Networking at IEEE LATINCOM 2017: Seminar on Vehicular Communications by Prof. Carlos Gutierrez at the El Salvador Chapter

By Carlos Eugenio Martínez-Cruz - El Salvador Section Chair
Carlos Gutierrez receiving a diploma of recognition.

Last November, I attended the 9th Latin-American Conference on Communications (LATINCOM 2017) which was held in Guatemala City, Guatemala. IEEE LATINCOM was an excellent opportunity to meet researchers, professors and telecommunication practitioners.

As part of the social events, ComSoc Guatemala organized a short trip to Guatemala’s most beautiful city, Antigua Guatemala. It was on that trip that many of us had the opportunity to directly talk with our colleagues. ComSoc conferences have proved to be a very good tool to connect people and to expand professional relations among its members. Many future professional collaboration activities were settled there.

Telecommunication professionals that attended the seminar of Carlos Gutierrez.

For instance, while we were visiting Mayan museums, I arranged a two-day seminar on vehicular communication with professor Carlos Gutierrez, from San Luis Potosi University, Mexico. Also at the same time, professor Carlos Gutierrez established contacts with researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham Young University. In a nutshell, ComSoc conferences are very effective to connect members and their chapters.

During his visit to El Salvador, before the two-day seminar, on Wednesday, 21 February, Professor Carlos Gutierrez gave two talks at two different universities. The first talk was given to students at the University of El Salvador. The activity was organized by the Universidad de El Salvador’s Students ComSoc chapter. More than 60 students attended the event. For most of them this was their first exposure to a ComSoc professional member, and probably to a foreign speaker. The event counted with ComSoc student chapter from Universidad de El Salvador. They invited other students and looked for facilities to hold the meeting.

The same day, later in the afternoon, a similar talk was given at the Universidad Tecnologica de El Salvador. There is great expectations at this university about having new members, creating a new student branch and having Computer Society and ComSoc student chapters. Finally, at the end of the day, we still found time to visit Salvadoran section members. They were having a meeting preparing their next regional conference, the 38th edition of CONCAPAN, the Central America and Panama IEEE Conference.

Once again, personal interaction among ComSoc members proved to be very fruitful. In less than half an hour, professor Gutierrez offered help to CONCAPAN’s technical committee. That help could be in the form of paper reviewers. In just one day many professional interactions were developed. Several institutional cooperation activities were planned.

The two-day seminar took place 22-23 February 2017. Twenty-six professionals attended the seminar. There were representatives from many different places from the telecommunication sector. Thirty percent came from industry, another thirty percent from the public sector, and forty percent from universities. Very few events in the daily life of our professional sector have been able to put together so many and so diverse telecommunication professionals. The seminar also helped to cement relationships among members.

Participants in the seminar showed interest in intelligent transportation systems. Professor Carlos Gutierrez explained that a further step forward toward the development of vehicular communication systems has come recently in the form of an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard. This amendment is referred to as IEEE 802.11p. The WiFi version of this standard was well known among participants which made the seminar more interesting. To illustrate these topics several simulations were presented and some of them were developed on the fly. This combination of lectures and simulation proved to be very interesting.