It was in 1911 that the first ever cargo flight in Britain took place to transport electric light bulbs (OSRAM).
And do you know where from?
Yes, you guessed it right, from Brighton to Hove, a good two miles away – a step in the long association of this city with Electricity and Electrical Engineering! Whether it is this connection with electrical engineering that tipped the scales when the IEEE SPS bestowed upon us the job of organising ICASSP 2019 is sure to be debated by future historians of the subject, but for us this challenging experience did require quite a few “light bulb moments”. Indeed, nothing in one’s career can prepare us for becoming an ICASSP TP Chair, a task of truly monumental scale, and for getting onto the right road to success, we owe our sincere thanks to our predecessors in this role, especially Alle Jan ven Der Veen and Dan Schonfeld. Their know-how and do’s and don’ts have been invaluable throughout.
So, whatever your experience in Brighton has been so far, now you can sit comfortably, relax, and be sure and secure in the knowledge that you are amongst friends, old and new. With over 50% of the states in the USA having at least one Brighton, for many the stay here will be a real home from home. For those interested in heritage, there are over 3360 listed buildings in Brighton & Hove – over 500 to choose from for every day of ICASSP.
With 3510 submissions, 1725 accepted papers, at an acceptance rate of 49.1%, and 41 presentations of journal articles recently published in Society’s Transactions and Letters, we are the biggest ICASSP in the history of this conference series. This task required the whole IEEE SPS to be mobilised, and indeed 97% of submitted papers received three or more reviews, a whopping total of 10,500 reviews. Our most heartfelt gratitude goes to our authors and reviewers from all over the world, whose technical expertise and sheer dedication has made our task so much more pleasurable. It therefore comes as little surprise that our first “light bulb” moment has been to introduce the Distinguished Reviewer Award, to recognise those colleagues who gave the most valuable help towards ensuring the highest technical quality of our meeting.
We are proud to say that the 2019 ICASSP technical programme not only keeps up with the times, but offers a number of forward-looking contributions, especially in the emerging areas of Smart Environments, Big Data and Internet of Things. Indeed, just within the scope of Machine Learning for Signal Processing, we have seen almost a doubling of the number of papers in two years, from 261 papers in 2017, to 336 papers in 2018, and 496 papers in 2019. We are also delighted that our authors have kept an eye firmly on practical relevance of their work - the number of papers in the Design and Implementation of Signal Processing Systems has more than doubled since last year.
ICASSP 2019 has the promotion of Signal Processing Innovation at the very core of its activities, and innovation starts with education. It is fortunate that our 2018-2020 ICASSPs coincide with the anniversaries of the conception or publication of some of our most celebrated mathematical tools, such as 60 years of the least mean square algorithm (LMS), 60 years of the Kalman filter, 60 years of I. J. Good’s prime-factor Fast Fourier Transform, 55 years of Cooley-Tukey’s Fast Fourier Transform, and 25 years of the particle filter, to mention but a few. Our “Back to the Future” events therefore proudly feature an Education Panel and two special sessions on DSP Education, which both celebrate the success of our discipline and chart ways to teach DSP in the modern curriculum. We are grateful to our pioneers Anthony Constantinides, Fred Harris and Alan Oppenheim for being the pillars of our ICASSP 2019 Education Panel, and for their role in educating generations of researchers who are carrying the torch of our discipline well into the 21st century.
We have in store other forward-looking intellectual sparks, such as the promotion of Quantum Information Science, with a Tutorial, a Special Session and a Panel dedicated to this emerging area. Another innovation falls rather into the “under-the-light-bulbs” category, whereby for the first time in the history of ICASSP the two evening sessions will serve the delegates to present their work while mingling with their colleagues in a more relaxed setting enhanced by the provision of catering. We have also introduced a new stream of ETON-Primer lecture series (Experts-TO-Non-experts), conceived as easy-to-digest but incandescent-to-inspire 45-minute overviews of topics du jour, aiming to help the participants decide upon future directions of their research.
