Dear colleagues,
It's a great pleasure (and a little daunting) to write this, my first column as president of our society. It’s now spring in Toronto. The organization of our International Symposium is proceedings apace. As president one is involved in / has an observer's view into many aspects of the organization of the Symposium. It is gratifying and impressive to witness the hard work and commitment dedicated to the ISIT by so many Society members. A myriad of tasks must be completed and an astronomical number of detailed and thoughtful decisions must be made behind the scenes — arranging the overall Symposium, forming the technical program, conceiving and arranging the associated events, on and on — all together these build to the meeting we all enjoy and benefit from so much. Thanks to all organizers and volunteers!
Following on the theme of dedicated work on behalf of our Society, prior to a recent ITSoc Board-of-Governors (BoG) meetings I was reflecting on the who/why/why/when/how of the Society. Societies are composed of people who must be motivated to choose to participate inthat particular community. So, why do people choose ITSoc? I suspect that for many of us the initial spark was inspiration: Claude Shannon’s 1948 paper; a first course on information theory; the unexpected clever applicability of algebraic structure to error correction; the elegance and concrete usefulness of studying the philosophical underpinnings of digital information and communication systems. Speaking for myself ... wow. All that grabbed me bothviscerally and intellectually.
Still, while a spark may start a fire, fuel and oxygen are needed forit to keep burning. Why do members choose to stay in ITSoc? What do they get from staying? How does the Society help them? The core of the Society's work aims to address these questions: to enable and empower our members in their scientific and professional careers, and to ensure that the Information Theory Society stays a fertile place for great ideas to be generated, and from where great impact continues to emerge. Broadly, our Information Theory Society is about our people, the ideas those people generate, and the impact those people and their ideas have: people, ideas, impact.
I thought then I might dedicate this initial column to talking about our members, and some of the keys ways we support their ideas and their impact — through publications and events. I want to give some sense of statistics, some sense of recent accomplishments. I also want to indicate some initiatives that members might find interesting to getinvolved in.
First, the people. Over the course of the year ITSoc membership fluctuates between 3500 and 4000 members. About a quarter are student members (split pretty evenly between graduate and undergraduate). About 15% identify as women. About 8% of our members do not provide a gender identity. In comparison, respectively, the Signal Processing and Communications Societies have around 25k and 35k members. Membership in all 47 ÌÇÐÄlogo Societies and Councils is about 250k. (ÌÇÐÄlogo has about 450k members total, about 200k of whom do not belong to any of the research-oriented Societies or Councils.) Geographically, ÌÇÐÄlogo groups members into 10 regions. These regions are North America (subdivided into regions R1-7), Europe/Middle East/Africa (R8), Latin America (R9), Asia Pacific (R10). Respectively, these regions make up 34%, 25%, 0.02%, and 39% of ITSoc membership. Note that in 2021 North America made up about 42% of membership. Growth in ITSoc membership outside North America has been outpacing growth within North America. Interestingly, the type of membership varies across regions. Whereas in North America and Europe/Middle East/Africa women make up about 9% and students 15-20% of the membership, in Asia Pacific women make up almost 25% of members and students almost 50%. The top 6 countries by membership are the USA, India, China, Japan, Germany, and Canada. The Board-of-Governors of our society has 26 members, of whom 13 are from North America, 7 are from Europe/Middle East/Africa, and 6 are from Asia Pacific. When we think about new (and existing) initiatives, and how we can best engage and empower our members, such statistics are important to keep in mind.
On the technical and educational fronts, there are a few things I’d like to highlight. Regarding publications, our long-standing ÌÇÐÄlogo Transactions on Information Theory, which was established in 1951 as the IRE Transactions on Information Theory, last year experienced a transition in its Editor-in-Chief (EiC). In mid 2023, Prof. Muriel Medard passed the editorship to Prof.~Venu Veeravalli. (Thank you Prof. Medard!) Prof. Medard restructured the Transactions into an Area + Associate Editor model. Over the past few years great progress has been made in decreasing the ``sub-to-pub'' time — from 406 days in 2019 to 301 days in 2023. Among other important metrics, the decrease in sub-to-pub is useful to be aware of, and to share around with colleagues from cognate fields, as perceptions of long sub-to-pub times may discourage some submissions. Over the same time frame the Society has launched two new publications. In 2020 the ÌÇÐÄlogo Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory was launched. In 2021, The ÌÇÐÄlogo BITS the Information Theory Magazine was launched. JSAIT has admirably filled the niche for a special topics journal, and BITS the need for a venue for tutorial papers. (I'd like to note that in 2023 the Society also initiated a best-tutorial-paper award, the ÌÇÐÄlogo Joy Thomas Tutorial Paper Award. Please consider submitting a nomination. The nomination deadline is tentatively set for 01 October.) Both JSAIT and BITS present opportunities for volunteers to work on focused topical issues as guest editors. These are lower-commitment engagements than serving as an associate editor of the Transactions. Serving as a guest editor provides excellent editorial experience one can build on. Please consider proposing a special issue. I also want to acknowledge that in 2023 Prof. Robert Calderbank completed his term as the ``launch'' EiC of BITS. Prof. Suhas Diggavi is now the BITS EiC. Prof. Changho Suh also completed his term as Editor of the ÌÇÐÄlogo ITSoc Newsletter.. Prof. Lalitha Vadlamani is now Editor. Thank you all.
