ISCAS Resources

ISCAS Information Structure

ISCAS Location Cycle

In order to ensure regional spread of the ISCAS event, CASS has adopted a location cycle as follows:

  • 2014, Melbourne, Australia
  • 2015. Lisbon, Portugal
  • 2016 Montreal, Canada
  • 2017 Baltimore, USA
  • 2018 OPEN
  • 2019 Asia (R-10)
  • 2020 OPEN
  • 2021 Europe (R-8)
  • 2022 OPEN

ISCAS Selection Procedure

The venue for ISCAS four (4) years ahead is decided during the ISCAS Steering Committee meeting, normally on Saturday before ISCAS. The ISCAS Steering Committee has the following members:

  • VP Conferences
  • Conference Division BoG members
  • General Chair of ISCAS 2 years back
  • General chair of ISCAS 1 year back
  • TPC Chair of ISCAS 1 year back
  • General Chair of current ISCAS
  • TPC Chair of current ISCAS
  • General Chair of ISCAS 1 year ahead
  • TPC Chair of ISCAS 1 year ahead
  • General Chair of ISCAS 2 years ahead

A Call for ISCAS proposals is normally distributed in February-March with a deadline one month before the ISCAS decision is made. All bidders must comply with requirements listed below, but are free to provide additional features for an improved experience. Normally 30 minutes are given for each bid to present and respond to questions from the Steering Committee.


ISCAS Requirements

  1. Venue and facilities

    1. Present the location and international accessibility of the ISCAS venue
    2. Give accurate dates for ISCAS, which is a four day event starting with a tutorial/CAS-FEST day on Sunday followed by 3 days of technical sessions. ISCAS should take place during the last part of May.
    3. Describe the conference venue, which must provide meeting space and facilities for the following:
      1. plenary sessions and approximately 10-14 parallel technical lecture sessions
      2. speaker preparation
      3. poster sessions, demo sessions, confession sessions, panel sessions, and other similar non-lecture sessions
      4. ISCAS special events (see section 5 below)
      5. CASS Technical Committee (TC) meetings. The CAS society is organized in approximately 15 TCs, which have their annual meeting during ISCAS.
      6. A variety of additional committee meetings associated with ISCAS, for example, meetings of future year ISCAS Organising Committees (ISCAS 1, 2 & 3 years ahead). Experience has shown that these additional meetings require at least 7 meeting rooms to be available during breaks (breakfast, lunch, afternoon).
      7. Pre-conference meeting rooms for CAS society Executive Committee and Board of Governors meetings should be planned with CASS staff.
    4. Present a suitable venue for the Awards Banquet to take place on the third day (Tuesday). Award ceremonies during the banquet require a suitable stage with AV equipment.
    5. Hotel room capacity must be adequate for an anticipated conference attendance of well over 1000 participants. Discount rooms for students should be provided (possibly at an alternative hotel close by).
    6. Provide an analysis of the impact of ISCAS location in the country and region (this is mandatory).
  2. Organization
    1. The ISCAS organizing committee must be set up with:
      • general chair
      • technical program chair
      • finance chair
      • publications chair
      • local arrangements chair
      • tutorial chair
      • special session chair
      • additional members according to local requirements

      It is common for some of these positions to be jointly held (e.g. Co-General Chair, Co-Technical Program Chair). Involving CAS members with previous ISCAS experience is recommended. Normally not more than two persons should co-chair each position and honorary committee members are not allowed.

    2. Two years in advance of each conference year, based on recommendations by the ISCAS Steering Committee, the CASS President assigns 3 active and voting members of the ISCAS Organizing Committee:
      • TPC co-chair
      • invited session co-chair
      • tutorial co-chair

      All members appointed by the CASS president are working members and must be involved in their assigned duties. The TPC co-chair will participate in the technical program committee meeting finalizing the technical program. Travelling expenses must be covered by the organizers.

