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 It is truly an honor and a privilege to serve as President of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society for 2018. VTS is very special society, and it is my personal goal to both continue and increase the numerous activities and services we offer to all VTS members, to support your professional development and growth.
Such help is especially important in today's world, where the technological landscape is evolving so rapidly. We all need to stay up-to-date with the latest advances in mobile radio, land transportation, motor vehicles, propagation, connected and automated vehicles, and many other areas under the vehicular technology umbrella.
As
for some information about myself: I originally hail from one of the most
awesome cities in the world—Montréal, Canada.
After completing my undergraduate and graduate studies in Electrical
Engineering at McGill University (B.Eng. and Ph.D.) and Queen's University in
Kingston (M.Sc.(Eng.)), I started my academic career in the USA, first at the
University of Kansas, and then Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts,
where I have been since 2007.
At WPI, I am
Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, with a
collaborative appointment as Associate Professor of Robotics Engineering. My research and teaching activities primarily
revolve around two technical areas: cognitive radio/software-defined radio and
connected/autonomous vehicles.
With respect to my
involvement with the VTS, I have been very active in both the organization of
VTS conferences and at Society-level leadership. I have helped organize several VTCs over the
years, including VTC2015-Fall in Boston, where I served as its General Co-chair.
Additionally, I have been
a VTS Distinguished Lecturer and VTS Distinguished Speaker since 2012. Finally, over the past 5 years I have served
as VTS Chapters Committee Chair, VTS Vice President—Membership Development, and
VTS Executive Vice President, while serving as an elected member of the VTS
Board of Governors (my second 3-year term to start this month).
On a personal note, I
am married to the most amazing woman (Jen) and I have a super-friendly
three-legged rescue dog (Captain). In my
free time, I enjoy hiking mountains, running, and making furniture.
As mentioned before, VTS
organizes an array of services and activities that are specifically designed to
enhance the professional development opportunities for our membership. Several
recent highlights and achievements include:
- VTS has committed itself
extensively to the IEEE 5G Initiative, with myself, Jae Hong Lee, James Irvine,
and Javier Gozálvez and others involved in several of the Initiative’s core
committees. 5G @ VTC, an event hosted at VTC2017-Fall in Toronto, is a
multi-day program of 5G-related technical paper sessions, tutorials, workshops,
and industry panels. IEEE Vehicular
Technology Magazine’s December 2017 issue contained a special section on 5G in
2020, which provided an insightful read about what the future holds in store
for us with respect to 5G.
- The last three years have
been truly energetic with respect to a technology that will transform the way
we travel: Autonomous vehicles. Personal
vehicles, trucks, buses, shared ride vehicles, taxis, and many other forms of
ground transportation are at the brink of driving themselves without any form
of human intervention. VTS leads an
effort to provide our members with the latest information on this rapidly
evolving technology, including two 2-day summer schools during 2016 and
2017. And the IEEE VTS Connected
Vehicles Initiative provided us with numerous opportunities to learn about
connected vehicles and their relationship to autonomous vehicles.
- An emerging threat to
the safety of vehicular systems are malicious cyber attacks against the
electronic sensors and systems onboard ground, marine, and aerial
vehicles. Focusing on ground vehicles,
automotive cyber security has become issue that has grown substantially over the
past decade. To provide opportunities to
our membership to learn more about these issues behind automotive
cybersecurity, two workshops at VTC2016-Fall in Montreal and VTC2017-Fall in
Toronto were organized, in addition to an upcoming special issue in the March
2018 installment of IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, with a line-up of five
excellent papers addressing different dimensions of this critically important
technical challenge.
- There has been a
substantial amount of activity surrounding electric vehicles, and VTS has been
at the forefront of providing opportunities for our members to learn more about
this increasingly important area. During
the past summer, the first-ever Summer School on Energetic Efficiency of
Connected Vehicles was hosted at the Université de Québec à Trois Rivières,
which provided an excellent program of lectures presented by six world-renowned
experts in both electric vehicles and connected vehicles. Attendance included 30 individuals physically
present during the lectures, as well as 750 views from the online live
streaming. In addition to the summer
school, the second installment of the VTS Motor Vehicles Challenge is currently
underway and builds upon the successes of the first student competition in this
domain.
