Newsletter – Vol. 26, October 2015
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Journal in the picture: SIGNAL PROCESSING
EURASIP Awards: Call Submission PhD Theses
In Memoriam
EURASIP Society Awards - 2nd Call for nominations
New Associate Editors for EURASIP-SPRINGER Journals
Open Special Issues
Recent Ph.D. Theses
Job Posts
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Journal in the picture: SIGNAL PROCESSING

SIGNAL PROCESSING Continues to Improve Service to the Community

A publication of the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP)

Signal Processing is pleased to report key metrics that have established the journal as one of the leading publications in its field. Indeed, Signal Processing has had excellent results in recent years due to the dedication of its Editors and Reviewers. The journal has improved its service to the community in these key areas:

  • Higher impact for your research: The Impact Factor has doubled since 2009 to 2.209 in 2014. The ranking has improved and is, for the first time, in the top 20% of the 249 ranked journals in electrical & electronic engineering
  • Fast review: First decisions are taken less than 5 weeks after submission on average and acceptance decisions in 24 weeks on average
  • Increased visibility for your research: The number of article downloads from ScienceDirect ScienceDirect reached over 530,000 during 2014 representing a 15% rise from 2013

  • The Editors and Publisher would like to thank the Board for their efforts in attracting quality papers and controlling their rigorous focus on quality. Moreover, we would like to recognize the reviewers for their efforts which had a direct impact on the quality of articles and speed of review over such a sustained period.

    To view a sample copy and submission guidelines, visit the journal homepage:
    www.elsevier.com/locate/sigpro

    For more information on the journal’s metrics, visit the insights page:
    http://journalinsights.elsevier.com/journals/0165-1684
    contributed by Alle-Jan van der Veen, EURASIP Publications Chair back to top
    EURASIP Awards: Call Submission PhD Theses
    Call for PhD Thesis Submission & Best PhD Thesis Award
    The European Association for Signal Processing (http://www.eurasip.org/), created and maintains a database of PhD manuscripts at http://theses.eurasip.org, which is one of the world's largest in the area of signal processing. The database also keeps tracks of monthly downloads and publishes regularly in its page the 10 top downloaded theses.

    Every year a committee of experts nominated by the EURASIP Board of Directors selects up to three theses related to different areas of signal processing to be awarded ‘Best PhD Thesis’ awards. The selection process is based on the evaluation of the impact of the theses, their subsequent journal and conference publications and related citations received, and on the review reports of independent reviewers as well as on the download and citation statistics.

    In order to select the 2016 best PhD theses, the temporal window of the years 2011 through 2013 is considered. The awards will be presented during the Awards Ceremony at EUSIPCO 2016. Each award consists of a certificate and of a travelling & accommodation reimbursement of 1K Euros for attending the Awards Ceremony.

    If you want to make your PhD thesis available in the EURASIP database, visit the site http://theses.eurasip.org and upload your thesis.
    contributed by Ana Pérez-Neira, EURASIP Awards Chair back to top
    In Memoriam
    Obituary: Alfred Leo Maria Fettweis (1926–2015)

    pict.Fettewiss Abdelhak Zoubir, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

    Professor Alfred Leo Maria Fettweis, one of the pioneers of digital signal processing passed away on August 20, 2015 in Bochum, Germany. Our community has lost a giant who made seminal contributions not only to engineering, but also to science. His ideas were visionary and far ahead of his time.

    Influenced by the work of Wilhelm Cauer and encouraged by Professor Vitold Belevitch, Dr. Fettweis started his scientific career in the area of classical circuit theory. In his thesis, he wrote in French in 1963, Dr. Fettweis developed a new theory on resonant-transfer circuits that led to a completely new type of application of the resonant-transfer principle, namely, the realization of filters built of capacitances and resonant-transfer switches only; a good overview of this new theory appeared in [1].

    Dr. Fettweis later introduced the concept of passivity into the field of digital filtering. With the publication of his seminal article in [2], Fettweis pioneered and paved the way for the most promising field of wave digital filters (WDFs).

