DS Technical Committee Meetings are typically held twice a year at Globecom and ICC. All are welcome to attend. 

IEEE ComSoc Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC)

Committee meeting held at Globecom 2011, Houston, Texas

Date: 8 Dec. 2011
Time: 12:00 - 13:30
Place: Room 344A, Hilton Americas

12 attendees:

Riccardo Raheli, UParma
Eui Seok Hwang, LSI
V. J. Kumar, CMU
Zining Wu, Marvell
Lara Dolecek, UCLA
Qiang Duan, Pennsylvania SU
Peter Müller IBM Zurich
Ying Y. Tai, SanDisk Corporation
Taisir El-Gorashi, ULeeds
Jaafar Elmirghani, ULeeds
Sedat Olcer, IBM Zurich
Tiffany Jing Li, Lehigh U


Meeting called to order at 12:15. Tiffany Jing Li, DSTC Chair, conducting.


1) DSTC Officers elected @ Globecom 2010

Chair: Tiffany Jing Li
Vice Chair (Industry): Haitao (Tony) Xia
Vice Chair (Academia): Riccardo Raheli
Secretary: Warren Gross
Treasurer: Kui Cai


2) Conference activities


GLOBECOM 2011, Houston, TX, USA - Data Storage Track

Chair: Alex Dimakis (dimakis@usc.edu)
Total number of active (submitted) papers reviewed: 28
Total numbers of TPC-Member Reviewers and Ordinary Reviewers invited: 123
Total number of valid review-reports received: 114
Average reviewing scores for all papers in symposium: 3.2 (computed using the EDAS weighting).

Good number of submissions compared to previous ICC and Globecom in recent years (about 15-20).

2 data storage sessions (12 accepted papers):

SAC03: Storage in Flash and Emergying Memory Technologies
Chair Bane Vasic (university of Arizona, USA)

SAC05: Distributed Storage and Coding Theory
Chair: Alex Dimakis (University of Southern California, USA)


A session related to cloud storage & data centers is present within the Communications QoS, Reliability, and Modeling Symposium:
CQRM01: Cloud and Data Center
Chair: Toktam Mahmoodi (King's College London, UK)


On the subject of "cloud", Riccardo Raheli describes the newly formed ComSoc Ad-Hoc Committee on Cloud Communications & Networking (CloudComm). This committee is chaired by Marcus Brunner and had its first meeting on Wednesday (yesterday). The committee is tasked to lead and coordinate ComSoc's efforts in various communications/networking issues related to Cloud Computing. Current members of the committee on behalf of the DSTC are Alex Dimakis and Riccardo Raheli. Riccardo attended the meeting to point out that there is strong interest of the DSTC on distributed cloud storage. The Ad-Hoc Committee can be reached at http://community.comsoc.org/groups .
Interested DSTC members can join the ad-hoc committee.


ICC 2012, Ottawa, Canada

A Data Storage Track is missing from the technical program, in particular from the Selected Areas in Communication Symposium. As a partial compensation, the DSTC has been granted a half-day workshop on "Emerging Data Storage Technologies", with Warren Gross, Kui Cai and Alex Dimakis as Co-Chairs.

Workshop topics include: signal processing, coding, control, hard disks and disk arrays, flash memories, distributed storage networks, storage management, visualization and security.

Workshop will be either Monday or Friday (pending decision).

Extended deadline for workshop paper submission: January 7, 2012.

All workshop papers must receive 3 quality reviews in order to be included in IEEExplore. Workshop may include a keynote speech and/or a panel discussion.

Further news about ICC 2012:
* Paperless - Tablet and software/downloadable program.
* Cost for Tablet (~$75), software/data (~$20) - registration fee will still be on same level or lower than that of ICC 2011.


GLOBECOM 2012, Anaheim, California, USA

Zining Wu is the DSTC representative. A Data Storage Track, within the Selected Areas in Communications Symposium, has been granted with Zining Wu as Co-Chair. TPC is formed.


ICC 2013, Budapest, Hungary, June 9-13, 2013

DSTC representative and Symposium Co-Chair: Tiffany Jing Li (Lehigh U),  jingli@lehgih.edu .

TPC will be formed - please volunteer.


GLOBECOM 2013, Baltimore/Washington, Maryland, USA, Dec. 1-6, 2013

DSTC representative and Symposium Co-Chair: Edward Au (Huawei), edward.ks.au@gmail.com .

TPC will be formed - please volunteer.


ICC 2014, Sydney, Australia

DSTC representative: Brian Kurkoski (University of Electro-Communications)
<kurkoski@ice.uec.ac.jp>.


GLOBECOM 2014, Austin, TX, USA, Nov 16-20, 2014

DSTC representative: Lara Dolecek (UCLA) <dolecek@ee.ucla.edu>.


New volunteers to organize a Data Storage Track in future conferences are welcome.

DSTC officers and representatives are expected to track the decision process at GITC meetings until a Data Storage Track at each specific ICC/GLOBECOM conference has been granted.

DSTC representatives are expected to attend TPC Meetings at ICC/GLOBECOM immediately prior to the proposed ICC/GLOBECOM.


ICNC 2012, Maui, Hawaii, January 30 --February 2, 2012.

Data Storage Technology and Applications Symposium @ International Conference on Computing, Networking &Communications (ICNC)

Chairs:  Tony Xia (Haitao.Xia@lsi.com),
 Andrew Jiang (ajiang@cs.tamu.edu).
 
Submission deadline was: July 5, 2011.

