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