    This attracted the interest of respected scientists from all over the world who started to work successfully in this area; Ruhr-Universität Bochum became the world-centre for research in the area of WDFs. More than 50 postgraduate students and scientists from all over the world (among whom were 13 Alexander von Humboldt Fellows) came to Bochum, some stayed for a few months while others stayed for a couple of years, to get acquainted with the research performed at the Communication Engineering Laboratory, headed by Fettweis. I remember very well the EURASIP Short Course “Wave Digital Filters: Theory and Practice,” held in Bochum, 7-9 March 1989. I was then a PhD student sitting in the course. The lectures given by Dr. Fettweis and other expert colleagues were accompanied by hands-on sessions held every afternoon. With an outstanding quality of both the lectures and hands-on sessions, this EURASIP short course became an unforgettable event.

    Beyond the development and improvement of the novel concept of WDFs, Fettweis extended and generalised it to serve as a very powerful tool for the numerical integration of partial differential equations (PDEs). He demonstrated that the strongly nonlinear PDEs encountered in fluid dynamic could be dealt with through WDFs. Numerous papers on the treatment of PDEs by wave digital principles have been published by Fettweis, most of them after he became a Professor Emeritus. Until his death, he continued to work tirelessly on fundamental problems, such as the understanding of the theory of relativity through Kirchhoff theory, and the concepts of passivity and losslessness.

    Professor Alfred Fettweis was not only an out-of-the-ordinary researcher, but he also was an outstanding academic teacher. I took undergraduate classes offered by Dr. Fettweis. It is remarkable how much emphasis and value Dr. Fettweis put on the physical relevance and interpretation of the rigorously derived mathematical results; he emphasised that the concepts of Fourier or Laplace transform should not be blindly applied by students, or their properties used as a recipe, but must be understood. One of Fettweis' quotes that I remember until today and mention it when introducing the important concept of causality to undergraduate students is, “causality is such an important physical property that even relativity theory did not violate it …” There was never a mixing between models and reality in his classes, a great attribute missed sometimes in engineering education.

    A short bio of Dr. Fettweis:

    Professor Alfred Fettweis received his engineering degree (ingénieur civil électricien) and his doctoral degree (doctor en sciences appliquées) from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Leuven), Belgium, in 1951 and 1962, respectively.

    After a successful industry career as a development engineer with the International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation (ITT) in Antwerp, Belgium, he moved to academia where he took up the position of Professor of Theoretical Electricity at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, and moved to the newly established Ruhr-Universität Bochum in 1967 as Professor and Chair of Communication Engineering. Despite many prestigious offers, Fettweis stayed in Bochum until he became Professor Emeritus in 1992. After a short stay as Distinguished Professor at the University of Notre Dame, USA, from 1994 until 1996, he returned to Bochum, where he was actively involved in research and teaching graduate courses. He also supervised PhD students during that time.

    He published extensively in various areas, including circuits and systems, communications, and digital signal processing. His archival work is found in the four languages he mastered, i.e., Dutch, English, French, and German. He also published in the areas of numerical integration, physics, as well as science-related general topics. He held 30 patents.

    With his visionary and seminal research, Fettweis earned the highest international reputation, as witnessed in the numerous prizes and awards, which include “the IEEE Centennial Medal” in 1984, the “VDE Ehrenring” in 1984, the “IEEE CAS Technical Achievement Award” in 1988, the “ITG/VDE Karl-Küpfmüller-Preis” in 1988, the “Basic Research Award of the Eduard-Rhein-Stiftung” in 1993, and the “IEEE Millennium Medal” in 2000. He was the first recipient of the “IEEE CAS Society Vitold Belevitch Award” in 2003, and recipient of the “IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award” in 2008.