    3. Involvement of the local CASS / engineering / educational / industrial community in ISCAS is important and must be emphasized. Supporting letters indicating technical interest / cooperation from local industry and/or pledged financial support is recommended.
  3. Administrative requirements
    1. ISCAS is 100% financially sponsored conference by the CAS Society.
    2. The ISCAS organizing committee is responsible for budget with proposed pre-registration and on-site fees for members / non-members / students.
    3. The ISCAS organizing committee must engage a professional conference organising company to assist with the ISCAS organization, including the closing of the conference.
    4. The budget should have a discount registration fee for CAS-members and a further reduction in registration fee for students.
    5. The registration (including student registration) should give access to all technical sessions as well as admission to the conference lunches and banquet.
    6. Additional fees may be charged for tutorials, special events (see below) and additional social events.
    7. Use of the ePapers web-based paper submission system is mandatory for ISCAS, to maintain the quality of the process for paper submission handling and technical session organization. CAS has a long-term agreement with the ePapers company. The cost of this use must be included in the ISCAS budget based on direct negotiations with the provider.
    8. The budget should show a surplus of 20 percent and comply with the general IEEE requirements.
    9. According to CAS policies $15k student travelling grants should be included in the ISCAS budget.
    10. The General Chair is responsible for
      1. closing the conference according to IEEE regulations and,
      2. submiting a written conference report to CASS no later than six (6) months after the conference

        3. .

  4. Technical program requirements
    1. Acceptance rate target: a maximum of 45%. The CAS appointed TPC co-chair is responsible for taking care of this requirement.
    2. ISCAS Technical Program Committee Chairs have the right to augment the track chair team assigned by the technical committees with volunteers of their choice, if they wish to do so.
    3. ISCAS “no shows” should be reported to IEEE, after verification with the authors and taking into consideration any extenuating circumstances. This policy of removal of no-shows from IEEE Xplore should be made known by the ISCAS TPC to the authors at the time of paper acceptance. The authors must be notified before paper submission that “no-show” papers submitted to ISCAS are still under IEEE copyright and cannot be resubmitted without IEEE permission to other conferences.
    4. The tracks can be reformed so that, wherever appropriate, two or more TCs correspond to one track.
    5. The TPC may accept an unlimited number of papers from each author.
    6. The TPC may limit the number of papers per one full registration to four (4).
    7. The TPC may keep the number of paper pages at four (4), but be flexible with requests for more pages.
    8. Papers of authors not paying registration fees should be removed from the ISCAS program. Authors should be informed in advance of this policy.
  5. Special Events During ISCAS

    In order to increase technical quality and make program interesting, special events has been adopted over the years. In addition to the following list, please check with CAS society staff or CAS VP conferences about additional events scheduled for ISCAS.

    1. CAS Forum on Emerging and Selected Topics — CAS-FEST

      1. CAS-FEST is included in ISCAS as a part of the tutorial program similar to a full-day tutorial session (or master-class).
      2. The general chair(s) of ISCAS is(are) also general chair(s) of CAS-FEST together with CASS VP Conferences.
      3. The technical content of CAS-FEST is managed by the CAS-FEST Technical Program Chair(s), appointed by the CAS-FEST steering committee. The technical committee will have full responsibility for the technical content and is expected to provide high-quality presentations attracting attendees.
      4. ISCAS organizers are responsible for all organizational aspects of CAS-FEST including location, registration, local arrangements, and budgetitems as required in the regular ISCAS budget. There are no proceedings to be taken care of.
      5. Registration fees should at least cover all costs and may even provide a surplus to the ISCAS budget with increasing popularity. ISCAS organizers are free to use a separate registration fee for CAS-FEST attendees.
      6. The technical committee is expected to organize CAS-FEST without any additional expenses. However, CASS is prepared to support, if needed, special efforts making CAS-FEST more attractive for attendees (for example, webcast). The CAS-FEST Chair(s) in collaboration with the CAS-FEST Technical Program Chair(s) should apply for such funding though the VP Conferences.
      7. The high quality of CAS-FEST is strengthened by CAS-FEST papers been published in the JETCAS journal by guest editors appointed by the CAS-FEST steering committee.
    2. Women in CAS — WiCAS
      1. To encourage women to take up and keep CAS membership, a special event is organized free of charge to attendees, preferably on Monday afternoon/night, after regular technical sessions.
      2. The Wi-CAS ad-hoc committee is responsible for the program.
      3. A suitable venue for at least 100 attendees must be provided by ISCAS organizers.
      4. The cost of this event to date has been met directly from the CAS Society budget.
      5. Food and drinks are provided at the event. Arrangements for this need to be made in collaboration with the WiCAS representative.
    3. IEEE Graduates of the Last Decade – GOLD
      1. A GOLD event takes place during ISCAS to encourage younger people to be active in the CAS society,
      2. The GOLD ad-hoc committee is responsible for the program,
      3. The ISCAS organizers will provide reasonable support in collaboration with the GOLD ad-hoc committee.