AREAS are broad:  Physical layer design/architecture (SAS, SATA,PCI express, serdes); Data storage for cloud computing; Cost versus performance, power issues for data storage centers;  Disk arrays;  Emerging storage technologies such as NAND flash, DRAM, phase change memory;  Coding and data security for storage systems;  Signal processing and coding techniques for magnetic recording systems includes timing recovery, equalization, detection and error-correction codes;  System-on-chip (SOC) architecture and optimization; Data compression for digital storage, including audio/video;  Channel characterization, modeling of media noise and nonlinearity; Noise modeling and analysis for data storage systems; Measurement, testing, and performance optimization; New concepts for data storage systems; and more.  
 
 
3) Best Paper Award & Best Student Paper Awards


2010 Best Paper Award

2010 Committee Chair: Andrew Jiang (ajiang@cs.tamu.edu).
2010 Committee: Andrew Jiang, Kui Cai (DSI), Sidharth Jaggi (Chinese U of Hong Kong), Yingquan Wu (Link-a-Media), Krishna Narayanan (Texas A&M U).
Nomination deadline was: July 31, 2011.
Papers dealing with data storage and published in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding during 2010 are eligible.

The committee received seven nominations (two papers were doubly nominated).

Award winner:

A. G. Dimakis, P. B. Godfrey, Y. Wu, M. J. Wainwright and K. Ramchandran ,"Network Coding for Distributed Storage Systems," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 56, Issue 9, Sept. 2010.


2010 Best Student Paper Award

2010 Committee Chair: Tony Xia (Haitao.Xia@lsi.com)
2010 Committee: Tony Xia (LSI), Warren Gross (McGill U), Xingkai Bao (Alcatel-Lucent), Alex Dimakis (USC)
Nomination deadline was: July 31, 2011.
Papers dealing with data storage, published in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding during 2010, and having a student as first author are eligible.

The committee received three nominations.

Award winner:

Y. Cassuto, M. Schwartz, V. Bohossian, and J. Bruck, "Codes for Asymmetric Limited-Magnitude Errors With Application to Multilevel Flash Memories", IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION THEORY, VOL. 56, NO. 4, APRIL 2010.


2011 Data Storage Best Paper & Best Student Paper Awards

Nomination deadline: July 31, 2012.

Papers must deal with data storage and must appear in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding in 2011.

Student Paper Award: Student author must be first author (or if authors are alphabetically ordered, must have contributed to more than 50% of work).

Nominations and self-nominations for these awards are welcome. Please email the relevant Committee Chair.


4) Policies and Procedures (P&P)

The DSTC current P&P charter is available at:

http://committees.comsoc.org/spfs/policies.html .

The general ComSoc P&P guidelines for Technical Committees are available at:

http://www.comsoc.org/about/documents/pp/7 .

In particular, according to ComSoc P&P, TC Officers must be elected by "active members":

"A TC voting member shall be any individual who has: 1) "attended"
(physically present, by teleconference, or via electronic means for
virtual TC meetings) two or more of the prior five regularly
scheduled TC meetings; or 2) contributed substantially to the TC
activities. (The TC Secretary shall maintain an attendance list for
each such meeting. That attendance list shall be part of the Meeting
Minutes prepared and issued by the Secretary."

The P&P of the DSTC must be revised to match the general ComSoc guidelines. In particular, the DSTC wishes to adopt the following P&P, to be approved at the next meeting.

Members: Any one can and is welcome to become a member of the Data
Storage Technical Committee.

An active (Voting) Member must satisfy at least one of the following conditions:

* Participated either in person or through teleconferencing in at least 2 DSTC meetings in the past three years (i.e. in the past 5 prior DSTC meetings)

* Is a DSTC officer and is actively involved in TC activities

* Organized and chaired a data storage track at ICC/GLOBECOM in the past three years

* Served in a Data Storage Track/Workshop TPC at least twice in the past three years at ICC/GLOBECOM.

Only active members have the right to vote for elections and other
issues through a voting process. Electronic voting will be made available
as soon as details are worked out.


5) Special issues

A special issue in IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) could be considered, with the following possible topics:

* Cloud Storage and Data Centers
* Flash memory
* Emerging Technology in Storaged?

Lara Dolececk volunteers to propose and guest edit a JSAC special issue.


6) Steering Committee

The DSTC should consider the institution of a Steering Committee composed of 6 to 8 members and based on volunteering & nominations, with final approval by the officers. Members of the committee should run for a five year term, with possibility of renewal.

The following members are asked and willing to be part of the Steering Comittee:

V. J. Kumar, CMU
Zining Wu, Marvell
Lara Dolecek, UCLA
Sedat Olcer, IBM Zurich.


5) Other business

Riccardo Raheli mentions the ComSoc initiative "Best readings in Power Line Communications". Other similar initiatives are undergoing by ComSoc as he learned by the TAC meeting he attended. The DSTC might consider proposing a similar initiative.

There are no other items for discussion.


The meeting is adjourned at 13:30.


----- minutes prepared by Riccardo Raheli

IEEE ComSoc Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC)
Committee meeting held at ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan

Date: 7 June 2011
Time: 12:00 - 13:30
Place: Room 558, Convention Center

Attendees:

1. Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma
2. Lara Dolecek, UCLA
3. Zining Wu, Marvell Semiconductors
4. Vo Tam Van, Toyota Technological Institute
5. Brian Kurkoski, Univ. of Elecro-Communications
6. Byung-Hak Kim, TAMU


Meeting called to order at 12:00. Riccardo Raheli, DSTC Vice-Chair for Academia, conducting. The DSTC Chair Tiffany Jing Li could not travel to Japan due to a visa problem. She wishes to apologize with the attendees.


1) DSTC Officers elected @ Globecom 2010

Chair: Tiffany Jing Li
Vice Chair (Industry): Haitao (Tony) Xia
Vice Chair (Academia): Riccardo Raheli
Secretary: Warren Gross
Treasure: Kui Cai


2) Conference activities


ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan

A Data Storage Track has not been included in the technical program.