    His outstanding scientific achievements have also been recognised through numerous honorary doctorates. He was awarded in 1986, Teknologie Doktor h.c., Linköping, Sweden, in 1988, Docteur Honoris Causa, Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, Belgium, in the same year, Doctor Honoris Causa, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, in 1995, Doctor Honoris Causa, Budapest University of Technology, Hungary, in 2004, Doctor Honoris Causa, Poznan University of Technology, Poland, and in 2011, Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften Ehren halber, Universität Paderborn, Germany. He was a member of multiple academies: the German Academy of Science and Engineering – acatech, the Rheinisch Westphälische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Germany), the Academia Europaea (London), and the Academica Scientiarum et Artium Europaea (Salzburg/Vienna). He was a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of EURASIP, ITG of VDE, Sigma Xi, Eta Kappa Nu, SITEL, and GAMM.

    His longtime colleague and friend, Dr. Joos Vandewalle, provided an in-depth summary of Professor Fettweis’ professional life:
    http://ieee-cas.org/dr-alfred-fettweis

    He wrote about Fettweis, “His love for science, art and people, and deep respect for the art of teaching and worldwide involvement in the professional society are reflected in his many international recognitions and social contributions. He leaves us with a lasting legacy.”

    Sankar Basu, Anton Kummert, and Klaus Meerkötter also wrote an Obituary that appeared in the October 2015 issue of the Springer Journal, Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing
    DOI 10.1007/s11045-015-0360-5

    They wrote: “Today, we are living in a digital world of smart phones, tablet PCs, compressed video and audio files that are devices and techniques which appear to be an afterthought for the younger generation. All of these developments are based on advances in digital signal processing going back at least 50 years ago, in which the first steps had indeed been deeply influenced by Alfred Fettweis.”

    An oral history of Alfred Fettweis conducted on 24 April 1997 by Frederik Nebeker for the Centre for the History of Electrical Engineering of the IEEE can be found in
    http://ethw.org/Oral-History:Alfred_Fettweis

    We will remember Prof. Alfred Fettweis as a great scholar and academic teacher, but also as a humble and a congenial person.

    Professor Fettweis is survived by his wife, 5 children, and 16 grandchildren.

    [1] A. Fettweis, Theory of Resonant-Transfer Circuits, in “Network and Switching Theory, ” Giuseppe Biorci (Ed.), Academic Press in 1968.

    [2], A. Fettweis, Digital Filters Related to Classical Filter Networks, AEÜ International Journal of Electronics and Communications, vol. 25, pp. 79-89, 1971 (also available in Digital Signal Processing Committee, IEEE ASSP Society, Selected Papers in Digital Signal Processing, II (IEEE Press Selected Reprint Series, 1976)).

    Acknowledgement: I wish to thank Prof. Klaus Meerkötter for his invaluable support.
    contributed by Abdelhak Zoubir, EURASIP Treasurer back to top
    EURASIP Society Awards - 2nd Call for nominations
    Each year, EURASIP recognizes technical and professional achievements through its celebrated EURASIP Awards Program. As part of the organization’s overall mission to advance signal processing as a science and a profession, EURASIP’s Board of Directors annually evaluates the contributions of candidates for various awards that span a spectrum of professional and technological accomplishments.

    EURASIP Members are invited to nominate candidates for EURASIP Society Awards that fall into the following categories:

  • Meritorious Service Award
  • Group Technical Achievement Award
  • Technical Achievement Award
  • Early Career Award
  • Athanasios Papoulis Award

  • For additional information on the scope and criteria for these awards, please visit the EURASIP website at: www.eurasip.org. The website also gives details of the nomination process and copies of the nomination forms can be downloaded. A listing of previous award recipients with their award citations is also available on the EURASIP Awards webpage.
    Please submit nominations to the EURASIP Awards chair, Ana Pérez-Neira, by e-mail. The deadline for nominations is 31st December 2015.

