Message from IEEE Region 10 Director
Dear All IEEE Region 10 Members,
Even though all are suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, I hope each of you is individually safe and healthy! When we held our most recent 7th March online Region 10 Meeting, in fact the first such online regional meeting among all our ten IEEE Regions, we had an ominous feeling concerning future events. Yet a number of events have since been successfully held online, and further online events and meetings are scheduled. These are to include our Sections Congress, R10 SYWL Congress, TENCON 2020, and R10HTC 2020. We are getting used to online meetings in this difficult situation, helped by us being engineers. But I still believe face-to-face meetings and the warmth of a human touch are very important for our organization and its gatherings. Like you, I naturally look forward to a return to such occasions in a not too distant future.
During this period of staying home, we began some outreach programs making use of local languages. Within our Region 10 we have a plethora of local languages, and there are many who would like to receive materials in their local tongue. With the generous help of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, not long ago we provided both Chinese- and Japanese-language subtitles for a very popular plenary speech on the topic of AI. We’ve also started a webinar series in Japanese. Let me know where local interest lies in furthering such innovation. Indeed, many Sections have signaled their interest in this activity of reaching out to local groups and subgroups, and I’m confident that a wealth of such materials in diverse languages will follow from our initial efforts with your significant help.
Another piece of news is new multimedia content in the current issue of our R10 Newsletter. We try fully to utilize our technology to create enriched content. I hope you will take notice and be pleased with the results, perhaps suggesting or facilitating further experimentation. Now we’re halfway through the year 2020. Most of us are still faced with a changing variety of restrictions, especially in traveling abroad. For example, I am addressing this message to you during the current online Board of Directors meeting series, supposed to have been hosted in Chicago instead of digitally.
The good news is I and others are able to avoid long-distance travel, but the bad news is that a number of us have to attend meetings during our local nighttime and then work as usual during the day. We know we have to take care, but at the same time, we are striving to create a new normal both in our daily lives and in all IEEE activities. I do hope we are creative enough to do that and perhaps some unexpected good will come of it.
Keep staying safe and healthy!
With every good wish,
Akinori Nishihara
Director, IEEE Region 10
Message from IEEE Region 10 Newsletter Coordinator
Dear Region 10 Members,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the July issue of IEEE Region 10 Newsletter, which is already our third edition for 2020. While COVID-19 pandemic may have halted many of our planned activities physically, it definitely did not stop Region 10 organizational units and volunteers to organize alternative online activities. Despite the lockdown in many countries, we received more than 50 report submissions from various organizational units for inclusion in this issue. Quite a number of these reports are on COVID-19 related activities. We would like to thank all these volunteers for their contributions to this newsletter.
This edition features special report on the recently concluded IEEE Region 10 Symposium 2020 (TENSYMP2020), the first flagship R10 conference to be held in full virtual mode. With more than a thousand valid submissions from 19 countries, and more than 400 papers accepted for presentation, the conference did very well in organizing all the virtual presentations smoothly. TENSYMP2020 organizers (Prof. Shaikh Fattah, Prof. Celia Shahnaz and team) have also very kindly agreed to share their experience in carrying out such a huge online event via a comprehensive article for immediate release in this issue. I believe every conference organizer will find the article very useful.
The newsletter continues with another four Personalities of the Month and five Organizational Units of the Month in this edition. Besides these, the issue also features the very first COVID-19 Personalities of the Month, a new initiative by the newsletter following the advice from Region 10 Director, Akinori Nishihara, to highlight our members who contributed in countering the COVID-19 threat. Besides the regular article, it also features a multimedia version which is published on our newsletter website. If you are working on COVID-19 related activities, and would like us to feature you in the coming issues, please drop us an email. We hope the pilot article and video featured in this issue will attract many more interests from our COVID-19 heroes to showcase their valuable work.
Our website version of the newsletter is also now live. From this issue onwards, you can read your newsletter through both the regular PDF version, as well as the more navigable website version. I would like to offer a very special thanks to all my R10 newsletter committee members for their incredible efforts in preparing both versions of the July newsletter issue. Finally thanks again all of you for your support, I hope you enjoy reading it. Stay safe.
Mohammad Faizal Ahmad Fauzi
Chair, IEEE R10 Newsletter Committee