and Information Theory that should be delayed to November due to the explosion of COVID-19 situation. The support of these activities is important for all the members that get from the chapter the visibility and is a funding attractor for the organizers.

The chapter also participated organizing pre-STEM activities such as the “Escape of the room: Save the world with the best telecommunication system,” where participants were divided into groups and they had to design and build a telecommunication system to transmit the information and escape from the room while they learned the basic concepts on communication. From the chapter we put faith on these kind of activities to attract young people to engineering and especially to the communication and signal-processing field. They are the future students and future engineers. They are our hope. Thus, the chapter organizes and collaborates with these anytime it has the opportunity. In fact, that activity got the second price at the “IEEE ComSoc Pre-STEM hands-on contest 2022” for ages 14–17. We are very proud of our volunteers!

Continuing with the pre-STEM outcomes, our volunteers always participate in panels, round tables and workshops related to this.

Regarding our more technical activities, this year 2022, the chapter co-organized with IEEE UK and Ireland ComSoc chapter 4 different virtual distinguished lectures (VDL) and one “IoT week” with another three VDL. We leveraged on the virtual activities so the number of potential members was higher in this collaboration. We hope that we can continue in the future with it and even co-organize in person events. I would like to thank prof. Nauman Aslan, UK-Ireland ComSoc chapter chair, for his help and fruitful collaboration. In our opinion, this is the way to obtain better results using efficiently the resources and leveraging on the IEEE family.

Of course, we are proud and honored to have our 7 DL this year. Thank you to all of them. The topics were in the whole spectrum of communications and signal processing:

• “Multi-antenna processing for satellite communications” by Bruno Clerckx.

• “Integrating UAVs in 6G mobile networks” by Fabrizio Granelli.

• “The rise of Quantum Internet” by Sara Angela Caciapouti.

• “IoT via 5G satellite systems” by Giovanni Giambene.

• “Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLCC) for 5G IoT. Time Sensitive networking and V2X communication” by Shahid Mumtaz.

• “AI based machine-to-machine communications in 6G” by Sinem Coleri.

• “Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: communication, sensing and their integration” by George Alexandropoulos.

We have all the information in our website:

https://ewh.ieee.org/r8/spain/spcom/index.html

Due to this hard work did by volunteers the chapter was awarded with the IEEE 2022 ComSoc Chapter Achievement Award in the EMEA region. This milestone is a booster for continuing and growing into our activities for next year!