Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Technical Committee (NCAS) – ISCAS’09 Minutes (May 2009)

IEEE ISCAS 2009, Taipei
May 26, 2009, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Attendees (17):
Jan Bremer
Mario Di Bernardo
Orla Feely
Zbigniew Galias
Francis Lau
Henry Leung (Secretary)
Xiang Li
Jinhu Lu
Maciej Ogorzalek
Hiroo Sekiya
Gianluca Setti
Wallace Tang
K. Thulasiraman
Ljiljana Trajkovíc
Michael Tse (Chair)
Yoko Uwate
Wei Xin Zhang

Agenda:

1.     Chairman’s welcome

2.     Welcome of new members

3.     Report on activities during the period from ISCAS 2008 to ISCAS 2009

4.     Report on paper submission/acceptance for NCAS track in ISCAS 2009

5.     Report on membership under new two-tier system

6.     Election of the 2009-2010 officers including Track Chair for ISCAS 2010 for term ending at ISCAS 2010

7.     Any other business

1.     Chairman’s welcome

The Chairman welcomed members to the Annual Meeting of the Technical Committee on Nonlinear Circuits and Systems (TC-NCAS).

2.     Welcome to new members

The Chairman welcomed two new members to the Technical Committee on NCAS:
– Francis Lau, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
– Xiang Li, Fudan University, China

The Chairman also welcomed the members of the Technical Committee on Graph Theory and Applications (TC-GTA) who join the TC-NCAS in 2008.

3.     Report on activities during the period from ISCAS 2008 to ISCAS 2009

The “Annual Report of TC-NCAS Activities 2008-2009″ was prepared by Michael Tse, TC Chair, and was tabled at the meeting for members’ perusal.

The Chair presented the annual report. Any further information should be forwarded to Michael Tse by 15 June 2009. The key items in the annual report were:

• During the 2008-2009 period, members of the TC-NCAS published three books and edited six special issues in fields related to nonlinear circuits and systems.
• The members of the TC-NCAS also engaged in active research leading to seven books chapters in the related fields and 41 publications at various conferences, workshops, and invited lecture series.
• The TC-NCAS website is hosted at http://diva.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ljilja/tcncas and contains web pages of TC members, conference reports, and meeting minutes.
• The TC-NCAS mailing list ((Click to show email)) currently consists of 98 subscribers that include the TC members and guests.

4.     Report on paper submission/acceptance for NCAS track in ISCAS 2009

The “Report on paper submission/acceptance to the NCAS track” was prepared and presented by Orla Feely.

The NCAS track at ISCAS 2009 attracted a total of 69 submissions, of which 20 were accepted in lecture format and 12 in the poster format. The acceptance rate was 46.4% with a total of 32 accepted papers. The acceptance rate is somewhat consistent with the overall acceptance rate for ISCAS 2009 that was 45% and the 48.8% acceptance rate for the NCAS track at ISCAS 2008. In 2008, the ISCAS-NCAS track attracted 82 submissions with 40 accepted papers (30 lectures and 10 posters). The decrease in the number of submissions (15.8%) is comparable to the decrease in the overall number of submissions to the ISCAS conference (1,631 paper submissions in 2009, down 12.2% from 1,858 submissions in 2008). Submissions to the NCAS track account for 4.2% of the overall number of submissions to ISCAS 2009. NCAS track papers were presented over four lecture sessions:

o       Chaotic Circuits: Control and Communications (Chair: Michael Tse)

o       Chaotic Circuits: Implementations and Applications (Chair: Sergio Callegari)

o       PLLs and Oscillators (Chair: Orla Feely)

o       Complex Networks (Chair: Ljiljana Trajkovic)

TC members raised the issue of having two complex network sessions at the same time slot. ISCAS 2009 program consisted of a Special Session on Complex Networks chaired by Jinhu Lu and a Regular Session on Complex Networks chaired by Ljiljana Trajkovic. Both sessions were scheduled for May 26, 2009, 15:30 and 17:00. Although it was noted that the TC does not have control of the final program, it was suggested that the TC members follow the special session proposals for overlapping topics and that the NCAS track chair should check any conflicts in scheduling two weeks before the final program is completed.

Further to the consolidation of the TCs of NCAS and TC on GTA. K. Thulasiraman suggested that a new sub-track on Graph Theory at ISCAS might be created. In addition, TC members also suggested that other sub-tracks related to emerging areas of research related to NCAS should be included under the ISCAS-NCAS track.

TC members also suggested that the acceptance statistics for the NCAS track be posted on the TC-NCAS website for public viewing.

5.     Report on membership under new two-tier system

A report on TC-NCAS membership, website, and mailing lists was presented by Ljiljana Trajkovíc.

Earlier, TCs were invited to consider compiling separate lists of “active” members and “corresponding members”. “Active members” are those who are actively involved in the TC’s activities such as attending annual TC meeting often, reviewing papers for ISCAS NCAS track, organizing workshops, organizing special sessions at conferences, while “corresponding members” are those who simply wish to be informed of the TC activities.

The TC-NACS mailing list has about 100 members. Ljiljana Trajkovíc discussed the two-tier system suggestion to segregate active and non-active members and reported to have polled members via emails. 38 members replied expressing their interest to remain active and only 7 wished to remain as corresponding members. Furthermore, one member wanted to be removed from the mailing list while 8 member emails bounced. Ljiljana Trajkovíc will send a 2nd call and depending on the replies that are received, she will remove the members who do not reply. It was also suggested that there was no need to have two lists, given that only 7 members wanted to maintain a corresponding member status. Therefore, TC-NCAS will continue having only one mailing list.

6.     Election of the 2009-10 officers including Track Chair for ISCAS 2010 for term ending ISCAS 2010

The Chairman proposed that Henry Leung and Francis Lau be the ISCAS 2010 Track chairs and the members unanimously agreed to the proposal. Other officers for 2009-2010 were elected according to the rotational rule adopted in the past. The new TC-NCAS officers for 2009-2010 are:

7.     Any other business

Mario Di Bernardo discussed the issue regarding the number of nonlinear workshops that are currently being held on a yearly basis. There are three workshops: IWCSN, NDES, and CNN. It was suggested that the organizers try to collaborate when organizing future events.

The new TC-NCAS chair will contact the organizers of CNN and NDES workshops to collaborate for future events. The goal is to reduce the number of workshops by collocating and collaboration of the existing workshops. This will help present nonlinear systems related work, and, hence, develop a stronger and more interconnected research community.

Mario Di Bernardo will communicate with Jinhu Lu to initiate IWCSN/NDES/CNN collaboration. Maciej Ogorzalek will contact NDES to see whether they will be interested in collaboration, in order to simultaneously conduct both events next year in Beijing or Shanghai.

TC members were invited to consider nominations for the CAS Society Board of Governors (BoG) and the Distinguished Lecturer Program. There are two ways to be included on the ballot for the BoG election: (1) by petition from 2% of the membership (206), which can now be done online, and (2) by the Nomination Committee. The deadline for BoG nominations is June 15, 2009.

Minutes taken by Henry Leung, May 26, 2009.