ISCAS Guidelines

In the following, recommendations and best-practice actions and procedures are proposed, based on years of ISCAS organizer experience.


ISCAS Call for proposals

  1. It is a good practice to have a unifying theme for the ISCAS event. Try to find something interesting and perhaps something related to local activities/industry.
  2. Make special efforts to attract high profile invited speakers for plenary sessions and remember to start this process early.
  3. Make early efforts involving local industry/research institutes/related institutions.
  4. ISCAS bids are awarded 4 years before the conference is actually held. It is best to engage the PCO (Professional Conference Organizer) to help prepare the bid, that is, greater than 4 years out from the conference. While high-profile speaker attraction, attracting industry involvement, and building activity in the local CASS community should start 2-3 years out, the majority of the real work ramps up quickly from a little over one year before ISCAS takes place.



ISCAS preparation phase
For ISCAS TPCs an excel-file is inherited

  1. ISCAS TPC EXCEL-file containing

    1. Subtracks with titles.
      These tracks are a very important tool making authors sort their submissions according to suitable topics. Substantial work is buried here avoiding ambiguities while keeping tracks balanced. The different tracks reflect mostly the technical committee structure of CAS, while sub-tracks are named in collaboration with TC chairs. There are also politics involved here since we often are merging technical committees to obtain reasonably sized tracks.
    2. Timeline
      Having a good timeline is very important and our web-provider (ePapers) are trained in these matters. Do not make your schedule too tight!
    3. Track chairs
      Track chairs are usually technical committee chairs or some replacements they nominate. Some tracks have many submissions and more than one track chair is assigned.
    4. Review Committee members
      The Review Committee is formed by each track chair and, usually, additional co-chairs are selected from members of the associated technical committee. In this way we maintain competent reviewers. Care must be taken to avoid conflicts-of-interest.
    5. Conference submission statistics
      Past statistics may give good indications of expected paper submissions.
    6. TC chairs
      Are responsible for nominating track chairs
    7. Acceptance rate sorted by track
      Try to keep the same acceptance rate across tracks
    8. Backup papers
      Backup papers may be used for filling in paper slots of late withdrawn papers.
    9. Schedule
      Prepare a draft for the overall conference plan in cooperation with the manager of ISCAS paper handling system.
    10. Oral and poster presentation schedule (from ePapers)
      During final program preparation work out the detailed technical program using ePapers support. Try to fill all sessions and work on good session titles.
    11. Blacklist of non-performing RCMs/chairs
      Unfortunately we have some non-performing members tending to disrupt the review process severely. This list is confidential and transferred between TPCs (excel-file).
  1. The Best Student Papers at ISCAS

    will be given during the ISCAS award ceremony, based on:

    • Eligibility: Any principal author of a paper submitted to ISCAS, who is a full- or part-time Undergraduate, Master’s, or Ph.D. Student and chooses to participate in the “Student Paper Contest.” Of course, any papers co-authored by members of the Selection Committee (see following) are excluded.
    • Selection Procedure: Papers which fall in the above category will be ranked during the review process and the authors of the 10 best papers will be invited to present a poster, in addition to an oral presentation.
    1. A Best Student Paper Selection Committee (BSPSC) is installed, comprising at least one TPC Chair and 3 other Track Chairs (preferably taken from the 3 largest tracks at ISCAS in order to have enough coverage of the topics of interest to the CAS community). Other possible members of the BSPSC can be members of the technical program committee, including the general chair(s).
    2. Of all accepted papers at ISCAS for which the authors have indicated that they wish to participate in the student contest, 15 to 20 papers are selected by means of the review scores received (by means of an algorithm) from the paper review process.
    3. These 15 to 20 papers are reviewed by at least 3 members of the BSPSC and the best 10 papers are selected, being the ones that are nominated for the Best Student Paper Award.
    4. The authors of these 10 nominated papers are informed and one of the authors, who must be a student, is invited to present the paper during a special closed poster session. Note: this is complementary to the regular poster or oral presentation.
    5. This closed poster session is scheduled on the first day of the conference, e.g., during the lunch break, as this provides sufficient time to allow temporary certificates to be printed and handed over during the Banquet and Awards Ceremony on the Tuesday of the conference.
    6. During the poster session, the students are visited by the BSPSC and present their poster (during 3 minutes) and answer questions of the various committee members (again during just 3 minutes)
    7. The three winners of the Best Student Paper Award will be selected immediately after the poster session by the BSPSC.
    8. The winners will be made known to the CASS Executive Director, CASS Awards Chair and the ISCAS General Chair(s).
    9. The winners will be announced during the Banquet/Awards Ceremony or during the separate CASS Awards Ceremony (if not coinciding with the Banquet). A temporary certificate will be presented to each winner.
    10. Checks of $500 USD and an Official Certificate will be issued to the winners after the conference
  1. Selection of Best Papers at ISCAS for TCAS-1 special ISCAS issue
    Note: the selection is the ultimate responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief and the Guest Editors. The points below are suggestions.

