GRSS spoke with IEEE MTT-S president, Prof. Stefano Maci and IEEE MTT-S president, Prof. Nuno Borges Carvalho on what they’re looking forward to with the partnership which will mainly benefit its members.
As the partnership with IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS), IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) and IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) continues this year, Maci and Carvalho expressed in an interview with GRSS their optimism in the outcome of this collaboration. For both presidents, all three societies share disciplines in one way or another.
“I really think that our fields are becoming more cross-disciplinary,” Carvalho said. He continued that the microwave theory and techniques side is moving towards systems. “One part of our systems are radars and remote sensing hardware so having a partnership with guys that actually know how to use remote sensing makes all the sense for MTT-S. So this is one reason why we can leverage our activities together,” he added.
For Maci, the partnership is an interesting opportunity to grow. “If we don’t have any interaction among them [other societies], it’s very difficult to have good new ideas.”
Planned activities
During the 2023 November AdCom meeting in Zurich, Maci and Carvalho, together with IEEE GRSS president, Dr. Mariko Burgin, discussed the activities that will be offered to members following the partnership.
In the interview, Carvalho mentioned the plan for intersociety panels as “on top of the table” and one that “we can do right away.” According to the MTT-S president, the idea is to bring specialists from different societies to a single panel and discuss technical topics.
Another activity that is on the pipeline is the distinguished lecture program. “We just discussed the possibility of three Distinguished Lecturer programs with the support of the three societies,” Maci said. He explained that the Distinguished Lecturer program is organized by one society and will choose speakers to travel across universities and institutions to give lectures. “But as far as i know, this is the first time that we will try to do a joint distinguished lecturers program – one person that will represent the three societies. This means one professional that can talk about it [topic] in the name of the tree societies,” Maci added.
All three societies also proposed to have common chapters around the world. For Maci, having common chapters for all three societies is “the best starting point.”
“If we have a chapter that is shared by the three societies, this facilitates a lot of movement. Even the movement of the distinguished lecturers for instance but even the normal attraction of student members,” Maci expressed.
Other plans also include joint conferences and joint publications.
Gaining from the partnership
There is a lot to benefit from this collaborative relationship with all three sister societies which includes sharing of resources. For instance, Carvalho mentioned that there are a significant number of MTT-S members that work for satellite communications, radars, payload and antenna arrays. For him, “these all make sense in the concept of bringing GRSS specialists close to microwave and RF specialists.”
Carvalho added that as a hardware society that builds circuits to devices for communication and transmission, “I think we can gain a lot by bringing the specialists, bringing the knowledge of GRSS on more high layered and high level concepts that we don’t have at the moment.
Meanwhile, Maci is positive that young students from their membership can take advantage of this partnership and “can extremely benefit from intersocietal aspects.” As an example, Maci explained that in the future, a student can do a collaborative project that will involve the knowledge of all three societies.
Looking forward
The IEEE AP-S and MTT-S presidents are looking forward to projects and initiatives together. Carvalho emphasized that a lot of activities can be done in the future especially with the technical committees of the societies.
“We have huge amount, more than two dozens of technical committees and some of them actually overlap with some of the GRSS technical committees, so i think having workshops together, having panels together and who knows, having a common conference, we have a very nice conference on space hardware for instance, it will be nice that we can collaborate with GRSS and bring them also together to this conference and bring papers from different societies,” Carvalho explained.
And with the significant amount of joint possibilities all three societies display, Carvalho thinks the partnership “will continue for a long time.”
IEEE GRSS president Dr. Mariko Burgin has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Prof. Stefano Maci, president of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S), and another MoU Prof. Nuno Borges Carvalho, president of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) on June 17, 2023.
Burgin mentioned in the past that this partnership will open an array of promising projects targeted to the benefit of each society’s members, and will be an opportunity for all three sister societies to grow and contribute to each other’s overall success.
Contact:
Stephanie B. Tumampos, MMMSc
IEEE GRSS Chief of Publicity and PR
Email: stephtumampos@ieee.org
