As the Technical Committee on Scalable Computing (TCSC) has already emerged as one of the most successful TCs within the IEEE Computer Society, it is important to maintain that leadership and at the same time create new innovative programs to further enhance for the benefit of its members and the overall community. I am fully committed myself in next two years as the TCSC chair with the executive committee to realize the following objectives effectively, and to assist our members more friendly to maintain their competitive edge, and to bring in some fresh perspectives and out-of-the-box solutions.
The following key program and initiatives are my plan for our general members:
1. continue to support the existing premier conferences. To minimize duplication of effort or proliferation of unsustainable conferences to ensure the quality and vitality of each of our sponsored TCSC conferences. Additionally establish the IEEE TCSC best paper and best student awards at each sponsored conference and the overall TCSC Outstanding Contribution award to attract the top research work presented and exchanged at the conferences and within TCSC community.
2. negotiate with IEEE CS to initiate an annual CD/DVD Super Compendium of the TCSC sponsored proceedings to all TCSC members. Initiate a TCSC Multimedia Series for all TCSC members comprises of a set of electronic media publications focusing on key talks/presentations given at various TCSC (likely including sister committees) sponsored conferences over the last few years. Each volume of the series focuses on some technical topic area and contains relevant presentations by key researchers from academia and industry.
3. continue to establish an effective, convenient and state-of-the-art TCSC Web portal to let our community members feel this is one of most important/comprehensive resource center for their careers and for all technical aspects of scalable computing and allied technologies as well as for their applications to relevant interdisciplinary domains.
4. initiate a weekly digest to its members, namely ScalCom digest, a weekly collection of articles, CFP, funding opportunities and job advertisements on topics related to Scalable Computing. Index of all archived issues of the Digest can be browsed via the TCSC web portal as well.
5. promote industry forums to be hosted at TCSC conferences to develop better links between industry and academia. Focus on substantially increasing the involvement level of industrial and governmental members into various activities related to conferences, resources, news and the sponsorships.
6. actively participate in the Society's Technical Activities Board (TAB) and ensure that the needs of our members are recognized and met. To explore with other sister/related technical committees to upgrade to a joint IEEE technical council resulting in a much higher level of clout and synergy for our community.
7. initiate a job/career/visiting forum (hosted at TCSC web portal and included in the weekly digest) to assist members in transition (specially for fresh graduates and emerging researchers) looking for faculty positions and industrial jobs, to help established members looking for mutual visits and collaborations.
8. expand further the regional TCSC forums to develop stronger links within and between regional communities.
9. encourage the technical area coordinators to further elaborate the Technical Resource Center, which is basically a website providing introductory information on the topic, various challenges in that area, links to major R&D projects around the world in that area.
10. actively seek more and more new and energetic volunteers (either younger and senior) to involve in the technical committee to contribute their new ideas and fresh perspectives. Recognize their contributions by nominating them for various IEEE TCSC service awards.
In particularly, I want to emphasize and promote the following key program and initiatives for our young and emerging members:
1. in the spirit of the long-running ACM programming contest, the TCSC's HPC Programming Contest challenges students in their HPC knowledge, and their problem solving, programming, and teamwork skills. It serves as an innovative initiative to assist in the development of top students in the HPC field. The contest will provide a platform for TCSC, academia, and industry to focus attention on the best and brightest of next generation HPC professionals. The host conference is to be determined.
2. through the grants, scholarships and the travel supports from industry, government and IEEE, treat students as first class participants and offer the similar services to those full-fee paying attendees.
3. enhance the mentor program for young researchers by establishing a body of international experts who are willing to volunteer their time and energy for guiding or commenting on research proposals and projects.
4. further develop the Ph.D. Forum and Young Researcher Forum to provide a means for PostDoc researchers, PhD students and other student researchers to share valuable information and pointers that help in creating valuable research contributions.
It is planned that the Young Researcher forum organizes an annual workshop in conjunction with a TCSC conference to provide a means for young researchers to present their thoughts and ideas on the workshop topic, network with peers. The Ph.D forum at one of our premier conferences (to be decided) is poster session for Ph.D. students to present and discuss their dissertation research with people in the TCSC community. The Forum is open to all members of the scalable computing community and is free-of-charge. It is co-located with one premier conference to attract the large TCSC audience, but conference registration is not required in order to attend this event.
The above forums will also distribute student travel funding allocations for TCSC conferences in the future.
5. continue the educational programs by encouraging the sharing of thoughts on teaching and teaching material, by establishing an active book donation program and by exploring the inclusion of emerging topics within SC in IEEE-CS/ACM Curriculum guidelines.
6. attract more student members into the TCSC community through my connections in the China and others Asian countries such as Korea, India etc. due to their large and still fast going CS student populations.
Although this seems like a long list of objectives to be achieved, I am confident of realizing them with your kind support and trust.
Biography: Dr. Laurence T. Yang is a professor in computer science at St Francis Xavier University, Canada. His research includes high performance computing, embedded systems, ubiquitous/pervasive computing and intelligence. He has published more than 200 papers in refereed journals, conference proceedings and book chapters in these areas. He has been involved in more than 100 conferences and workshops as a program/general conference chair and more than 200 conference and workshops as a program committee member. He served as the vice-chair of IEEE Technical Committee of Supercomputing Applications (TCSA) until 2004, currently is in the executive committee of IEEE Technical Committee of Scalable Computing (TCSC), and of IEEE Technical Committee of Self-Organization and Cybernetics for Informatics, and of IFIP Working Group 10.2 on Embedded Systems, and of IEEE Technical Committee of Granular Computing. In addition, he is the editors-in-chief of several international journals and few book series. He is serving as an editor for around 20 international journals. He has been acting as an author/co-author or an editor/co-editor of 30 books from Kluwer, Springer, Nova Science, American Scientific Publishers and John Wiley & Sons. He has won four Best Paper Awards; one IEEE Best Paper Award, 2007; one IEEE Outstanding Paper Award, 2007; three Best Paper Nominations; Distinguished Achievement Award, 2005; Distinguished Contribution Award, 2004; Outstanding Achievement Award, 2002; Canada Foundation for Innovation Award, 2003; University Research/Publication/Teaching Award 00-02/02-04/04-06.