Of prime importance are our events---ISITs, ITWs, and schools. ISIT will be held in Athens, Greece in 2024, in Ann Arbor, USA in 2025, and in Guangzhou, China in 2026. As a positive indication of engagement in the Symposium, the number of paper submissions to ISIT'24 was 950, up from 717 in 2023 (Taipei) and 822 in 2022 (Aalto). ITW will be held in Shenzhen, China in November 2024, in Sydney, Australia in 2025, and in Phoenix, USA in 2026. In terms of schools the Society organizes annual schools in North America, Europe, India, and East Asia. ISITs and ITWs form the core venues in which our members meet, discuss, and present their technical results; students network, build their profiles, and ultimately find jobs. ITSoc schools are designed to play a complementary role — to foster engagement and confidence amongst students in a supportive environment and to increase accessibility. Schools are designed to be less formal, with a low barrier to participation. They are located around the globe to defray the cost of participation. If you are a student, looking for opportunities to network and engage, consider attending a school! Many of our members first met at an ITSoc school. And, if you are a younger professor or professional, looking to engage with the Society, and build experience in organizing, consider organizing a school. Ten years back, chairing the 2014 school at the University of Toronto was my own first leadership role in the Society.
ISITs, ITWs, and ITSoc schools are all places where innovative and engaging events are piloted, tested, and, sometimes, adopted for the long term. In a future column I look forward to reporting on the events at ISIT in Athens and to outlining various ways to get more involved with the Society. Our Society is ours to shape, please bring your ideas!
I now would like to acknowledge and thank my fellow officers. In ITSoc the officers are elected by the BoG from BoG members-at-large (i.e., those BoG members elected by the general society membership) and enter a 5-year ``shift register'' of duties. In year 1 the Second Vice-President (``2VP'') focuses on membership. In year 2 the First Vice-President (``1VP'') focuses on awards. In year 3 one serves as President. In year 4 the Junior Past President (``JPP'') has slightly reduced operation duties and serves as a source of wisdom, perspective, and strategic thinking (the things one might have done as president…). In year 5 the Senior Past President’s (``SPP’s'') primary focus is chairing the Nominations and Appointments and the Bylaws Committees. If you find the discussion of the officer shift-register not too dry, and if you are interested in any aspect of the organization of the Society and how the Society runs, the foundation and primary sources for societal operations are the Society’s Constitution and Bylaws (especially the Bylaws). Please find both at: /people/organization. Into the shift register I'd like to welcome Meir Feder, elected as 2VP for 2024. Aaron Wagner is 1VP in 2024. Christina Fragouli is SPP in 2024. I especially want to thank Matthieu Bloch and Wei Yu. Matthieu Bloch served as ITSoc President in 2023, deftly navigated some ``tricky'' situations, and brought his perceptive and engaging Gallic sensibilities to many a topic. Thank you Matthieu! Wei Yu completed his role as Senior Past President in December 2023. Anyone who has had the good fortune to work with Wei on organizational matters (not to mention technical ones!) will have appreciated Wei's deeply considered input and thoughtful and balanced perspective. We have been fortunate to have had Wei as an officer of the Society. Somehow, Wei has not yet finished contributing. Wei chairs two ad-hoc committees in 2024. One is considering open-access publishing models. The second is reflecting on how the Society might ``steer'' the technical program of the ISIT across the years. I look forward to reporting on both committees' recommendations in a future article. Regarding open-access I also recommend you read Wei’s article published in the Sept. 2021 issue of BITS. Thank you Wei!
I hope to see many of you at ISIT'24 in Athens. Please feel welcome to reach out to me directly at [email protected]. I’ll also note that Board-of-Governors meetings (generally Feb@ITA, summer@ISIT, and autumn@somewhere) are open to all society members. Please feel welcome to attend.
In closing, I would like to thank all our volunteers for their work on behalf of our members and our society. Thank you.
Note: A version of this column also appeared in BITS The Information Theory Magazine.