GLOBECOM 2011, Houston, TX, USA - Data Storage Track

Chair: Alex Dimakis(dimakis@usc.edu)
Total number of active papers reviewed: 28
Total numbers of the TPC-Member Reviewers and Ordinary Reviewers invited, respectively: 123
Total number of valid review-reports received: 114
Average reviewing scores for all papers in your symposium: 3.2 (computed using the EDAS weighting).

Good number of submissions compared to previous ICC and Globecom in recent years (about 15-20).


ICNC 2012, Maui, Hawaii, January 30 --February 2, 2012.

There will be a Data Storage Technology and Applications Symposium at the International Conference on Computing, Networking & Communications (ICNC). Chairs are Tony Xia and Andrew Jiang. Submission Deadline is July 5, 2011. Web site: http://edas.info/N10291 .


ICC 2012, Ottawa, Canada

A Data Storage Track is missing from the technical program, in particular from the Selected Areas in Communication Symposium. As a partial compensation, the DSTC has been invited to submit a Workshop proposal. The TC has proposed a half-day workshop on "Emerging Data Storage Technologies", with Warren Gross, Kui Cai and Alex Dimakis as Co-Chairs.
Topics include: signal processing, coding, control, hard disks and disk arrays, flash memories, distributed storage networks, storage management, visualization and security. In addition to contributed papers, invited papers and a Panel discussion could be considered, provided they are compatible with the general ComSoc Conference Guidelines.


GLOBECOM 2012, Anaheim, California, USA

Zining Wu is the DSTC representative. A proposal for Data Storage Track has been submitted with Zining Wu as Co-Chair and decision is pending. A TPC meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. No further news are available to the attendees.


ICC 2013, Budapest, Hungary, June 9-13, 2013

A request for proposals was received on Friday. A proposal for Data Storage Track was submitted by the DSTC Chair, despite the short notice. The presentation at the GITC meeting, held yesterday, included this track within the SAC Symposium.


GLOBECOM 2013, Baltimore/Washington, Maryland, USA, Dec. 1-6, 2013

DSTC representative must be determined.


Lara Dolecek and Brian Kurkoski offer to volunteer as DSTC representatives at coming conferences.


DSTC representatives, must attend at least two TPC Meetings at ICC/GLOBECOM immediately prior to the proposed Conference.


3) Best Paper Award & Best Student Paper Award


2010 Best Paper Award

Committee Chair: Andrew Jiang (ajiang@cs.tamu.edu)
Nomination Deadline: July 31, 2011
Papers must deal with data storage and must have been published in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding during 2010.


2010 Best Student Paper Award

Committee Chair: Tony Xia (Haitao.Xia@lsi.com)
Nomination Deadline: July 31, 2011
Papers must deal with data storage, have a student as first author (if authors are alphabetically ordered, the student author must have contributed to for more than 50% of work) and must have been published in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding during 2010.


Nominations and self-nominations for these awards are welcome. Please email the relevant Committee Chair.


4) Policies and Procedures (P&P)


Each TC has to undergo a "recertification process" by ComSoc every two years. The DSTC has to verify that its current P&P, available at http://committees.comsoc.org/spfs/policies.html , are compatible with the the general ComSoc P&P for Technical Committees available at http://www.comsoc.org/about/documents/pp/7 .

In particular, according to ComSoc rules, TC Officers must be elected by "active members":

"A TC voting member shall be any individual who has: 1) "attended"
(physically present, by teleconference, or via electronic means for
virtual TC meetings) two or more of the prior five regularly
scheduled TC meetings; or 2) contributed substantially to the TC
activities. (The TC Secretary shall maintain an attendance list for
each such meeting. That attendance list shall be part of the Meeting
Minutes prepared and issued by the Secretary."

During the next DSTC meeting at Globecom 11, necessary revisions of the current P&P will discussed and possibly approved.


5) Other business


There are no other items for discussion.


The meeting is adjourned at 13:15.

----------------------minutes prepared by Riccardo Raheli

Minutes of the DSTC meeting, Miami, Florida, USA, December 9, 2010

Attendees:

1. Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma
2. Xinde Hu, STEC-Inc
3. Haitao Xia, LSI Corporation
4. Derek Leong, Caltech
5. Euiseok Hwang, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
6. Cai Kui, DSI Singapore
7. Shu Lin, University of California, Davis
8. Xinmiao Zhang, Case Western Reserve University
9. Qin Huang, University of California, Davis
10. Ting Jin, BUPT
11. Di Li, BUPT
12. Shuguang Cui, Texas A&M University
13. Liuqing Yang, Colorado State University
14. Seungjune Jeon, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
15. Youjian Liu, University of Colorado
16. Guoliang Xue, Arizona State University
17. Tolga Duman, Arizona State University
18. Tao Jiang, Huazhong University of Technology
19. Yuanxing Lee, LSI Corporation
20. Jehoshua Bruck, Caltech
21. Anxiao (Andrew) Jiang, Texas A&M University
22. Vo Tam Van, Toyota Technological Institute
23. Lu Lu, LSU
24. Yang Yang, SHRCWC
25. Zhensheng Zhang, Institute Of Electrical And Electronics Engineers, Inc.
26. Alex Dimakis, University of Southern California
27. Warren Gross,  McGill University
28. M. Fatih Erden, Seagate Technology
29. Tiffany Jing Li, Lehigh University
30. Fanggang Wang, BUPT
31. Francois Leduc-Primeau, McGill University
32. Ravi Motwani, Intel
33. Eitan Yaakobi, UCSD


1) DSTC Officer term of service changes from three years to two years

2) DSTC Officer elections

New DSTC officers have been elected for 2011-2012:

Chair: Prof. Tiffany Jing Li
Vice Chair from Industry: Dr. Haitao (Tony) Xia
Vice Chair from Academia: Prof. Riccardo Raheli
Secretary: Prof. Warren Gross
Treasurer: Dr. Kui Cai

3) Globecom2010, Miami, Florida, USA

TC representative and SAC Symposium Co-Chair is Haitao (Tony) Xia

The DS Track within the Selected Areas in Communications Symposium
received a total of 15 submissions, 7 papers have been accepted and formed into two oral sessions.