- Services and
activities supporting the professional development of our industry members
continues to increase, especially with the continued and growing success of theindustry tracks across multiple VTC events.
Additionally, the number of local VTS chapters around the world continues
to grow, as well as the services and support we provide them, especially our
extremely successful Distinguished Lecture (DL) program (DL talks are
professional development opportunities almost exclusively reserved for VTS
chapters).
- Both the IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology and the IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine
continue to be among the top publications when compared amongst our peer
publications. The papers published in
both these venues continue to provide our members with the latest cutting edge
knowledge and results in mobile radio, connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles,
land transportation, vehicular electronics.
- In order to provide a
convenient online interface between VTS members and various society resources,
a new VTS website has just been launched.
This new website uses a Wordpress template that allows for easy access
of information, especially when using a hand-held or mobile device. Furthermore, the VTS Resource Center
continues to grow with valuable content that can help further enable the
professional development of all our members.
Although VTS has been
very active on multiple fronts, there still exists many opportunities where our
society can continue to grow and provide additional resources and services to
our members. In particular, two
activities that will be pursued in 2018 include the following:
- Increasing the level
of industry engagement and membership services:
Based on the success of the industry tracks at the last several VTCs, I
intend to expand the number of services and activities that focus primarily on
the professional development of our membership from industry.
- Providing new
services and activities focused on autonomous vehicle technology: Over the past
36 months, self-driving cars have attracted a significant amount of attention
from the vehicular technology community, and new services and activities are
needed to enable our membership to learn more about autonomous vehicles. Consequently, during 2018 we plan to introduce
several new activities to our VTS members in order to learn about this emerging
and cutting-edge technology. This
includes the start of the 2-year Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV)
Initiative in January 2018, the IEEE CAV Summit (http://vehiclesummit.ieee.org/) that
will be hosted in Santa Clara, California on 8 February 2018, and the launch of
a 6-lecture eLearning series on autonomous vehicles co-organized between VTS
and IEEE Educational Activities.
As with any society,
its operations are handled via a core group of volunteers dedicated to enabling
your professional development and growth.
I am honored to be working with an amazing team this year to continue
and grow many of the excellent activities and services offered by the VTS. The VTS leadership team includes:
- Abbas Jamalipour (Executive Vice President)
- JR
Cruz (Vice President—Conferences)
- Weihua
Zhuang (Vice President—Publications)
- Richard
Yu (Vice President—Membership Development)
- Jae
Hong Lee (Vice President—Mobile Radio)
- David
Thurston (Vice President—Land Transportation)
- Loïc
Boulon (Vice President—Motor Vehicles)
- Oliver
Holland (Chapters Committee Chair)
- Doug
Coates (Publicity Committee Chair)
- Carmela
Cozzi (Women In Engineering Liaison)
Overall, VTS is in a
very healthy place in terms of our ability to provide these services and
opportunities to all of our members. This
is all made possible by the dedication and contributions of VTS volunteers over
the past several years.
In particular, I
would like to sincerely thank the outgoing VTS president, Javier Gozalvez, for
his leadership of our society over the past 2 years and positioning us such
that we can increase and grow as a community interested in advancing the
current state of the art in all things vehicular technology. Thank you again,
Javier! Fortunately, he will not be too
far away since he will continue to serve VTS as an elected member of the Board
of Governors.
I am very excited
about the VTS team, and that I will serve all of you in the upcoming year. Vehicular technology has experienced a
revolutionary amount of growth and change over the past five years, and it is
our duty to provide all of your with the services to keep you current with the
cutting edge in this technology, enabling you all to grow professionally via
networking opportunities, and expand your knowledge base in mobile radio, land
transportation, electric vehicles, and many others areas related to vehicular
technology.
If you ever hand a question,
suggestion, idea, or comment on how VTS can better serve you and the rest of
the VTS membership, please do not hesitate to let me know by contacting me at alexw@ieee.org.
Wishing you all a prosperous and joyous Happy New Year 2018, and looking
forward to serving you all, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society! |
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