Message from 2021-2022 IEEE Region 10 Director

Happy New Year!

Wish 2021 brings hope, health, and prosperity to you and your loved ones.

There are many lessons to learn from 2020, which was unprecedented and very challenging. But, challenges bring opportunities. It is my great honour and privilege to serve Region 10 as Director for 2021-2022. I take this opportunity to thank you all for your kind support and electing me to this position.

I would like to congratulate the leadership of Prof. Akinori Nishihara, which was exemplary and outstanding. He led the 2019-2020 Region 10 team in an excellent way and provided immense value added member engagement during this time of pandemic.

As we march towards 2021, we are fully aware of the challenges brought forward by the pandemic; and we have to look for opportunities in these challenges. IEEE is a ‘member centric, volunteer driven and staff supported organization’. We saw its true reflection during 2020, where volunteers and staffs together made wonderful opportunities available to its members. Numerous events – webinars, conferences, congresses, competitions, awards ceremonies and many other activities were conducted in the virtual format.

IEEE also took very prompt initiative and created COVID-19 Resources for members in the form of products, services, courses, and tools from across IEEE to help members and their families. All our volunteers and staffs deserve sincere appreciation for this. I am truly grateful to them for their selfless contributions.

In 2021, it seems, we would be continuing our activities in virtual mode, at least for quite some time. However, it is also pragmatic to see that at some places activities are getting started in a hybrid mode. I too wish that the pandemic gets over soon and we are able to start our in-person events.

Irrespective of how 2021 pans out, the Region 10 team will be committed to go full gear forward with our goals. Following are our thrust areas and major priorities for 2021-2022.

Thrust areas:

• Membership Activities: Member retention and continuation of students to Young Professionals.
• Technical Activities: Section-Chapter collaborative programs, conference quality and industry engagements.
• Professional Activities: Entrepreneurship and career advancement programs.

Major priorities:

• Conferences and its quality
• Member value, member engagement and member satisfaction through collaborative programs
• Industry academia partnership
• Diversity: more leadership and volunteering opportunities for YP and women.
• Programs for students and YP, where YP helps students in their career growth.
• Sustainable ‘Humanitarian Technology’ projects.
• Promote ‘Reaching Locals’ initiative.

Apart from these, if you believe that there need to be any other specific areas of focus, please feel free to reach out to me personally. I am open to your ideas and feedback, and look forward to your continued support in the coming year, to propagate our combined vision of “Joy of Volunteering”.

Wishing you once again a very happy and promising time ahead.

Deepak Mathur

2021-2022 Region 10 Director

Message from 2019-2020 IEEE Region 10 Director

Dear All IEEE Region 10 Members,

Happy New Year 2021!

As my two-year term as Region 10 Director reached a close at the end of 2020, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all for your collaboration and support in the operation and management of Region 10 under my directorship. The year 2019 proceeded as planned, but 2020 was assuredly like no other.

We experienced a fine start of 2020 under the leadership of President Toshio Fukuda, our first IEEE President to hail from Region 10. In January we held the Region 10 Executive Committee meeting in New Zealand and the IEEE Board of Directors Strategic Retreat in Fukuoka, Japan, without any special problems, but by the time of the Board of Directors meeting that convened in Boston in February we were wearing masks and using disinfectant.

The situation had worsened by March so that all events were moved online, including the Region 10 AGM, three flagship conferences, and our biennial SYWL Congress. We have been learning how effectively to conduct online meetings and conferences, developing skills whose usefulness is I think bound to extend beyond the immediate pandemic.

Furthermore, even with COVID-19 expanding, Region 10 is still growing. One new Section (Vizag Bay), five new Subsections (Quetta, Laos, North Karnataka, Rourkela, and Mysore), several Affinity Groups, and numerous Chapters and Student Branches were all formed during 2020.

IEEE’s Member and Geographic Activities Board has been discussing regional realignment since 2018. Region 8 (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and Region 10 (Asia-Pacific) proposed to split their present regions into two each, as their respective memberships comprise 18% and 32%, of the IEEE total. The MGA Board unanimously agreed to six (6) Regions in the Americas and four (4) Regions in Eurasia, Africa, and Oceania. However, among our overall membership that decision does not necessarily represent everyone’s first choice.

This year we shall move further in discussing how best to determine new regional borders. In Region 10, for example, we have been considering a split of the current Region 10 into two. I have great confidence in the leadership of my immediate successors: Deepak Mathur, 2021-22 Director, and Lance Fung, 2023-24 Director, and hope we can reach agreement on the two new Regions for Asia-Pacific in the very near future.

Meanwhile, please continue to devise and participate in vibrant and innovative IEEE (online) activities, and keep staying safe and healthy!

With much gratitude for the past two years,

Akinori Nishihara

2019-2020 IEEE Region 10 Director

Message from IEEE Region 10 Newsletter Coordinator

Dear Region 10 Members,

Happy New Year! It is my pleasure to welcome you to the January 2021 issue of IEEE Region 10 Newsletter. It is two years since I first took over as the chair for the IEEE Region 10 Newsletter Committee, and it has been a wonderful experience for me to work with my Newsletter Committee members as well as the Region 10 ExComm members in producing eight (8) newsletter issues throughout the two years. I am very thankful to the 2019-2020 Region 10 Director, Akinori Nishihara, for giving me the chance to helm the committee and contribute to IEEE at the regional level. And thank you also to the new Region 10 Director for 2021-2022, Deepak Mathur, for entrusting me again to continue leading the Newsletter Committee under his leadership for the next 2 years.

This first newsletter issue of the year features excellent content for your reading pleasure. As you may have been aware, we started our technical column last year with articles from the winners of the R10 Postgraduate Research Paper Contest. This year, we plan to expand the technical content by inviting renown researchers to write on the latest development on various research fields within the scope of IEEE. For this issue, we are honored to have two (2) of our IEEE Fellows, Byung-Gook Park and Seishi Takamura, to write about their latest work on Neuromorphic System and Integrated Circuits and Image/Video Coding Technology for IoT Era, respectively. This issue also features special report on three (3) flagship R10 events conducted during the last quarter of 2020, namely the IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON2020), IEEE R10 Humanitarian Technology Conference (R10HTC2020), and IEEE R10 Student, Young Professionals, Women in Engineering, and Life Members Congress (SYWL2020), all of which were carried out virtually.

The newsletter continues with another five (5) Personalities of the Month as well as five (5) Organizational Units of the Month in this edition. We received many requests from Student Branches across the region to feature in our Student Branch of the Month column, that we decided to feature two (2) of them in this issue. Besides, we also continue to feature another one of our COVID-19 heroes in the COVID-19 Personality of the Month column. This time, the honor goes to the team from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia from the Malaysia Section for their effort in studying communication effectiveness at construction sites during COVID-19 outbreak in Malaysia. And we are very glad to continue receiving tremendous support from various Sections, Chapters, Affinity Groups, and Student Branches/Chapters across Region 10 in reporting IEEE activities occurring within their unit. We thank all these volunteers for their contributions to this newsletter.

And I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank and honor my R10 Newsletter Committee members (Prof. Fattah, Prof. Prashant, Redwan, Wathmini, Naila and Nabeel) for their incredible hard work and efforts in assisting me for the last 2 years.

And to all readers, enjoy the newsletter, and stay safe wherever you are.

Mohammad Faizal Ahmad Fauzi

Chair, IEEE R10 Newsletter Committee