The two technical (oral) sessions were successful with an average number of
about 30 attendees.


4) Future conferences

* ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan

TC representatives are Tiffany Jing Li, Leigh University, and Edward Au,
Huawei Technologies. A DS track has not been included in the technical
program. A successive workshop proposal was also not accepted.

A discussion on this matter follows. Strong committment to more closely
follow the decision process for future conferences is essential and
encouraged. In particular, attendance of the following meetings by a
DSTC representative must be secured:

- GITC (GLOBECOM & ICC TECHNICAL COMMITTEE)
- TAC (TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES COUNCIL)
- TPC (TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE) for each specific Globecom and ICC.

* Globecom 2011, Houston, TX, USA

TC Representative is Alex Dimakis, University of Southern California.

* ICC 2012, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

TC Representatives are Warren Gross and Kui Cai.

* Globecom 2012, Anehem, California, USA

TC Representatives are Zining Wu.


5) 2009 Best Paper Award and 2009 Best Student Paper Award

The committee recevied 6 nominations for the 2009 Best Paper Award.
The number of nominations for the 2009 Best Student Paper Award is two.

* 2009 best paper award:
 

Awardees:  Anxiao (Andrew) Jiang, Robert Mateescu, Moshe Schwartz, Jehoshua Bruck

Paper:  "Rank Modulation for Flash Memories," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 55, pp. 2659-2673, June 2009.

* 2009 best student paper award:
 

Awardee:  Anantha Raman Krishnan, Rathnakumar Radhakrishnan, Bane Vasic, Aleksander Kavcic, William Ryan, Fatih Erden

Paper:  "2-D Magnetic Recording: Read Channel Modeling," IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, vol. 45, pp. 3830-3836, October 2009.

6) Other business

- Prof. Duman brought out question regarding to the qualification of active members of Data Storage Society.


----------------------minutes prepared by Haitao (Tony) Xia
 

Minutes of the DSTC meeting, Cape Town, South Africa, May 26, 2010

Attendees:

1. Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma
2. Ashish Jagmohan, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
3. Michele Franceschini, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
4. Derek Leong, Caltech
5. Euiseok Hwang, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
6. Damian Morero, UNC Argentina
7. Rajiv Agarwal, Stanford University & Link-A-Media Devices
8. Alek Kavcic, University of Hawaii
9. Pietro Savazzi, University of Pavia


1) DSTC Officer elections

The following positions are open for the next term 2011-2013:

Chair
Vice Chair from Academia
Vice Chair from Industry
Secretary
Treasurer

Elections will take place at Globecom 2010. The current list of
candidates is:

Chair:
* Tiffany Jing Li, Lehigh University, tjl3@lehigh.edu

Vice Chair from Academia:
*Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma, Italy, raheli@unipr.it

Vice Chair from Industry:
* Fatih Erden, Seagate Technology, Fatih.Erden@seagate.com
* Haitao, Xia, LSI, Haitao.xia@lsi.com

Secretary:
* Kui Cai, Data Storage Institute, Singapore, CAI_Kui@dsi.a-star.edu.sg.

Further nominations can be considered. They are particularly sought
for the positions with no candidates (Treasurer).


2) ICC 2010, Capetown, South Africa

TC representative and SAC Symposium Co-Chair is Riccardo Raheli.

The DS Track within the Selected Areas in Communications Symposium
received a total of 14 submissions, of which:
* 2 out of scope papers (which were nevertheless reviewed)
* 3 papers on distributed storage networks.

A team of 10 TPC members secured 42 high-quality reviews by the TPC
members themselves or delegated colleagues. All these colleagues are
gratefully thanked. As a result of the review process and consequent
negotiation within the Symposium, 8 papers were accepted to:
* form 1 technical session with 6 oral presentations
* contribute with 2 papers to a poster session.

The technical (oral) session was successful with an average number of
about 25 attendees.


3) Future conferences

* Globecom 2010, Miami, FL, USA

TC representatives are Haitao (Tony) Xia, LSI, and William Radich,
Seagate. Symposium Co-Chair for DS Track within SAC Symposium is Haitao
(Tony) Xia. Information on number of submissions/expected acceptances
is not available to attendees.

Rajiv Agarwal announces that Globecom 2010 will feature a "Workshop on
the Application of Communication Theory to Emerging Memory Technologies".
TC members are warmly encouraged to submit and attend. Attendence will
be free of charge for all Globecom 2010 attendees. Deadline for paper
submission is July 2, 2010.

* ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan

TC representatives are Tiffany Jing Li, Leigh University, and Edward Au,
Huawei Technologies. A DS track has not been included in the technical
program. A successive workshop proposal was also not accepted.

A discussion on this matter follows. Strong committment to more closely
follow the decision process for future conferences is essential and
encouraged. In particular, attendance of the following meetings by a
DSTC representative must be secured:

- GITC (GLOBECOM & ICC TECHNICAL COMMITTEE)
- TAC (TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES COUNCIL)
- TPC (TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE) for each specific Globecom and ICC.

* Globecom 2011, Houston, TX, USA

TC Representative is Alex Dimakis, University of Southern California.

