Systems, Man & Cybernetics - July 2017 - 5

President's Message

by Dimitar Filev

his year, the IEEE Systems,
Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMCS) went through a
regular IEEE review of our five-year
activities (2012-2017). The material
we presented for review included
over 50 pages of detail of every
main function of the Board of Governors (BoG)-technical activities,
membership, publications, conferences, finance, and governance,
among others. Browsing through the
response report of the IEEE Society
Review Committee we just received,
I couldn't be more pleased by the
extremely positive feedback and
the great recognition of the SMCS'
efforts to develop, grow, and deliver
the highest quality in every aspect of
our activities to our members over
the years.
Whether it be Society organized
and sponsored conferences and meetings, technical committees, publications, or new initiatives, there is no
doubt regarding our significant impact
on the SMC community. Our efforts
to improve the quality and effectiveness of Society operations and activities have either remained strong or
grown stronger. I am very proud that
the BoG and the Executive Committee
(ExCom) continue to hold themselves
to high standards of leadership and deliver more value to our members.
In February, we had our traditional
spring ExCom and new BoG member
orientation meeting. During the twoday session, we reviewed the status of
all major activities, discussed our plans,
and developed individual assignments
for all BoG members. Some of the discussion topics included the problem
with backlogs of our transactions, the
activities of the technical committees,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSMC.2017.2701423
Date of publication: 19 July 2017

Progress and
Preparation

better use of social media for communication with membership, identifying
emerging technical areas, and positioning the Society to respond to new
trends and technology challenges.
The newly elected BoG members, G.
Eigner, K. Panetta, E. Herrera-Viedma,
C.-C. Tsai, and F.-Y. Wang, and the new
chair of the Industry Liaison Committee, Liu Qiao, had the opportunity to
introduce themselves and share their
interests, visions, and recommendations to the ExCom. Overall, this
event was a great opportunity to align
and strengthen the SMCS leadership
team and to prepare for the rest of 2017.
In April, we welcomed the newly
appointed editor-in-chief (EiC) of
IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems (T-CSS), Fei-Yue
Wang. Fei-Yue has had a very successful tenure as the EiC of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation
Systems, and he brings plenty of experience, enthusiasm, and new ideas
to T-CSS. We wish him great success.
We highly appreciate the wisdom, experience, and hard work of the outgoing founding editor of T-CSS, George
Cybenko, and we are looking forward
to his continuous support and participation in SMC activities.
We are delighted by the progress in
the preparation and enthusiastic support for our flagship annual conference
in Banff, Canada, 5-8 October 2017. This
year the conference program will continue to cover the main technical fields

Ju ly 2017

of the Society-systems science and
engineering, human-machine systems,
and cybernetics-and will also include
the traditional Brain-Machine Interface
Workshop and the second edition of the
Brain-Machine Hackathon. New satellite conference events are the industrial
track focusing on industrial applications and the Founders' Forum, a panel
including the pioneers of the SMCS,
Thomas Sheridan, William Rouse,
James Tien, and Chip White.
We should also mention the third
IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics, which was held 21-23 June,
in Exter, United Kingdom, and promoted the newly established tradition of
regular biennial satellite conferences
in the three main areas of the Society.
We are looking for your active support
and participation in these events and
in the several dozen additional conferences and meetings that are financially
or technically sponsored by the SMCS.
The second half of the year is when
we review the results of our work and
elect new leaders of our Society. We
would like to open the Society to new
volunteers, and I urge you to actively participate in the process of nominations
and elections at any level-technical
committees, editorial boards, BoG,
ExCom. Let's take this opportunity to
re-energize our society with enthusiastic
new volunteers who are ready to serve
and contribute to our membership!

IEEE SYSTEMS, MAN, & CYBERNETICS MAGAZINE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Systems, Man & Cybernetics - July 2017