IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - February 2020 - 13

lower dimension during IJCNN 2018
in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and FUZZIEEE 2019 in New Orleans (US), we
plan to organize for the first time a
Mentoring Program at WCCI level during WCCI 2020 in Glasgow (Scotland).
The two previous programs have demonstrated the potential of this activity,
but a much larger implementation at a
WCCI level requires the strong involvement of a large team of volunteers that
have already started its work.
From highly visible actions as the
Technical Challenge or the Mentoring
Program, we will move now to another
initiative with quite limited external visibility but a high impact in the internal
activity: the implementation of the
recently updated Technical Activities
Operational Manual, and the auditing of
TCs. An updated Operational Manual
has been recently defined and is now in
the process of approval. As soon as the
approval process is completed, we should
start working on its implementation that
should take place in 2020. We plan also
to complete an already started auditing
process involving the different TCs and
TFs of TAC.
It has been mentioned before that
transfer (technology transfer) should also
be considered as one of the components
contributing to scientific/technology
advancement. In that sense, it is clear
that IEEE CIS needs to improve its
interaction with Industry, and TAC
seems to be the right place to work for
this improvement considering not only
transfer but also dissemination activities.
It is also important to achieve a higher
involvement of Industry in IEEE CIS
activities. We need to define new tools,
and exploit the existing ones, to
approach/attract industry and to gain
visibility. Every TC or TF can play a role
in this respect, but obviously, application
oriented TFs will have more to offer to
Industry. Tools to be considered are the
organization of Industrial Panels in our
conferences or even in our Computa-

tional Intelligence Magazine. Other
actions such as Industry oriented special
sessions and application oriented special
issues would also be interesting. These
actions will obviously require the interaction with Conferences and Publications Committees.
Technology transfer has been always
in the agenda of TAC. Some years ago,
there was a Technology Transfer Committee integrated as a component of
TAC, but the committee disappeared,
and some of the questions under its
consideration were assumed by the
Industry Liaison Sub Committee under
the Education Committee. Recently, the
IEEE CIS Strategic Plan included as
one of its points, to: "Increase collaborations and soften boundaries between CIS and
other IEEE societies, emergent communities
and industry," and designed some specific
actions to be deployed by TAC (jointly
in some cases with other Committees of
IEEE CIS) in order to achieve this strategic goal:
❏ Promote CI concepts to all IEEE members
❏ Demonstrate that CI is central part to all
computational learning systems
❏ Constitute an Industry Advisory Committee
The third point is of particular interest here. An Industry Advisory Committee could represent an extremely
powerful tool to strengthen IEEE CIS
collaboration with Industry. It will help
in designing a strategic plan for the
industry engagements, which include
industry sponsors, demos, panels, special
sessions/issues, and even recruiting
events. The design and implementation
of this Committee will represent a quite
important point in TAC Agenda for the
next two years, a design that will require
a previous thoughtful analysis involving
not only TAC but also ExCom and
Education Committee (at least through
its Industry Liaison Sub Committee).
To this point, I have mentioned actions
that will require potential cooperation
with Education, Conferences and Publications Committees. These and any

other action or technical activity will
always rely on volunteering IEEE CIS
members. Consequently, a key action for
the success of any initiative is to enlarge
the body of volunteers supporting our
activities. To do so, one important point
will be to extend the support of TAC to
regional IEEE-CIS technical activities in
order to catch new people (and particularly young people) to work for the
Society. This promotion at a regional
level will require the cooperation with
Chapters Committee (under Members Committee).
In summary, for the next two years,
we are designing a mixture of different
activities and initiatives. These activities
range from doing business as usual by
contributing to conferences (with
papers, special sessions, panels, tutorials,
workshops, etc.), or to journals (with
papers and special issues), to completely
new initiatives as the creation of an
Industry Advisory Committee. We will
also work to consolidate recently
launched initiatives such as the Technical
Challenge and the Mentoring Program.
All these ideas will be implemented
considering a quite synergistic approach
with other Committees (e.g., Education,
Publications, Conferences and Members), and trying to integrate the largest
and widest possible team of volunteers.
We should favor the integration in this
team of young professionals, people
from industry, and women, continuing
with the Gender Balance Strategy of
IEEE CIS.
I can't end this message without saying thanks to all those who have contributed and who will contribute to the
success of the technical activities of our
Society. Please, consider yourself as a
potential candidate to join the team.
New volunteers will be more than welcome. I am also open to any suggestion
or comment. If you want to be involved
or has any idea or opinion you want to
share with me, please directly contact
me at luis.magdalena@upm.es.

FEBRUARY 2020 | IEEE COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE

IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine - February 2020

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