At the time of this writing, the first week of 1996 is coming to a close, and it is a natural time to reflect on the accomplishments of the Information Theory Society in 1995 and to look forward to the challenges of the New Year. Two excellent workshops and an extraordinary International Symposium punctuated 1995. The Information Theory Workshop in St. Louis on Information Theory, Multiple Access and Queuing, organized by Bixio Rimoldi and Bruce Hajek, covered some of the most important problems in communications and networks today and emphasized again the relevance and contributions of our discipline. The topically broad-based Workshop organized by Witold Holubowicz and Paul Siegel in Rydzyna, Poland, continued the long-standing international involvement of the Information Theory Society and was truly a special cultural experience for those that were able to attend. Of course, the International Symposium held in Whistler, B. C., Canada, and organized by General Co-Chairs Vijay Bhargava and Mike Pursley along with Technical Program Chair Ian Blake, was technically stimulating, historically significant, and socially enjoyable, and continued a tradition of successful symposia.
The successes in 1995 owe a great debt to last year's president, Bruce Hajek, whose attention to detail and broad vision helped keep the Society running smoothly. Bruce, in his December 1995 column, acknowledged those that served in various leadership positions during 1995 and their contributions are also enthusiastically recognized here.
For 1996, Sergio Verdú of Princeton University has been elected First Vice-President and Thomas Ericson of Linkoping University in Sweden has been elected Second Vice-President, and we are pleased that Behnaam Aazhang of Rice University has agreed to serve as Treasurer and Greg Pottie of UCLA will serve as Secretary. Additionally, Tom Fuja of the University of Maryland-College Park takes over as Chair of the Workshops and Symposia Committee, Urbashi Mitra of Ohio State will serve as Membership Chair, and Michelle Effros of Caltech is shouldering the task of Newsletter Editor. Ramesh Rao will expand his role as the IT Society's World Wide Web Editor. As one of the duties of First Vice-President, Sergio will appoint and chair the Awards Committee.
The three meetings of the Board of Governors in 1996 will be held at Princeton University during CISS '96 March 20-22, at the Information Theory Workshop in Haifa(June 9-13), and at ISITA '96 in Victoria, B. C., Canada (Sept. 17-20). The 1997 International Symposium on Information Theory to be held in Ulm, Germany, will begin to take shape this year, and as usual, one of the primary topics at the BOG meetings will be to select sites and organizers for future workshops and symposia.
Of course, along with the technical meetings that give us a chance to interact with our peers, the IT Transactions are the `Heart and Soul' of the Society. Rob Calderbank of AT&T Bell Labs continues as Editor-in-Chief and Steve McLaughlin of Rochester Institute of Technology is continuing his role as Publications Editor. As a Society, we can take pride in the technical contributions of our members, and I am continually impressed with the high quality of the papers appearing in the Transactions and of the technical presentations at our conferences. It is a (perhaps) unique hallmark of our society that, by exploring fundamental limits on information processing and transmission, we have a major impact on a wide range of practical applications.
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, I would enjoy hearing from you. My e-mail address is j.d.gibson@ieee.org.