The technical program structure has not been defined yet. TPC meeting
is being held concurrently to this meeting, because it was scheduled
only recently and the collision could not be avoided. Likely, DSTC
is not represented in the concurrent Globecom 2011 TPC meeting.

* ICC 2012, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

TC Representative has not been nominated yet (to the knowledge of the
attendees).


4) JSAC Special Issue

The JSAC Special issue on "Data Communication Techniques for Storage
Channels and Networks", guest edited by Sedat 謑鏴r, Aleksandar Kavcic,
Bane Vasic, Bruce Wilson, and Lihao Xu, was published in February 2010.
It includes 17 papers.


5) IEEE promotions

The TC actively encourages and recommends the promotion of its eligible
members to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow rank.

The TC is currently sponsoring some candidates for senior membership
and fellowship grade elevation.

Senior Membership:
Dr. George Methew
Dr. Haitao (Tony) Xia
Dr. Indukumar Kalahasthi
Dr. Fatih Erden.

Fellowship:
Professor Bene_Vasic
Professor Vijayakumar Bhagavatula.


6) 2009 Best Paper Award and 2009 Best Student Paper Award

The committee recevied 6 nominations for the 2009 Best Paper Award.
The number of nominations for the 2009 Best Student Paper Award is not
known to the attendees. Both Awards will be presented at Globecom 2010.

The 2008 Best Paper Award Winners (presented at Globecom 2009) are:

* 2008 best paper award:
"A general construction of constrained parity-check codes for optical
recording", by Kui Cai and Kees Immink, IEEE Trans Com, 2008

* 2008 best student paper award:
Discrete-Input Two-Dimensional Gaussian Channels With Memory: Estimation
and Information Rates Via Graphical Models and Statistical Mechanics, by
Shental, O.; Shental, N.; Shamai (Shitz), S.; Kanter, I.; Weiss, A.J.;
Weiss, Y., IEEE Trans Information Theory, April 2008, pp 1500 -1503.


7) 2009 IEEE Distinguished Lecturer

Professor J.R. Cruz (Fellow, IEEE), University of Oklahoma, was appointed
Distinguished Lecturer for 2009 and 2010 following the nomination of the
DSTC.


8) Other business

- Priority for future conferences: consolidate and increase the number
of submissions in the field of data storage systems and networks.

- Ashish Jagmohan and Michele Franceschini announce that IBM TJ Watson
Research Center is planning to host a workshop on "Non-Volatile Memory
Devices" in October 2010.


----------------------minutes prepared by Riccardo Raheli
 

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Dec. 1st, 2009

 ----------------------minutes prepared by Yuanxing Lee

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Dresden, Germany, June 15th, 2009

 ----------------------minutes prepared by Sedat Oelcer and Fatih Erden

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, New Orleans, LA, USA, Dec 3rd, 2008

      Our representatives, i.e. delegated symposia co-chairs, for the future conferences are: 

                 Acceptance notification: May 15, 2009

                 Final manuscript: Sept 15, 2009

                 Publication: Q1 2010.

 4) 2007 best paper awards

   -2007 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

   -2007 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

 5) Inclusion of storage area networks and security

  -We are encouraged to actively -- seek involvement of professionals in the areas of Storage Area Networks and Storage Security to actively participate in the DSTC and publish/present their work at ICC & GLOBECOM conferences. Future calls for papers and conference notifications should be emailed to professionals in these areas. Also, the pending issue of JSAC will seek to include papers in Storage Area Networks and Storage Security.

 6) IEEE promotions

-We need to actively seek promotions of our members to IEEE Fellow and Senior Member rank. We are currently sponsoring some candidates for fellowship and senior membership grade elevation.

 7) Distinguished lecturers

-Nominated two distinguished lecturers to IEEE COMSOC on August 16, 2008.

 8) Misc

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Beijing, China, May 24th, 2008

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Washington DC, USA, Nov. 29th, 2007

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Tiffany Jing Li, Yuanxing Lee, Bruce Wilson, Xinde Hu, Ruwan Ratnayake, Krishna Narayanan, Henry Pfister, Jing Jiang, Fatih Erden, Alvin Wang, Riccardo Raheli, Tolga Duman, Sedat Olcer, Marcus Marrow

1)  TC Recertification: Once in 3 years the technical committee needs to be recertified by ComSoc. Our technical committee passed the recertification, but two areas were recognized as weak, and should be improved

- It is recommended that at least 2 special issue of JSAC (Journal on Selected Areas in Communications) be sponsored by the TC per decade. It has been almost a decade since the TC sponsored a special issue of JSAC. This should be rectified. It is recommended that a new special issue be kicked off soon. Since the process will take 2-3 years, it is essential that the process be started immediately.  

-  Increase activity by organizing workshops at least twice per decade. Efforts are already under way for GLOBECOM 2007. Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are organizing a Workshop on Data Storage with in GLOBECOM 2007.

-  Recognize TC members by successfully promoting them to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow grades.

2) GLOBECOM 2007 report: GLOBECOM 2007 was another successfully organized conference from the perspective of our Technical Committee.

- 14 papers were submitted. 6 papers were accepted and all were presented in one session as part of the General Symposium.

-  Marcus Marrow and Bruce Wilson organized a Workshop on Data Storage as part of GLOBECOM 2007 with 6 invited speakers and attendance of over 20. 

3) ICC 2008 report: Preparations for ICC 2008 (Beijing) are under way 

- DSTC will be represented in the Data Storage Track of the General Symposium. Ned Varnica is the General Symposium co-chair responsible for the Data Storage Track.

- 20 papers submitted in Data Storage. 7 (or 8) will be accepted. The paper selection process is still under way. Authors will be informed once the final decision is made.  

4) Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2008 and onward) the Data Storage TC will be represented by a separate track of the General Symposium (or the Symposium on Selected Areas in Communications)  

Our representatives, i.e. delegated symposia co-chairs, for the future conferences are: 

-   ICC 2008 (Beijing), Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell) and Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University)

-   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose) and Henry Pfister (Texas A&M University)

-   ICC 2009 (Dresden): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich) and Shaohua Yang (LSI, San Jose)

-   GLOBECOM 2009 (Hawaii): Fatih Erden (Seagate, Pittsburgh)

-   ICC 2010 (Cape Town): Riccardo Raheli (University of Parma, Italy) 

5) JSAC special issue: Sedat Olcer will take the lead role and recruit 4 additional guest editors who will start the process of organizing a JSAC special issue on Data Storage. The proposal is expected to be submitted at the beginning of 2008.  

6) 2006 best paper awards: Two papers were selected as best papers of 2006, ad the awards were presented at this meeting 

-   2006 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

"Iterative Soft-Input Soft-Output Decoding of

Reed--Solomon Codes by Adapting the Parity-Check Matrix,"

by Jing Jiang and Krishna R. Narayanan, IEEE TRANSACTIONS

ON INFORMATION THEORY, vol. 52, No. 8, pp. 3746- 3756,

August 2006.

-   2006 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

"Multidimensional Signal Processing and Detection for

Storage Systems with Data-Dependent Transition Noise,"

by Riccardo Pighi, Riccardo Raheli, and Umberto Amadei.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, vol. 42, No. 7,

pp. 1905-1916, July 2006, 

7)  Inclusion of Storage Area Networks and Security: We are encouraged to actively seek involvement of professionals in the areas of Storage Area Networks and Storage Security to actively participate in the DSTC and publish/present their work at ICC & GLOBECOM conferences. Future calls for papers and conference notifications should be emailed to professionals in these areas. Also, the pending issue of JSAC will seek to include papers in Storage Area Networks and Storage Security. 

8) Elections: Alek Kavcic ended his term as Chair of the Data Storage Technical Committee. The following were the nominations for the officers of the Technical Committee 

Chair: Yuan Xing Lee (automatic promotion from vice chair position)

Vice-Chair (industry): Bruce Wilson

Vice-Chair (academia): Tiffay Jing Li (continuation)

Secretary: Haitao Xia (continuation)

Treasurer: Fatih Erden 

9)  Election results:

Bruce Wilson:        for (13)  against (0)     abstained(1)

Fatih Erden:            for(12)          against(1)      abstained(1)    

10) Newly elected officers:  

Chair: Yuan Xing Lee (automatic promotion from vice chair position)

Vice-Chair (industry): Bruce Wilson

Vice-Chair (academia): Tiffay Jing Li (continuation)

Secretary: Haitao Xia (continuation)

Treasurer: Fatih Erden 

11.  Misc: None.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Alek Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, June 24th, 2007

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Yuanxing Lee, Bruce Wilson, Moon Ho Lee, Edward Au, Hua Hu, Sedat Olcer, Mehmet Seskinoz, Lara Dolecek, Stefano Galli

1)  Name Change: The board of Governors approved the name change for the technical committee from "Signal Processing for Storage Technical Committee" to "Technical Committee on Data Storage". The new name will better reflect all technical areas represented by the community.

2)  TC Recertication: Once in three years the technical committee needs to be recertified by ComSoc. Our technical committee passed the recertification, but two areas were recognized as weak, and should be improved:

 - It is recommended that at least two special issue of JSAC (Journal on Selected Areas in Communications) be sponsored by the TC per decade. It has been almost a decade since the TC sponsored a special issue of JSAC. This should be rectified. It is recommended that a new special issue be kicked off soon. Since the process will take 2-3 years, it is essential that the process be started immediately.

-  Increase activity by organizing workshops at least twice per decade. Efforts are already under way for GLOBECOM 2007. Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are organizing a Workshop on Data Storage within GLOBECOM 2007.

-  Recognize TC members by successfully promoting them to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow grades.

3)   ICC 2007 report: ICC 2007 was another successful conference from the perspective of our Technical Committee.  

 - 35 papers were submitted. All 12 accepted papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee appeared grouped in 2 contiguous sessions (one oral session and one poster session) in a single day. No data storage papers appeared in scattered sessions throughout the conference.

- The co-chairs Yuan Xing Lee, Thomas Conway and Haitao (Tony) Xia did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions within the General Symposium.

- The following paper was selected as the Best Paper in Signal Processing and Coding for Storage at ICC 2007.

R. Todd and J. R. Cruz, "Computing Maximum-likelihood Bounds for Reed-Solomon Codes over Partial Response Channels", University of Oklahoma

4)   GLOBECOM 2007 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC, USA) are under way  

 - TCDS will be represented in the Data Storage Track of the General Symposium. Alek Kavcic is the General Symposium co-chair responsible for the Data Storage Track.

- Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are co-chairing the Data Storage Workshop within GLOBECOM 2007. Talks by invited speakers will be presented at the workshop.

5)   Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) the Data Storage TC will be represented by a separate track of the General Symposium (or the Symposium on Selected Areas in Communications) 

Our representatives, i.e. delegated symposia co-chairs, for the future conferences are: 

-   ICC 2008 (Beijing): Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell Semiconductor) and Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University). 

-   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Henry Pifster (Texas A&M University). 

- ICC 2009 (Dresden, Germany): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich), Shaohua Yang (Marvell Semiconductor)

-   GLOBECOM 2009 (Hawaii): Fatih Erden (Seagate, Pittsburgh). 

