IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2012 - 98

*
their attention and interest. Ph.D. students, undergraduates,
and younger children are increasingly involved in the activities with different robotics initiatives considering their
preparation and objectives.
I'm working with a group of volunteers to improve the
exchange of ideas, networking, inspiring, educating, keeping
members active, and to recruit new students at all levels, to
increase the visibility of students inside the Society and outside. Together, with the support of senior researchers and professors, the SAC is working to keep students' interests
continuously stimulated. The Society is an exclusive resource
for opportunities in careers and knowledge, to meet and interact with the leaders of the academia and industry fields, and to
learn about new educational and career opportunities and
even financial support.
The SAC will keep working hard for a continuous dissemination of news, international events, surveys on student activities'
usefulness, jobs, or stages placement opportunities, and
engagement in research groups, with highly integrated information. So, stay tuned!

Joining the Society represents a unique opportunity to those
students who want to rise up and who are motivated to prepare for a stronger, powerful, and absolutely unique career (full
of initiatives, chances, and in harmony with their projects,
enhancing their own value). Choose your career, choose the
special opportunities you may find in your daily life, choose
your job, choose to intensively live your passions, and choose
the way to make your dreams come true. The SAC is always
ready to recruit all fervent, positive, revolutionary inventors to
share these dreams, inspire, and encourage innovative ideas to
work together for the new generation of robotics and automation leaders.
Thank you all, again, for giving me the opportunity to share
this experience with you. Feel free to contact me at any time. I
hope to see many of you joining our activities and the Society;
open your mind and heart, use your eyes and your dreams to
look far away, "be the change that you wish to see in the world."
Laura Margheri
IEEE RAS SAC Chair
RAS AdCom Student Member

The RAS Student Reviewer Program-Updates
The Student Reviewer Program (SRP)
was initiated by the SAC a year ago
with the aim to introduce students to
the reviewing process step by step in a
controlled and supervised way. We
have believed from the beginning that
improving reading and writing
* skills will greatly
Our Facebook and
benefit the Society: editors and
Google groups are
writers benefit
open to daily
from good reviews,
maintaining the
discussions,
quality of their
communications, and
journal or conference, and stuproposals.
will learn
* dents
from others' mistakes. Eventually,
everyone will write better papers,
setting new standards. Within SRP,
some specific goals have been formulated and are as follows:

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2012.2190358
Date of publication: 26 March 2012

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

collect and create instructive material that students can refer to for
help in the reviewing process
l organize a training and supervision
process to help students become
better reviewers
l create a community of talented and
devoted students
l provide a database with experienced and motivated students that
editorial boards can refer to
l raise awareness about this program
in the community.
In this IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine issue, you can read
two articles within the "Reviewing
Process" series: one on assessing
scientific contribution and another
on validating results. It is important
to note that while the same skills
apply to almost all kinds of writing,
the SRP primarily focuses on highquality scientific publications: original research papers and articles sent
to the flagship conferences and to the
transactions. (The rejuvenated IEEE
Robotics & Automation Magazine is
seeking slightly different types of
l

MARCH 2012

contributions, such as surveys, tutorials, and reviews.)
The first year of SRP closed with
a successful pilot round, where 13 RAS
student volunteers were involved
in the reviewing procedure of the
upcoming ICRA 2012 conference,
under the guidance of Conference
Editorial Board EIC Prof. Lynne
Parker (University of Tennessee).
Students were able to consult senior
grad students one by one about their
reviews in the first step, and the
results were submitted to the relevant
associate editors (AEs). The editor
and AEs discussed these, along with
other reviews, and almost all of them
were accepted and transferred to the
authors. The conclusion they made
was that the students tend to be too
hard on others when it comes to
grading. Successful participants can
now advance in the SRP.
If you are interested, SRP plans to
continue closely collaborating with
the upcoming RAS conferences. Learn
more about the program at http://
sites.ieee.org/ras-srp/.

http://http:// http://sites.ieee.org/ras-srp/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2012