E komo mai!!! A warm aloha to the 32nd ICASSP, the premier conference in Signal Processing to be held at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu. Our field continues to evolve as this year we have a new TC, Information Forensics and Security (IFS). The Speech and Spoken Language Processing TC was broken up into two areas: Speech Processing (SPE) and Spoken Language Processing (SLP). This year, excluding special sessions, we received 2844 regular paper submissions (this is the second most ever, only exceeded by the 2006 ICASSP which had 3040 submissions). The submissions figures are ranked below according to the various Signal Processing Society Technical Committees:
| Speech Processing | (SPE) | 573 |
| Image & Multidimensional Signal Processing | (IMDSP) | 465 |
| Signal Processing Theory and Methods | (SPTM) | 443 |
| Signal Processing for Communications | (SPCOM) | 382 |
| Sensor Array & Multi-channel Signal Processing | (SAM) | 166 |
| Audio & Electroacoustics | (AE) | 161 |
| Machine Learning for Signal Processing | (MLSP) | 141 |
| Spoken Language Processing | (SLP) | 99 |
| Multimedia Signal Processing | (MMSP) | 97 |
| Information Forensic Security | (IFS) | 94 |
| Bio Imaging and Signal Processing | (BISP) | 91 |
| Design & Implementation of SP Systems | (DISPS) | 69 |
| Industry Technology Track | (ITT) | 52 |
| Signal Processing Education | (SPED) | 11 |
In order to ensure high conference quality, ICASSP technical programs have been gradually reducing the acceptance rate for submitted papers in the last few years, and this year we set the acceptance rate to be slightly below 45 %. Specifically, out of 2844 submissions this year, 1272 were accepted. A special mahalo to all the TC chairs: Mazin Gilbert, Roberto Pieraccini, Sheila Hemami, John Apostolopoulos , G. Tong Zhou, Ali Sayed, Ananthram Swami, Nicholas Sidiropoulos, Alex Gershman, Michael Goodwin, Tulay Adali, Jan Larsen, Ton Kalker, Ingemar Cox, Michael Unser, Chaitali Chakrabarti, Wayne Burleson, Eli Saber, and Huseyin Abut who performed the complex task of coordinating the review process. We worked closely with the TC chairs and appreciate their full cooperation and timely responses to all our requests. All TC chairs and members worked diligently with the help of external reviewers to provide accurate and timely evaluations of the submissions. They managed to obtain three reviews for most papers. The success of this conference should be primarily attributed to their effort. They also selected the student paper finalists. The finalists will present their papers at ICASSP with final awards selected by panelists from the organizing committee and the TC members.
Many thanks to Lance Cotton and Billene Mercer from Conference Management Services whose assistance was invaluable. Their support and help were much appreciated. The infrastructure and organization they provided allowed the review process to run efficiently and smoothly, and allowed the technical program to come together. This year, the technical program is organized into twelve different time slots with each slot having six parallel oral sessions and eight parallel poster sessions. The choice between acceptance as a poster or an oral presentation was made by the TC chairs based on subject grouping, and not on paper quality. A special thanks to all authors of contributed papers and the special session chairs who have organized special sessions on timely signal processing topics.
This past summer a call for special sessions and tutorials was issued. This generated substantial interest with 43 tutorial proposals and 32 special session proposals submitted. Hideaki Sakai, the tutorial chair coordinated the reviews, selection, and organization of tutorials which consists of sixteen tutorials to be held prior to the start of the regular technical program. Phil Chou, the special sessions chair, coordinated the reviews, selection, and organization of the twelve special sessions. The special sessions cover leading-edge topics of interest to the signal processing community. They have been selected carefully so as to be complementary to the regular sessions. Many thanks to Hideaki and Phil for respectively putting together excellent tutorial and special session programs.
We are pleased to have a very strong plenary program with four plenary talks planned. The four plenary talks are to be given by Irwin Mark Jacobs on “Expanding Utility of the Amazing and Ubiquitous Cellphone”, by Sadaoki Furui on “50 years of progress in speech recognition technology – Where we are, and where we should go”, by Shankar Sastry on “Embedded Intelligence: Beyond Sensor Webs”, and by Philip Wiser on “Network Media Distribution: A Decade of Revolution”.
This year’s conference will also feature two panel sessions: “Riding the Internet-Highway with Speech, Language and Video Technology”, organized by Mazin Gilbert and “Future Needs and Directions in Signal Processing Education”, organized by Fred Taylor. These panel sessions will be given during lunch time and provide important timely topics with time for interactive discussions. Thanks to Phil Chou for coordinating the panel sessions.
We look forward to seeing you in Honolulu.
Mahalo,
Yih-Fang Huang and Anthony Kuh
Technical Program Co-chairs, ICASSP 2007