6)   JSAC special issue: Sedat Olcer will take the lead role to recruit 3-4 guest editors who will start the process of organizing a JSAC special issue on Data Storage.  

7)   IEEE promotions: Yuan Xing Lee will recruit an IEEE Fellow from the ranks of the TCDS to start a committee that will nominate TCDS members for promotions to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow Ranks.  

8)  2006 best paper awards:  Two award committees have been formed

- 2006 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Alek Kavcic (University of Hawaii) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by an official ComSoc plaque.

-  2006 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Tiffany Jing Li (Lehigh University) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by a $400 prize and an official ComSoc plaque.

- Award announcement date: October 2007.

- Award presentation date and place: At the TC DS meeting at GLOBECOM 2007 in Washington DC.

9)  Miscellaneous: None.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Alek Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, San Francisco, USA,   Nov. 29th, 2006

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Yuanxing Lee, Zhiyuan Yan, Zhengya Zhang, Lara Dolecek, Bruce Wilson, Shaohua Yang, Marcus Marrow, Haitao Xia, Sedat Olcer, Ksenia Lakovic, Tiffany Jing Li, Jae Moon, Henry Pfister, Ghurunwruhan Ganesan, Shayan Srinivasa, Shashi Chilappagani, Sun-How Jiang, Nedeljko Varnica

1)  Recertification: Once in 3 years all TCs are graded on their activity.

- Outcomes: (1) Recertified (2) 1-year probation (3)Termination.

- Criteria: (1) Regularity and attendance of meeting; (2) Conference co-sponsorship; (3)Transparency of officer elections/web-site; (4) Recognition of members of community: best paper awards, nominations to IEEE senior members and fellows, distinguished lecturers; (5) Organizations of journal special issues.

- Self-evaluation: (1) Positives: meetings, conferences, best paper awards; (2) Improvements needed: promotions, distinguished lecturers, organization of journal issues, officers.

2)  Globecom 2006 report (by Nedeljko Varnica): Globecom 2006 was a success from the perspective of

    our Technical Committee.

 - The papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee had been grouped contiguously into two oral sessions of 12 papers and poster session of 3 papers in General Symposium.

-  Nedeljko Varnica and Erozan Kurtas did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions.

3)   ICC 2007 report (by Yuanxing Lee): Preparations for ICC 2007 (Glasgow, Scotland) are well under

      way.  

 - At ICC 2007, SPS Society is allowed to have a separate symposium. Dr. Yuanxing Lee is the Symposium Chair, Prof. Tom Conway is the Co-Chair, and Dr. Haitao Xia is the TPC Chair.

- 27 papers were submitted and reviews were organized. Every paper received at least 3 reviews.

- 12 papers will be accepted and organized into one oral and one poster sessions.

4)   Election for new officers:  

 - Vice President for Academia: Since previous Vice President, George Matthew, went to industry, a new Vice President from academia was needed. Two candidates, Prof. Tiffany Jing Li and Prof. Bane Vasic were nominated, Prof. Tiffany Jing Li has been elected as Vice President.

- Vice President for Industry: Erozan Kurtas resigned, and election for new Vice President for industry will be held at ICC 2007. A call for nominations will be sent out and criteria for nomination will be announced.

5)   News from GITC:  

 - In future, the symposia names will be fixed (but slow evolving), by which GITC tries to avoid drastic name changes and avoid thematic overlaps.

- Where does DATA STORAGE fit, Signal Processing Symposium or General Symposium? 

  All the attendees chose General Symposium as the location where future data storage papers need to be submitted.

6)   Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) there will be a  reorganization of Symposia by the GITC. Alek Kavcic will be on the GITC work group that will reorganize the Symposia structures.  

Our representatives for the future conferences are: 

-   GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC): Alek Kavcic (Harvard University), Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Marcus Marrow (Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA).

-   ICC 2008 (Beijing, China), Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University) and Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell Semiconductor).

-   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Henry Pifster (Texas A&M University). 

-   ICC 2009 (Dresden, Germany): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich), Shaohua Yang (Marvell Semiconductor). 

7)   Name change for SPS technical committee (TC):  

 - Because of the phrase "signal processing" in the name of our committee, conference organizers always try to put us in the Signal Processing Symposium.

-  The paper statistics for our paper submission: Coding (45%), signal processing (35%), circuits (10%) and others: information theory, storage networks, (10%)

  All the attendees agreed to change our committee name into Data Storage Technical Committee. 

8)  Paper Awards:  

-   2005 best paper award:

Awardees: Aleksandar Kavcic, Xiao Ma, Nedeljko Varnica

Paper: A. Kavcic, X. Ma, N. Varnica, "Matched Information Rate Codes for Partial Response Channels," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 51, pp. 973-989, March 2005

-   2005 best student paper award:

Awardee: Shaohua Yang

Paper: S. Yang, A. Kavcic, S. Tatikonda, "The Feedback Capacity of Finite-State Machine Channels," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 51, pp. 799-810, March 2005.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Haitao Xia

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Istanbul, Turkey, June. 14, 2006

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Sedat Olcer, Mehmet Seskinoz, Fatih Erden, Bane Vasic, Tolga Duman, Joseph O’Sullivan, Riccardo Raheli, Erozan Kurtas

1)  ICC 2006 report: ICC 2006 was a success from the perspective of our Technical Committee.

 - For the first time in years, the papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee appeared grouped in two separate sessions. One session was in the Communication Theory Symposium, and the other session was in the Signal Processing for Communications Symposium. 10 papers were presented in these sessions, and no paper overlapped.

-  Bane Vasic and Erozan Kurtas did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions.