With our Plenary Co-Chairs, Jonathon Chambers, Zoran Cvetkovic, and Geoffrey Li, we have lined up a list of plenary speakers of the highest stature, who will no doubt deliver gripping talks that will excite many in the audience, especially our youngest colleagues. Our participants can look forward to the talks by Sir David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge (“Understanding Uncertainty”), Corinna Cortes from Google Research (“Machine Learning”), Mischa Dohler from King’s College London (“Internet of Skills”), and Hermann Ney from RWTH Aachen University (“Automatic Speech Recognition”). We also take this opportunity to congratulate the 2018 winner of the Norbert Wiener IEEE SP Society Award, John Treichler, whose award-receiving keynote our delegates also eagerly anticipate.
Unlike previous years, we decided to provide more opportunities for organizing special sessions on pertinent topics, and in this spirit, we initially accepted 40 proposals for special sessions. The peer review was of the same rigour as for regular papers, and we were delighted to eventually accept 30 special sessions with 184 papers. We extend our thanks to our Special Session Co-Chairs Simon Godsill and Stephan Weiss, and to all special session chairs for adding the icing onto our ICASSP programme. Our tradition of offering full-blown 3-hour tutorial continues, with 15 exciting topics covered by foremost international experts - a big thank you to our Tutorial Co-Chairs Dave Bull, Patrick Naylor, and Mark Plumbley.
We are delighted to continue with the tradition of hosting “show-and-tell” demonstrations of innovative work by industrial and academic researchers. Please feel free to visit the Demo Booths to experience first-hand the potential of state-of-the art products and advanced prototypes which use DSP as an enabling technology, to meet and greet fellow researchers who got their hands dirty on successful practical applications, or even just to collect some give-aways.
There are many individuals and institutions whose involvement has been instrumental to the success of ICASSP 2019. A big “thank-you” goes to Lance Cotton of CMS Solutions for tirelessly guiding us through the maze of tasks related to handling of ICASSP submissions, and to Caroline Johnson of IEEE for being so proactive in `de-convolving’ our interaction with the IEEE Office into a smooth and painless experience. We also extend our thanks to all the colleagues mentioned in the General Chairs’ address. Our closest “partners in crime,” the Technical Committee Chairs, Special Interest Group Chairs, and Area Chairs deserve special mention, too. Last, but not least, we are indebted to our next generation DSP researchers who volunteered to make the experience of holding the first ICASSP in England a unique one.
With the Technical Programme full to the brim, we take the responsibility for making you work so hard - as if our participants needed any encouragement in this direction! Sunset in Brighton at this time of the year is around 21:00, which gives us plenty of time to meet colleagues (and join in the English love of discussing the weather), in between and after the technical sessions. DSP researchers traditionally play hard, too, and Brighton offers plenty of opportunity for that with its numerous establishments ready for you to reflect on the technical sessions until the wee hours of the next day, and the highest density of restaurants per capita in the UK. To feed our spirits, the Brighton Festival, https://brightonfestival.org/, coincides with our conference, offering theatre, music, comedy, outdoor and family events, and more. And, for those who suffer from jetlag, there are an estimated 614,600,000 pebbles to count along the 6 miles of beach - what a wonderful opportunity for a collaborative DSP project.
The first cargo plane took off from Brighton, and, it is our hope, as TP Chairs, that ICASSP 2019 will also become a runway, helping many budding research careers to take off. Notable careers that took off in Brighton include ABBA winning the Eurosong Contest with Waterloo in 1974, and Pink Floyd’s first performance of Dark Side of the Moon in 1972.
Again, we very much welcome you at ICASSP 2019 in Brighton, a venue where Signal Processing Meets Needs of Modern Humankind.
Enjoy the experience!
Andrzej Cichocki, Petar Djurić, and Danilo Mandic