    We encourage you to share this information with your colleagues and peers.
    contributed by Ana Pérez-Neira, EURASIP Awards Chair back to top
    New Associate Editors for EURASIP-Springer Journals
    EURASIP maintains a portfolio of seven Open Access journals published by SpringerOpen, and can only do so thanks to the excellent management by the seven Editors-in-Chief and the strong commitment of over 300 Associate Editors. We are therefore delighted to announce the appointment of 20 new Associate Editors for the EURASIP journals published by SpringerOpen.
    EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing Affiliation
    Eva Lagunas University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
    Ali Cafer Gurbuz TOBB University of Economics and Technology (Turkey)
    Paolo Braca NATO Science & Technology Organization, Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (Italy)
    Frederic Pascal Ecole Centrale de Marseille (France)
    Alban Goupil Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France)
    Yves Louet CentraleSupélec - Campus de Rennes (France)
    Danilo Orlando University Cusano (Italy)
    EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking Affiliation
    Roman Maršálek Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic)
    Stefan Schwarz Technische Universität Wien (Austria)
    EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing Affiliation
    Éric Granger École de technologie supérieure (Canada)
    Chiou-Ting Candy Hsu National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan)
    Defeng Wang The Chinese University of Hong Kong (China)
    contributed by Alle-Jan van der Veen, EURASIP Publications Chair back to top
    Open Special Issues of EURASIP Journals
    Signal Processing: Image Communication Deadline
    Medical Image Communication, Computing and Security
    Jan. 31, 2016
    Aesthetically-Aware Image and Video Analysis
    Feb. 1, 2016
    EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing Deadline
    Recent Advances on Estimation and Filtering in Networked Dynamic Systems Feb. 29, 2016
    EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking Deadline
    Big Data Analytics for Cyber-Physical Systems Dec. 30, 2015
    EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems Deadline
    Advances in RFID and near field communications in embedded systems Dec. 31, 2015
    Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems Jan. 31, 2016
    Embedded Systems for Pervasive Computing Feb. 10, 2016
    EURASIP Journal on Information Security Deadline
    Security Trends in Mobile Cloud Computing, Web and Social Networking Dec. 30, 2015
    contributed by Toon van Waterschoot, EURASIP Newsletter Editor back to top
    Recently submitted Ph.D. Theses in EURASIP Library
    Author Title & Link University Supervisors Publication Year
    Dowell, Jethro Spatio-temporal Prediction of Wind Fields (2015) University of Strathclyde Stephan Weiss, David Infield 2015
    Ballal, Tarig AOA-based Ultrasonic 3-D Location for Ubiquitous Computing University College Dublin Chris Bleakley 2015
    Bruylants, Tim Advanced Coding Technologies For Medical and Holographic Imaging: Algorithms, Implementations and Standardization Vrije Universiteit Brussel Peter Schelkens, Adrian Munteanu 2015
    contributed by Aggelos Pikrakis, EURASIP Web Services Coordinator back to top
    Job Posts
    EURASIP encourages employers to post open research positions in Signal Processing on the EURASIP Job Site.
    Open positions will be continuously accessible online and will be advertised monthly in the EURASIP Newsletter.
    Open Positions Institution Location Closing Date
    PhD scholarship on signal processing theory and methods Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro - State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Nov. 25, 2015
    ELEKTRONIK INGENIEUR (M/W) HARD- UND FIRMWARE NDT Global GmbH & Co. KG Stutensee, Germany Dec. 31, 2015
    ELECTRONIC ENGINEER FPGA AND FIRMWARE NDT Global GmbH & Co. KG Stutensee, Germany Dec. 31, 2015
    ELEKTRONIK INGENIEUR (M/W) HARDWARE NDT Global GmbH & Co. KG Stutensee, Germany Dec. 31, 2015
    Post-Doctorate Researcher Technion Israel Jan. 1, 2016
    Post-Doctorate Researcher: Multivariate Image Labeling Laboratoire de Physique ENSL France Mar. 1, 2016
    contributed by Aggelos Pikrakis, EURASIP Web Services Coordinator back to top
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