IEEE Canadian Review now On-line

IEEE Canada is pleased to announce that, for the current issue #41, the IEEE Canadian Review exists in both a "printed & mailed" edition and an on-line HTML edition. For the last several years, PDF copies of the printed pages of the Review have been posted on the IEEE Canada web site. Now it is available in on-line HTML format as well for easier on-line perusal. All members are invited to take a look at the on-line Review and provide feedback to editor Vijay Sood using the on-line form. You can visit the Review web site from the IEEE Canada home page http://www.ieee.ca or use http://canrev.ieee.ca directly.

IEEE Canadian Foundation Grants & Scholarships

The IEEE Canadian Foundation provides grants and scholarships to Canadian IEEE student branches. On-line application forms and full details are available on their web site at http://www.ieeecanadianfoundation.org - there is also an on-line form to update branch contact information. The next deadline for grant applications is September 15.

IEEE/LEOS Award for the best student

The Toronto Chapter of IEEE/LEOS has an award for the best student  technical paper in the areas of lasers, electro-optics, optical communication or networks, or nonlinear optics. The paper will be judged on its significance, originality and clarity. The paper must have been accepted for publication by the 15th Annual Meeting of the IEEE Lasers & Electro-optics Society in Glasgow on November 10-14, 2002. Only those papers submitted and presented by a current student member of the IEEE/LEOS (Toronto Chapter) will be considered. The award has a value of CDN$200. In order to be considered for the prize, you must submit before 18 October 2002:

1. a completed copy of the application form below (email or hard copy)
2. a copy of the paper, either hard copy or electronic (PDF or PS format only)

Hard copy submissions should be sent to:
Toronto IEEE/LEOS Paper Award
c/o Andrew Stok
10 King's College Road
Toronto, ON
M5S 3G4

Electronic submissions should be sent by email to Andrew Stok at andrew.stok@utoronto.ca.

Dues Rates Change for 2003

IEEE dues rates will be going up for 2003. The IEEE Board of Directors at their June meeting in Toronto voted the following dues rates to go into effect for the 2003 membership year (all prices in US dollars):

• Higher Grade Member dues will be increased to $110.00 plus regional assessments.
• The IEEE-USA assessment will be increased by $2.00 to $33.00, with $1.00 of this increase to go to EAB to support the ABET accreditation program. Note: The IEEE-USA assessment is only applicable to members in Regions 1-6.
• Student dues will increase to $30.00 in Regions 1-7 and to $25.00 in Regions 8-10. Region 7 Students must also pay the applicable Canadian GST or HST tax.
• The IEEE Society Affiliation fee was set at 50% of the basic IEEE dues rate ($55.00 for 2003). Society Affiliates must pay this fee along with the applicable dues for their individual Society.

While obviously no one welcomes price increases, it should be noted that this is just the second increase in the past seven years for Higher Grade members, and it is the first increase for Students in the past ten years. Student dues were last raised in 1993, and in fact, were actually lowered in 1997. The new 2003 dues rate for Students is just $2.00 per year above the rates that were in effect back in 1996. And it should also be noted that, except for voting privileges, Students continue to receive the complete benefits of full IEEE membership.

The reasons behind these actions are varied, although inflation, of course, represents a large component – particularly the escalating costs of paper and postage, which make up a big part of IEEE’s expenses and which are increasing significantly faster than the general inflation rate. However, another part of the underlying cause of these increases is the inability of IEEE to rely on investment income to help offset some of its operating expenses. During the mid-to-late 1990’s, IEEE, like most investors, was achieving double-digit returns on its investment portfolio. Of course, with the recent weakened performances in the investment markets, IEEE’s returns have become flat or negative. As a result, in both 2000 and 2001, IEEE found it necessary to reach into its Reserve accounts to underwrite operating expenses – a practice which, for obvious reasons, cannot be repeated indefinitely. While many cost reduction measures have been put in place to mitigate this downturn in investment income, it has also become necessary for dues rates and subscription prices to be placed closer to the actual costs of providing the services involved. This is particularly true for those heavily subsidized memberships, such as Student memberships, where servicing costs dramatically exceed the level of the actual dues received.

Arrears Telemarketing Effort Successful

This Spring, the IEEE Member Services Department attempted to contact all members in dues arrears in Regions 1-7. This marks the first year that the Arrears Outreach Program sponsored by Regional Activities was done solely in-house. The results indicate clearly what a difference being contacted by IEEE staff makes. There were 4,110 IEEE Memberships renewed this year, a 64% increase over the 2,510 members renewed during last year’s effort. In addition to this, 4,095 Society memberships were also renewed. This included renewals from each of the 36 Societies, plus 22 renewals for the Women in Engineering affinity group. The total revenue generated from this effort amounted to $684,490, up a staggering 86% over last year. Members who chose not to renew were queried as to their reason for dropping membership. The 3 most frequently cited reasons were:

• Employer doesn’t pay dues (19.1%)
• Too expensive (17.5%)
• Insufficient time to read publications (8.9%)

For additional information, contact Mike Binder, IEEE Regional Activities, at +1 732 562 5514 or via email, m.binder@ieee.org

New IEEE Journals for 2003 announced

The IEEE Board of Directors has approved three new technical periodicals to be published by IEEE in 2003:

• IEEE Power Electronics Letters, an electronic subscription-based journal, will focus on the general area of power electronics, with specific attention to new developments and specific techniques of broad use.
• IEEE Security and Privacy, a new IEEE Computer Society magazine, will cover computer/network security, information assurance and infrastructure protection issues across the spectrum from practical know-how to cutting edge research results.
• IEEE Power & Energy Magazine will combine IEEE Computer Applications in Power Magazine and IEEE Power Engineering Review and disseminate information of interest to electric power engineers and others in the electric power industry.

