President's Message

This is the first EURASIP Newsletter after EUSIPCO-2011, which was held in Barcelona, Spain. The conference was superbly organized by Ana I. Pérez-Neira (General Chair) and Miguel A. Lagunas (Honorary Chair). I would like to warmly thank and congratulate Ana and Miguel as well as all their co-workers for making this year's EUSIPCO so successful and memorable, and so for setting such a high standard for future EUSIPCO's. An extensive EUSIPCO-2011 report, as provided by Ana, is included in this newsletter.

In the meantime, preparations for future EUSIPCO's are being made:

For EUSIPCO-2012, to be held at Bucharest, the paper and special session submission process has already been started. A call for papers is included again further up in this newsletter.

For EUSIPO-2013, the location has now firmly been decided. EUSIPCO-2013 will be held at Marrakech, Morocco, and organized by Mounir Ghogho. For the first time EUSIPCO will move outside Europe. EURASIP intends to initiate liaison activities in North-Africa, and so having a EUSIPCO in Morocco will be very appropriate and instrumental in making this a successful  initiative. A EUSIPCO-2013 announcement already provided by Mounir is also included further up in this newsletter.

For EUSIPCO-2014 and EUSIPCO-2015, the BoD is currently negotiating with potential local organizers. As soon as firm decisions are made, these will be communicated.  For EUSIPCO's after 2015, the BoD welcomes any proposals. Those interested in holding a EUSIPCO are invited to contact EURASIP BoD member and event coordinator Abdelhak Zoubir.

In this newsletter, EURASIP BoD member Aggelos Pikrakis also reports on a recent update of the EURASIP Ph.D Library.  This Ph.D Library is presently the most extensive collection of doctoral dissertations in the broad area of signal processing, with currently over 400 entries, and is freely accessible to everybody (theses.eurasip.org). Due the success of the Ph.D Library (number of uploads as well as downloads), a major update of the website was deemed necessary.  Therefore, the Ph.D Library website has been revamped, and its search facilities have been improved significantly. We again invite Ph.D authors and supervisers to submit their thesis documents, in order to make these more widely available. From the Ph.D Library, each year a thesis is also selected to receive the EURASIP Ph.D Thesis Award.

This very newsletter should be memorable as it will be the last printed newsletter distributed to the EURASIP membership. For years, the EURASIP BoD has been contemplating switching to electronic distribution. It was felt that, while all other associations had already stopped printing their newsletters, being the one and only association left with a printed newsletter could be something special and make the newsletter stand out.  So but now the time has come to finally surrender. In the end, it is certainly true that a printed newsletter offers a slow and yet expensive means of communication. Starting January 1st 2012, EURASIP will distribute compact bi-weekly electronic alerts. The content will be collected and archived in the EURASIP website, which will then look very much like the familiar quarterly newsletter. We do hope that our membership will find this a more sustainable and efficient means of communication.

Marc Moonen

EURASIP President