Thanos Stouraitis
Dear Members of IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Society,
It has been an exciting year for me. Reflecting on the many CASS activities and initiatives we undertook, I believe I express the feelings of all the inspiring colleagues currently serving on the CASS governing bodies, when I say that we have been able to further increase the value of the CASS membership and provide all of us with an enhanced sense of community.
Through the many dedicated CASS volunteers who chair our chapters around the world, run our technical committees, edit our journals, and organize our conferences, workshops, summer schools, student competitions, and various other outreach initiatives, we try to serve the mission of CASS, that is to foster our members, across the many disciplines represented in CASS, to address some of humanity’s grand challenges, such as those identified by the American National Academy of Engineering, by conceiving and pioneering solutions to fundamental and applied problems in circuits and systems.
The current state of CASS, as it is going to be reflected in an upcoming review by IEEE, is good, as measured by a number of metrics. After several years of continuing decline, the number of members during the last two years has been stabilized at roughly 10,000. Our members have increased their activities and enhanced their quality. Our technical committees work hard to continuously align themselves with the CASS vision (http://ieee-cas.org/) that the grand engineering challenges can only be addressed in an inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary manner and that CASS’ unique and profound expertise in circuits, systems, signals, modeling, analysis, and design can have a decisive impact on a list of important issues such as sustainable energy, bio-health, green information technology, nano-technology, and scalable information technology systems.
We sponsor more and more conferences (currently about 45), which continue to improve their quality, their impact on technology and society, and their attendance figures. Our journals and magazines are constantly improving on all performance indexes and they increase their reputation and stature in the fields. The number of society chapters around the world has increased to about 100. Our regional activities are now overseen and handled in a uniform manner by our Vice President for Regional and Membership Activities and the BoG members that serve in the corresponding division. We believe that, among other benefits, this new form of governance will allow for those best practices that exist at a local level to inoculate most other chapters and regions. Our events that target the promotion of increased participation of women and graduates of the last decade (GOLD) in our activities seem to be well attended. A question that requires more attention remains on how to transform this attendance into real results. Our budgets continue to show surpluses which are utilized to fund activities proposed and undertaken by a large portion of our membership. We have started an industry task force, which is already hard at work to examine ways to involve our members that work in the industry (currently more than 50% of the total membership) into our daily activities. The international dimension of membership is increasing. The membership currently residing in non-north American regions is now at about 50 percent of our total membership.
We continue to attract the best people to serve on our Board of Governors and Executive Committee. I would like to express my gratitude for the outgoing members of the BoG as well as our VP-Publications Enrico Macii, for the wonderful job they did during their term, and to welcome on board the five newly elected members of the BoG, to serve for the next three years, Pamela Abshire, Elena Blokhina, Chang Wen Chen, Mohamad Sawan, and Yoko Uwate, as well as our new VP-Publications, Yong Lian.
Continuing into the second year of serving as president, I cannot help but appreciate the foresight of my predecessors to institute a two-year presidency for CASS. For the first time in CASS history, the two-year presidency will allow for a chance to serve the Society with enhanced continuity. It will provide better effectiveness at the leadership level in working with the IEEE and other Societies. I look forward to continue working together with my predecessor Mani Soma as well as with our newly elected and most capable President Elect, Vojin Oklobdzija, and all our ExCom and BoG members to provide a more efficient infrastructure, respond better and faster to your needs, and expand our horizons both in technologies and in services.
On behalf of our Society’s ExCom and BoG, I convey a pledge to do our best to provide enhanced value for the membership and make sure we are running our friendly society in an efficient and financially responsible manner. As we continue to improve our services, I invite you all to work with us for the growth and prosperity of the CAS Society.
I wish you and your families a happy, healthy, and creative New Year.
Thanos Stouraitis
Past Messages
Past President’s Message – 2011
President’s Message – 2011
Quarterly Message – 2010
President’s Message – 2008
President’s Message – 2007: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Annual Report
