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 is published every month in the Global Communications Newsletter.
In this series of articles, I introduce the Vice President and the six Directors on 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, they present their sector activities and plans one by one.
In this issue, I interview Besma Smida, IEEE ComSoc Director of the North America (NA) Region.
Besma Smida (Senior Member, IEEE) is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Quebec (INRS), Montreal, QC, Canada. She was a Research Engineer with the Technology Evolution and Standards Group of Microcell, Inc. (now Rogers Wireless), Montreal. She serves as Area Editor for the IEEE Transaction On Green Communications and Networking, and as Editor for the IEEE Transactions On Communications and IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society. She has been an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer for 2021-2023. She was included in the “100 Brilliant and Inspiring Women in 6G” List. She was awarded the INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine’s 2015 “100 Inspiring Women in STEM.” She received the Academic Gold Medal of the Governor General of Canada in 2007 and the NSF CAREER award in 2015. Her research focuses on In-band Full-Duplex systems and applications, backscatter modulation, IoT, and two-way communication networks.
Stefano: Hello Besma! Would you like to begin by introducing the North American Region to our readers? What are its main characteristics?
The North American region is a vast region, accounting for one-third of all ComSoc members. It also contains 38 Chapters and 55 Joint Chapters. The majority of the Region’s members come from industry, followed by academia, reflecting the region’s high level of industrial development.
The region is home to major telecommunications companies that are key in advancing technologies like 5G, fiber-optic networks, and satellite communications. It is also a hub for telecommunications research, innovation, and development, with significant investments in emerging technologies such as AI-driven network management, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing. Additionally, its regulatory framework and competitive market encourage further growth and development in the industry.
This is your first time serving as IEEE ComSoc NA 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?
Yes, this is my first time serving as IEEE ComSoc North America Region Director, and I feel both honored and a bit stressed by the responsibility.
I’ve been volunteering with ComSoc for years as the North America (Region 4) representative, Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering, Chicago Section, and Chair of ComSoc Chicago, so I’m familiar with the key responsibilities.
Fortunately, the previous NA Region Director, Fawzi Behmann, provided tremendous mentorship, which was reassuring. I’ve also had great support from the staff: special thanks to Cindy Tiritilli and Trish Jaraicie for their help.
What is the best news of this year?
I have two great pieces of news to share with our readers:
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The ComSoc North America Region Chapter Chairs Congress (NA RCCC) was held very successfully on 9 June, co-located with ICC 2024 in Denver, CO, USA;
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The IEEE ComSoc Atlanta Chapter won the North America Region Chapter Achievement Award and the 2024 Chapter of the Year Award!
The Distinguished Lecturer Program (DLP) and the Distinguished Speaker Program (DSP) are particularly appreciated by our Members. What are the activities of your NA Region under these ComSoc Programs?
Most North American ComSoc chapters actively utilize the Distinguished Lecturer Program (DLP) to connect renowned communications technology experts with their members. This is further supported by the fact that several Distinguished Lecturers are based in the North American region.
What other membership activities in the NA Region do you consider most significant and would like to highlight in particular?
In line with one of the main goals of the MGA strategic plan, to understand how to better serve our members and collaborate with Chapters to identify their needs, we conducted a mini-survey to identify specific goals that the NAB Chapter/Region would like to achieve.
What are the most difficult challenges you face in the NA Region?
The North American region is one of the least densely populated in the world, making it particularly challenging to co-organize membership activities.
And what about Students? Do you regularly organize any specific activities for them?
One of the main challenges for ComSoc NA is to increase student membership. In order to encourage student membership, we are leaning into the ComSoc Mentoring Program.
This program was launched as a pilot program at IEEE GLOBECOM 2022, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, as a Women in Communications Engineering (WICE) / Young Professionals (YP) Joint Session. At ICC 2024, it attracted approximately 35 students and 18 mentors.
To conclude, what are your plans for 2025?
North America has 8.44% female members, compared to 16.2% overall in ComSoc. Interestingly, 16.8% of young professionals (YPs) in North America are female, double the percentage of women in the region overall and slightly higher than ComSoc’s global average.
This offers a great opportunity to increase the percentage of women members and expand the number of active student branch chapters in North America.