All of these publications will be available in print and through various IEEE online collections. Look for more information on these new journals soon.

IEEE ComSoc offers six free issues of IEEE Communications Magazine

Through 1 August 2002, the IEEE Communications Society is offering a free half-year society membership to current IEEE members. Included are the next six issues of IEEE Communications Magazine. The offer is not available to former Communications Society members or affiliates. For details, visit http://www.comsoc.org/freeoffer/.

IEEE introduces new careers website

IEEE has announced the creation of a new careers website for IEEE members. IEEE Spectrum's team of careers experts will provide the site with original and professional content on a weekly basis, with attributes including a "job of the month" and a featured employer. The site is an enhanced conduit for employers and job seekers to get the information they're looking for and provides links to other valuable IEEE career aids such as the IEEE Salary Calculator. Visit the new website at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers.

The following members were upgraded to Senior Member status at the June 2002 Admission and Advancement Panel meetings in Toronto:

• Nikhil Ranjan Das - Hamilton
• Roger M. Hay - Hamilton
• Edward M. Hinchley - Hamilton
• John E. A. Hunter - Hamilton
• Scott Lowell - Hamilton
• J.E.C. White - Hamilton
• George H. Wright - Kingston
• Sean P. McAlister - Ottawa
• Aldo Petosa - Ottawa
• Sorin P. Voinigescu - Ottawa
• Eloi Ngandui - Saint Maurice
• George V. Eleftheriades - Toronto
• Teng-Joon Lim - Toronto
• Brian Leonard Avent - Vancouver

For more information on the Nominate a Senior Member Initiative (NSI) Program, please visit http://www.ieee.org/ra/md/smprogram.html.

• IEEE Workshop on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks (LAN/MAN)

11-13 August 2002
Stockholm, Sweden
For more information please visit http://www.ieee-iemc-2002.org/

• International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR2002)

11-15 August 2002
Québec City
For more information please visit http://icpr2002.gel.ulaval.ca/

• International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED)

12-14 August 2002
Monterey, California
For more information please visit http://www.ee.ucla.edu/~islped

• International Conference on Modeling and Simulation of Electric Machines, Convertors and Systems

18-21 August 2002
École de technologie supérieure
Montreal, Quebec
For more information please visit http://www.electrimacs2002.com/

• 2nd IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology

25-28 August 2002
Arlington, Virginia
For more information please visit http://ewh.ieee.org/tc/nanotech/nano2002/

• IFIP World Computer Congress

25-30 August 2002
Montreal
For more information please visit http://local.cips.ca/info2002/

• IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME)

26-29 August 2002
Lausanne, Switzerland
For more information please visit http://www.icme2002.org/icme.html

• 6th International Conference on Signal Processing

26-30 August 2002
Beijing, China
For more information please visit http://icsp02.njtu.edu.cn/

• European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO-2002)

3-6 September 2002
Toulouse, France
For more information please visit http://www.carte-blanche.fr/~eusipco2002/

• International Telecommunications Symposium (ITS2002)

8-12 September 2002
Natal, Brazil
For more information please visit http://its2002.ufrn.br/

• IEEE Conference on Mobile and Wireless Communications Networks (MWCN2002)

9-11 September 2002
Radisson Arlandia
Stockholm, Sweden
For more information please visit http://www.cwc.nus.edu.sg/mwcn2002/

• IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS2002)

15-18 September 2002
Dubrovnik, Croatia
For more information please visit http://www.icecs2002.org

• IT: Solutions to Compete and Win

The Canadian Society for Civil Engineering is pleased to announce the hosting of a nationwide seminar series entitled IT: Solutions to Compete and Win. This nationwide seminar is organized by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering in collaboration with The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), The Canadian Construction Association (CCA), and Public Work and Government Services Canada (PWGSC)

The following five cities will be visited in September 2002:

• September 16: Toronto
• September 17: Ottawa
• September 18: Montreal
• September 19: St. John's
• September 20: Moncton

Another five cities will be visited in the Spring of 2003 - Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg.

For further information on this nationwide seminar, please contact Mr. Mahmoud Lardjane at CSCE National Office at 514-933-2634, ext. 26.

• IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 2002)

22-25 September 2002
Rochester, NY
For more information please visit http://icip2002.com/

• IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, COTS cluster computing

24-26 September 2002
Chicago, USA
For more information please visit http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/cluster2002/

• IEEE International Telecommunications Energy Conference (INTELEC)

29 September - 3 October 2002
Montreal, Canada
For more information please visit http://www.intelec.org

• Accelerated Stress Testing Workshop 2002

2-4 October 2002
Hotel Wyndham Montreal
Montreal, Quebec
For more information please visit http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/cpmt/tc7/ast2002/index.html

IEEE Montreal maintains a page of upcoming events at http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r7/montreal/evenements_e.html.

IEEE Toronto maintains a page of upcoming events at http://www.tor.ieee.ca/events.htm.

For more IEEE conferences, visit IEEE Conference Search at http://www.ieee.org/conferencesearch/.

You can send any submissions by email to the editor:
Abhi Gupta at a.k.gupta@ieee.org

Please ensure you send in your submission by the 20^th of the month