IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2011 - 6

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

School and the Distinguished Lecturer Program
By Kazuhiro Kosuge

he 2011 IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA) was held
9-13 May in Shanghai, China.
I am sure that many people attended
and enjoyed the conference and the
city of Shanghai. This conference attracted the largest number of paper
submissions and attendees in ICRA
history. I thank all of the conference
organizers, especially Prof. Zexiang
Li, general chair; Prof. Yuan Zheng,
program chair, and Prof. Antonio Bicchi, editor-in-chief of the Conference
Editorial Board of our Society, for
their wonderful work on this recordbreaking conference.
After the conference, an Administrative Committee (AdCom) meeting was
held. During the AdCom meeting, the
vice presidents-elect who will work with
our President-Elect Prof. David Orin
from 2012 to 2013 have been elected,
and several proposals related to our
future activities have been approved. I
would like to congratulate those who
have been elected as vice presidents-elect.
In the following, I would like to
introduce two programs that have been
approved: school and the Distinguished
Lecturer Program.
Schools
Based on our experience of the IEEE
Robotics and Automation Society (RAS)/
International Foundation of Robotics
Research (IFRR) School of Robotics Science, we will start new schools. Starting
in 2012, we will commence three schools
every year, one being fully sponsored
and the other two cosponsored by our
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2011.942479
Date of publication: 13 September 2011

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

Introduction to RAS at Shenyang Institute of Automation, China.

Society. Our Society will provide the
necessary funds up to US$40,000 for
the fully sponsored school and up to
US$20,000 for the cosponsored schools,
respectively. Each school is supposed to
be held in a different region, and the fully
sponsored one will be rotated around the
world. For both types of schools, the call
for proposals will be made later. More
details are available in the "Education"
column by Hollerbach et al.
New Distinguished
Lecturer Program
The new Distinguished Lecturer Program
will commence from 2012. Its aim is to
promote the research areas of the RAS as
identified by its technical committees.
There are two ways in which the distinguished lecturer requests can be made.
1) A chapter can make a request for a
distinguished lecturer on a particular technical topic.
2) A technical committee can identify
one of its members to speak at a
particular event or location to promote its activities.
The cost of a distinguished lecturer's
travel will be supported, up to US$3,000.
There is no requirement for matching the
funds for the host Chapter travel. More

SEPTEMBER 2011

details are included in the "Society News"
column of this issue.
The schools and the Distinguished
Lecturer Program will be handled by
both the Member Activities Board and
the Technical Activities Board. I would
like to thank Prof. Stefano Stramigioli,
vice president (VP) of the Member
Activities Board, and Prof. John Hollerbach, VP of the Technical Activities
Board, for their leadership in implementing these new systems.
After ICRA 2011, several members
of RAS Executive Committee (ExCom)
visited several places in China, which
included Nanjing, Jinan, Wuhan, Shenyang, and Tianjin, to introduce our
Society activities. This is a part of our
pilot program, the Distinguished Ambassador Program (DAP). The aim of
DAP is to reach out to areas where
RAS has not been well recognized.
We received good feedback and will
continue this activity in the future. I
would like to thank all of the universities/institutes for accepting and supporting these activities. The DAP is
held in conjunction with conferences
sponsored/cosponsored by our Society.
If you are interested in this program,
please let us know.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2011