Okoshi-Yasu (Welcome) to Kyoto for the 37th edition of ICASSP, the premier conference in Signal Processing to be held at Kyoto International Convention Center in Japan. This year, we received 2670 regular paper submissions (not including special session papers). Submission figures are listed below with topics mostly represented by a Technical Committee (TC) of Signal Processing Society:
| Audio and Acoustic Signal Processing (AASP) | 292 |
| Bio Imaging and Signal Processing (BISP) | 119 |
| Design and Implementation of Signal Processing Systems (DISPS) | 54 |
| Image and Multidimensional Signal Processing (IVMSP) | 450 |
| Industry Technology Track (ITT) | 36 |
| Information Forensics and Security (IFS) | 79 |
| Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP) | 168 |
| Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP) | 80 |
| Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing (SAM) | 171 |
| Signal Processing Education (SPED) | 14 |
| Signal Processing for Communications and Networking (SPCOM) | 222 |
| Signal Processing Theory and Methods (SPTM) | 366 |
| Speech Processing (SP) | 505 |
| Spoken Language Processing (SLP) | 114 |
| Special Sessions | 65 |
A tremendous effort has been put into a thorough review of all submitted papers to ensure a high quality conference. Special thanks go to the TC review coordinators (mainly TC Chairs) in the efforts to organize several hundred reviewers for timely review completion of all papers: Malcolm Slaney (AASP), Jean-Christophe Olivo-Marin (BISP), Dimitri Van De Ville (BISP), Wonyong Sung (DISPS), Jarmo Takala (DISPS), Gaurav Sharma (IVMSP), James Fowler (IVMSP), Fa-Long Luo (ITT), Mauro Barni (IFS), Tülay Adali (MLSP), Paris Smaragdis (MLSP), Philip Chou (MMSP), Oscar Au (MMSP), Mats Viberg (SAM), Dominic K. C. Ho (SAM), Wayne Padget (SPED), Doug Williams (SPED), Dim Davidson (SPCOM), Geert Leus (SPCOM), Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo (SPCOM), Abdelhak Zoubir (SPTM), Vikram Krishnamurthy (SPTM), John Hansen (SP/SLP), and Douglas O’Shaughnessy (SP/SLP).
This year’s ICASSP set an acceptance rate at 49% in order to ensure its quality as a flagship conference. After some adjustments among TCs, a total of 1370 including special session papers were finally accepted. We worked closely with the TC review coordinators and greatly appreciate their full cooperation and timely responses to all of our requests. They managed to obtain three reviews for most papers and sometimes even more for critical cases. The success of this conference should be primarily attributed to their efforts along with fair and good reviews.
Accepted papers by countries are illustrated in the following chart.
As a complement to the regular papers in the technical program, twelve special sessions have been included. Special Session Chairs, Kazuya Takeda, Akira Taguchi, and Masayuki Kawamata, have put together a program with emerging signal processing topics of high interest to the community. We would like to thank the individual organizers of the sessions and the authors of the contributed papers.
Prior to the start of the regular technical program, fifteen half day tutorials will be held on Sunday and Monday. Keikichi Hirose, Kiyoharu Aizawa, and Yoshikazu Miyanaga, Tutorial Chairs, are responsible for the tutorials program having selected a range of topical areas that cover the field of signal processing.
Kenji Nakayama. Takahiro Saito, and Shoji Makino, Plenary Chairs, are responsible for organizing plenary sessions, by identifying and recruiting internationally recognized experts. We are pleased to announce the following four world renowned plenary speakers for the ICASSP 2012 program:
- “Audio and Acoustics Signal Processing: the Quest for High Fidelity Continues,” Karlheinz Brandenburg, Professor, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany,
- “From Signal Processing to Information Extraction of Speech: A New Perspective on Automatic Speech Recognition” Chin-Hui Lee, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA,
- “Can Signal Classification Speak Mathematics?” Stephane Mallat, Professor, École Polytechnique, France,
- “Computational Neuroscience, Brain Decoding and Neurofeedback,” Mitsuo Kawato, Director, ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Japan.
After tutorial programs on Sunday and Monday, the regular technical program starts on Tuesday. It is organized into eleven different time slots during four days. Each time slot has four or five parallel oral sessions, eight parallel poster sessions, and one or two special sessions. The decision on whether a paper goes into a lecture or a poster session was made to keep papers of similar and related technical contents in the same place. At ICASSP, neither of lecture sessions nor poster sessions is considered to be more prestigious than the other -- high quality papers will be found in both venues.
This year’s conference will also feature a workshop: “Signal Processing Education: Asian Perspectives and Practices.” This workshop is planned to commemorate an ICASSP in an Asian country and provides participants with opportunities to share Asian perspectives and practices in signal processing education and networking among educators, engineers, and students. It will start with presentations by four representative speakers from Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, followed by a panel session. Akinori Nishihara and Hironori Yamauchi have devoted themselves to planning and organizing this special workshop as Promotion Chairs. A free lunch box per person is provided on the first-come-first-served basis up to 40 starting at noon before the workshop begins. No registration is necessary. Please join this workshop and share your ideas, thoughts, and experiences with others.
The “Show & Tell” event on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon was organized by Local Arrangement Chair, Yoshinobu Kajikawa, and will put the icing on the cake. Show & Tell presentations include hardware/software demonstrations of some of the state-of-the-art technologies by research groups in industry, academia and government.
At this 37th ICASSP, we will recognize five students for their outstanding papers in quality with ICASSP 2012 Student Paper Award in a range of signal processing topics. We extend our sincere appreciations to the generous support of NEC Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, and Google Inc. for these awards. We are grateful to TC review coordinators for forwarding candidates to us. Award winners selected by Award sponsors and the ICASSP 2012 Organization Committee will be presented a check and a plaque at the welcome reception on Monday evening.
We wish to thank all TC review coordinators for helping us create an attractive and exciting program for this year’s conference. Ultimately, the quality of the conference is determined by the efforts of the authors and speakers; we appreciate their participation and look forward to learning about their research. Finally, we express our utmost gratitude to Michael Simon, Lance Cotton and Billene Mercer from Conference Management Services, whose prompt and professional assistance was invaluable in putting together the technical program.
Akihiko Sugiyama and Hitoshi Kiya
Technical Program Chairs, ICASSP 2012