    1. The Editor-in-Chief appoints Guest Editors for the Special Issue. It is recommended to appoint his/her Deputy Editor-in-Chief and the Technical Program Chairs of ISCAS as Guest Editors. If more coverage of the field of interest of TCAS-I is needed, additional Guest Editors can be selected among the ISCAS Track Chairs and/or TCAS-I Associate Editors. Note: as the time line of the special issue is fixed, it is recommended that all guest editors have experience with the way TCAS-I organizes its review process and the system it uses.
    2. The GEs and the EiC select about 40 to 50 papers that received the highest review scores from the ISCAS paper review process and that belong to the field of interest of TCAS-I and seem to be suitable (as evaluated by the Guest Editors) for a follow-up paper in TCAS-I.
    3. The authors are invited to submit a follow-up paper on their ISCAS contribution to TCAS-I by September/October.
    4. All manuscripts received will follow the regular TCAS-I review and revision process, albeit that the time allowed for reviews and revisions may be a little shorter in order to meet the time line of the special issue.
    5. The special issue preferably hits the press at the beginning of May (before next year’s ISCAS)
  1. Best live DEMO award

    1. Best live demo is usually selected by a committee during the ISCAS conference.
  1. CAS-FEST coordination
    Make contact with the CAS-FEST technical program chair(s) appointed by CASS at an early stage
  1. GOLD and WiCAS requirements
    Make contact with the GOLD and WiCAS organizers appointed by CASS at an early stage
  1. Organization of sessions and special requirements for demo-sessions and poster sessions
    Over the years many exciting new events have emerged. Demonstration sessions are popular and it is wise to allocate good rooms for this activity
  1. Special session acceptance rate and organization
    Sometime special sessions are all left to the selected special session chair without any required review. However, it is recommended wherever possible to include also papers of special sessions in the review process.
  1. Encourage interesting events

    1. “101 ways to make your circuit fail”
    2. Confession session
  1. Technical program setup

    1. After the review process is finished, all Review Committee Members have recommended through our web-system papers to be accepted for presentation.
    2. Then track chairs compose sessions and session names to be included in the program
    3. Finally the detailed program is composed by TPCs in collaboration with a few extra TPC members with appropriate expertise. The most important input in this meeting is the technical assistance from our web-provider (ePapers, Tom Wehner). This TPC meeting should be called for in a suitable location (normally the city for ICAS just before Christmas). Sessions are finalized and disputable decisions checked out.
    4. The session layout is then made finishing up the technical program.
  1. Conference program
    With a web-based review system, an important function of our provider is the production of the program booklet listing schedule and other important information for the conference. Also a web-based technical program is provided.

During the conference

  1. Conference banquet
    The conference banquet is an important event with most attendees showing up. Remember this is a large number of people and keep logistics simple.

    1. Award ceremony
      We always have our award ceremony during the banquet. It is important to provide a good podium with AV equipment visible for everybody.

Side-meetings requirements
The CAS community has a number of side meetings during ISCAS and usually simple food and drinks are served. Remember AV equipment is needed in these rooms.

  1. Post-conference procedures

    1. Closed within 6 months
      It is vital to finish up everything required by IEEE within 6 months. CASS is fined by IEEE central for conferences not closed. We are working on ways to improve here.
    2. Preparation of Xplore
      Before papers are handed in for IEEE Xplore by the manager of the paper handling system no-shows must be excluded:

      1. Excluding no-shows.
        Before submitting to Xplore, “no show” papers are excluded. Although we try to be reasonable and ask the authors why they did not show up, there should be strong reasons to include “no-show” papers and it is generally NOT possible. Remember when submitted to ISCAS, copyright is transferred to the IEEE and resubmission cannot be done without permission from the IEEE. It is recommended that this strict no-show policy is clearly communicated to authors at submission of papers.
    3. Report requirements
      Please provide your final ISCAS report for coming organizers to learn from your experience. Please also report any issues or improvements we may adapt.