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 The VTS Board of Governors (BoG) held its winter meeting on 18 January in Las Vegas, NV USA.
As always, the BoG meeting is an opportunity to assess the status of the Society, track the progress of initiatives, and make decisions that shape the Society.
As this was the first BoG meeting of his presidency, VTS President Abbas Jamalipour revealed his vision and priorities for 2020.
In addition to strengthening the areas of membership, publications and conference, he wants to focus on making VTS more visible within IEEE, improving diversity, improving technical and regional inclusion, implementing sound and sustainable budgeting, continuing works on education and standardization, and ensuring governance transparency and accountability.
The Board received reports from several ad hoc committees created in previous years, and decided to extend their mandates into the year 2020. This includes the ad hoc committees on Electric Railways, Autonomous Vehicles, Deep Learning for Wireless Communications, and Women and Diversity.
Some highlights in Membership Development include the recent creation of two new chapters—Poland and Bangalore—with the creation of several more being discussed.
In the Publications area, the new IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology has been accepting submissions since September, and is on its way to publishing its first articles. The IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT) continues to experience a strong growth in popularity, with a 20% increase in the number of submissions between 2018 and 2019.
The Board approved increases in the maximum number of pages for submissions to TVT. The IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine is also experiencing success, with a large growth in the number of submissions as well as the number of downloads on IEEE Xplore.
On the day prior to the Board meeting, the VTS Long Range Planning Committee met under the leadership of Executive Vice-President James Irvine. This was an opportunity to discuss the challenges faced by the Society in carrying out its mission, as well as the potential that lay in front of us.
The results of these discussions will feed into the next VTS Strategic Plan, to be developed over the course of the next few months. | 
 held its winter meeting on 18 January in Las Vegas, Nevada.This meeting is an opportunity to assess the status of the Society, track the progress of initiatives, and make decisions that shape the Society.*/);){kind=small}
