Welcome to the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society

Posted: 2010-01-10

It's my greatest honor to serve as your president for the next two years. The IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) has shown remarkable growth from its humble beginnings as the IEEE Neural Networks Council in the early 1990s. Since then, we have grown into a thriving and expanding society, with an international representation of devoted volunteers, a strong sense of community, and a vision for addressing some of the most challenging real-world issues with biologically motivated computational paradigms.

Our current activities are well represented by our publications and conferences. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, and IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation routinely rate high in their respective categories. Among the 409 computer science journals indexed by the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) in 2008, our three flagship publications are all with impact factors of 3.6 or higher and ranked at 10th, 11th, and 12th among all Electrical and Electronics Engineering Publications. IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, and IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, as newer additions, have paved paths to a greater success in years to come. Our main conferences, the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, and the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation each continue to showcase well-regarded peer-reviewed technical contributions and attract growing participation from around the world. These three meetings will once again come together under a single roof from July 18-23 in Barcelona, Spain for the 2010 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence. Additionally, the bi-annual IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, which was inaugurated in 2007, witnessed another overwhelming success in 2009-Nashville, featuring 24 concurrent symposia in specialized topics. Look out for the next edition of SSCI 2011 in Paris for even greater success.

Our technical activities are catered by eleven technical committees and many task forces that comprise of leading and active contributors. You are encouraged to participate in these working groups to help shape the strategic and tactical advances that are required for our society to flourish. It is through the concerted efforts of motivated individuals and these grass-root organizations that novel ideas are born, new symposia are initiated, and special issues of our transactions are proposed. In addition, our Standards Committee offers a balance, openness, due process, and consensus program dealing with standards, data sets, and software of interest to people working in CI.

Our member activities routinely support distinguished lecturers at our local chapters. We offer webinars of timely interest on the Web for viewing at your convenience and one of the most generous student assistance programs for traveling to conferences. We also have a new program to support researchers from developing countries to present their works at CIS-sponsored conferences. Graduates of the Last Decade (GOLD) subcommittee is dedicated to serving the needs of undergraduate and graduate students as well as practicing engineers who have graduated within the last ten years and are working in the field of computational intelligence.

Beginning 2009, we have also placed a specific focus on education outreaches, including multimedia tutorials at your disposal, summer schools around the world, and a repository of education materials. Extensive efforts will also be made to develop course modules both at undergraduate and graduate levels in computational intelligence. I am confident that these efforts will help bring computational intelligence to a higher level of recognition and visibility in today¡¦s social, economical, and technological world.

I look forward to serving your needs as the IEEE CIS president, and I encourage your suggestions. Please feel free to contact me at gyen@okstate.edu. I will be pleased to hear from you, and I welcome your participation in advancing the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society into the future.

Gary G. Yen
President of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (2010-2011)