President's Column

Bruce Hajek

These are interesting times indeed for the Information Theory community. Communication bandwidth, perhaps the world's only truly renewable resource, is being harnessed at ever increasing rates. The challenge to better understand and efficiently use this resource has never been more forcefully evident. The IEEE Information Theory Society is prepared to continue its important role in meeting this challenge.

Thanks to the skillful efforts of the Editor-in-Chief, Richard Blahut, and his outstanding team of Associate Editors and Publications Editor, Joseph O'Sullivan, the quality of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory remains very high. The Transactions backlog is down to its target level, and the publication delays experienced over the past year have been substantially reduced, and will soon be eliminated. Thus, if you have any papers sitting on your desk waiting for your review, get to it---we're waiting for you. A special issue on algebraic geometry codes is to appear this year. Robert Calderbank will take over the Editor-in-Chief position in September, and Steve McLoughlin will take over as Publications Editor. The transition is sure to be a smooth one, and the Transactions is destined to be strong for years to come, even if it is someday not delivered in hardcopy.

The Information Theory Society Newsletter continues to thrive under its able Editor, Ramesh Rao. Not only is IEEE on the World Wide Web (address: http://www.ieee.org), but so is an expanded version of the Information Theory Society Newsletter (http://daftar.ucsd.edu), thanks to Ramesh. From the Newsletter homepage, with two clicks you can take a look at online descriptions of the program for the April Information Theory Workshop, or the CISS Conference at which our Board of Governors will meet, or the 1995 International Symposium on Information Theory.

The Society offers a full menu of meetings this year. There is the Information Theory, Multiple Access and Queueing Workshop in St. Louis in April, the Information Theory Workshop in Rydzyna, Poland in June, and the International Symposium on Information Theory, in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada in September. Daniel Costello played an important role in coordinating these and future meetings. I understand there is an open time slot for a focused workshop in the fall of 1996. Suggestions?

The Society is currently on a sound financial footing. We are fortunate to have Tom Fuja continue for another year as the Treasurer of the Society, and to have Sarena Zabin serve as Secretary. The IEEE Information Theory Society enjoyed moderate but steady growth in membership the past few years, but last year membership somewhat decreased. Together with our able Membership Chairman, Roger Cheng, the Board of Governors and I will monitor this trend and consider measures to increase membership.

The Board of Governors will meet at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 22, at Johns Hopkins University (in connection with the Conference on Information Sciences and Systems), on Monday evening at the Workshop in Rydzyna, and again during the Symposium in September. All members of the Society are welcome to attend these meetings. One issue we will discuss this year is whether to increase the frequency of Shannon Lecturers, offering one award each year. Another is whether to make the Society's Symposium an annual event. In the next Newsletter issue I'll comment on what I think are the main challenges faced by the Society. If you have comments on that or any other item, I'd be delighted to hear from you (b-hajek@uiuc.edu).

__________________________________________________________________