IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - November 2019 - 3

President's
Message

Nikhil R. Pal
Indian Statistical
Institute, INDIA

Friends, It Is My Time to Sign Off!

t has been a great honor and privilege for me to serve as the
president of the IEEE Computational intelligence Society
(CIS). I began with a great pleasure but at the same time
with some fear in mind - would I be able to deliver what is
expected of me! Neither I can nor do I intend to assess whether
I could meet the expectation. But I have enjoyed the last
(almost) two years although for a short while I had to sail
through a bit stormy weather. I am happy that I was given this opportunity to
serve. When I started, the two-year period appeared a long time. Time flies so fast
...! I am about to finish my term.
I have good news to share with you. In line with the IEEE Member Get a Member (MGM) program, CIS has launched the CIS MGM program. If you are a CIS
member, then you would be able to invite your friends and colleagues to be members
of CIS via a webpage accessible from the CIS website. It is a user-friendly system,
where you just need to give minimal information such as your name and email
address, and the name and email address of your friend whom you are inviting to join
the CIS. If your referral becomes a member of CIS, you will receive some awards,
which can be used while renewing your CIS membership as well as for a few other
things. To the best of my knowledge, CIS is the first society to have such a program.
So please invite your friends/colleagues to join CIS and get credits for that. It is easy
and useful!
Now I am going to switch the context to a different but very important one.
Nowadays almost in every organization/society, there is an emphasis on achieving
gender balance and geographical diversity. For any international association, these
issues are very important. Time demands our attention and action to address them.
So our editors, chairs of technical committees, education committees, membership committees, all have been working diligently to achieve these. I greatly
admire their efforts and achievements. Gender balance is necessary to achieve
gender equality. In line with IEEE Women in Engineering, CIS also has a subcommittee, Women in CI (WCI), which develops and organizes programs to
achieve an equal opportunity to both genders. This sub-committee is doing a
commendable job. But can the situation be further improved? Possibly yes! On
July 25, 2019, I looked at the CIS membership distributions and the ratio of male
to female is roughly 8:1! This statistic at the level of IEEE is also not much different! This suggests that these issues are more difficult than we think they are. We
need to be more proactive, innovative, and have strategic plans to achieve gender
balance and geographic diversity.
In order to achieve gender balance in all spheres of our activities in a natural way,
we need to improve the imbalanced ratio at the level of membership. I believe a few
initiatives may help to some extent in the long run - these initiatives are strategic in

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCI.2019.2937594
Date of current version: 14 October 2019

CIS Society Officers
President - Nikhil R. Pal,
Indian Statistical Institute, INDIA
President Elect - Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier,
University Pierre et Marie Curie, FRANCE
Vice President - Conferences - Gary B. Fogel,
Natural Selection, Inc., USA
Vice President - Education - Simon M. Lucas,
Queen Mary University of London, UK
Vice President - Finances - Pablo A. Estévez,
University of Chile, CHILE
Vice President - Members Activities - Carlos A.
Coello Coello, CINVESTAV-IPN, MEXICO
Vice President - Publications - Jim Keller,
University of Missouri, USA
Vice President - Technical Activities - Hussein Abbass,
University of New South Wales, AUSTRALIA
Publication Editors
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks
and Learning Systems
Haibo He, University of Rhode Island, USA
IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems
Jon Garibaldi, University of Nottingham, UK
IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
Kay Chen Tan, City University of Hong Kong,
HONG KONG
IEEE Transactions on Games
Julian Togelius, New York University, USA
IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental
Systems
Yaochu Jin, University of Surrey, UK
IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in
Computational Intelligence
Yew Soon Ong, Nanyang Technological University,
SINGAPORE
Administrative Committee
Term ending in 2019:
Cesare Alippi, Politecnico di Milano, ITALY
James C. Bezdek, USA
Hisao Ishibuchi, Southern University of Science and
Technology, CHINA
Kay Chen Tan, City University of Hong Kong,
HONG KONG
Term ending in 2020:
Janusz Kacprzyk, Polish Academy of Sciences,
POLAND
Sanaz Mostaghim, Otto von Guericke University of
Magdeburg, GERMANY
Christian Wagner, University of Nottingham, UK
Ronald R.Yager, Iona College, USA
Gary G.Yen, Oklahoma State University, USA
Term ending in 2021:
David Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., USA
Barbara Hammer, Bielefeld University, GERMANY
Marley M. B. R.Vellasco, Pontifical Catholic
University of Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL
Xin Yao, Southern University of Science and Technology, CHINA
Jacek M. Zurada, University of Louisville, USA

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCI.2019.2937592

NOVEMBER 2019 | IEEE COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE

IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - November 2019

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