-  There was a glitch with one paper by Singla and O’Sullivan. The paper was accepted and appeared in the advanced conference program, but in the end the paper was not included in the proceedings. Alek Kavcic agreed to follow up with the conference organizers.

2) Globecom 2006 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco) are well under way.  

 - Initially, SPS TC was allowed to apply for a separate symposium at GLOBECOM 2006. The nominated Symposium Chair was Erozan Kurtas, and the nominated TPC Chair was Nedeljko Varnica.

- 30 papers were submitted and reviews were organized. Every paper received at least 3 reviews.

- Because the number of submissions did not warrant a full symposium, the papers in Signal Processing will be folded into the General conference, and organized into contiguous sessions.

- 15 papers will be accepted and organized into oral and poster sessions.

 3)      ICC 2007 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2007 (Glasgow) have started

 - SPS TC was allowed to apply for a separate symposium at ICC 2007. The nominated Symposium Chair is Yuan Xing Lee, and the nominated TPC Chair was is Haitao (Tony) Xia.

- If we do not get enough papers for a symposium, we will fold the papers into the General Conference. 

4)  Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) there will be a reorganization of Symposia by the GITC. Alek Kavcic will be on the GITC work group that will reorganize the Symposia structures. The criteria for organization will be:

 - Symposia titles will need to have continuity (thus far only a few symposia, such as the Communication Theory Symposium and the Signal Processing for Communication Symposium) have maintained the stability of Symposia titles.

- Overlap of topics should be avoided between the symposia and sessions should be organized so as to avoid mid-session migrations of attendees.

- Topics that do not generate large numbers of submissions (such as Data Storage) should be organized in the General Symposium. 

Our representatives for the future conferences are: 

-   GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Marcus Marrow (Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA)

-   ICC 2008 (Beijing), So far, Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University) has volunteered.

-   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): No representatives from SPS TC have been named yet. 

5)      Paper Awards: ComSoc has allowed every technical committee (TC) to present two paper awards per year. Most TCs do that by presenting a best paper award within their Symposia at GLOBECOM and/or ICC. Since our TC is small, and since we do not generate many paper submissions, we present two annual awards: 1) The best paper award, and 2) the best paper student award. 

-   2005 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Steven McLaughlin (Georgia Institute of Technology) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by an official ComSoc plaque.

-   2005 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Tolga Duman (Arizona State University) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by a $400 prize and an official ComSoc plaque.

-   Award announcement date: October 2006.

-   Award presentation date and place: At the SPS TC meeting at GLOBECOM 2006 in San Francisco.

 6)  Technical Committee Recertification: Every three years ComSoc needs to recertify all Technical Committees (TCs). The main criterion for recertification is activity of the TC. Inactive TCs will cease to exist. Alek Kavcic is involved in preparing the activity report for the SPS TC to present to ComSoc. The report is due in August 2006. 

7)   Elections of SPS TC officers: The SPS-TC officers elections are scheduled to take place at the SPS TC meeting at GLOBECOM 2007 in Washington DC. We will start accepting nominations a year prior to the elections.  

8)    Miscellaneous: The following miscellaneous topics were raised at the meeting.

 -   Increasing the activity of the SPS TC:

1.    Organize tutorials or workshops at one of the next ICC or GLOBECOM conferences. The issue raised though is that ComSoc views tutorials and workshops as a revenue-generating activity. Hence we need to organize a tutorial or workshop if the conference is organized at a site that can guarantee industry presence (such as the Silicon Valley, or Colorado area).

2.    Broaden the scope of activities to general ISI channels. This may not fly with ComSoc because ComSoc wants to avoid the overlap of topics. So, if we start organizing sessions that encompass general ISI channels, they will almost certainly overlap with Communication Theory or Wireless Symposia.

3.    Broaden the scope of topics to include: nanotechnologies for storage, optical storage, probe storage, etc. This is a suggestion that can be implemented immediately in the next call for paper.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, St. Louis, MO,   Dec. 1, 2005

Attendees:

Aleksandar Kavcic, Tiffany Jing Lee, Jin Xie, Shaohua Yang, Zheng Zhang

1) 2004 Best Student Paper Award: By the decision of the student award committee, the best student paper award for 2004 in the area of signal processing and coding for data storage was awarded to Zheng Zhang who recently graduated form Arizona State University, for the paper:

 "Achievable Information Rates and Coding for MIMO Systems over ISI Channels and Frequency-Selective Fading Channels",

  by Zheng Zhang, Tolga M. Duman, Erozan M. Kurtas, IEEE Transactions on Communications,   vol. 52, p. 1698, October 2004.

The winner was presented with a plaque and a $400 monetary prize. 

2) Best paper award: From 2006 onward, the SPS TC will award an annual best paper award, in addition to the student paper award. Thus, in the future, SPS TC will award two papers per year, one in the general category, and the other in the student category. Calls for nominations will be distributed in early 2006.

3) Conference organization: At GLOBECOM 2005, all data storage papers appeared in scattered sessions. This is perceived by the TC as a serious problem. Efforts are under way to prevent this from happening in the future. At ICC 2006, all papers will appear in contiguous sessions. From GLOBECOM 2006 onward, there will be a separate symposium on signal processing and coding for data storage, thus all papers in this area will appear in thematically grouped sessions. Erozan Kurtas and Nedeljko Varnica are in the process of organizing the symposium.

4) SPS representatives at conferences: The following people will represent the SPS technical committee at future conferences

      -   ICC 2006 (Istanbul), Erozan Kurtas, Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA

     -   GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco): Erozan Kurtas (symposium chair), Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA, and Nedeljko Varnica  (TPC chair), Marvell, Santa Clara, CA.

    -   ICC 2007 (Glasgow) Yuan Xing Lee (symposium chair), Hitachi GST, San Jose, CA and Haitao (Tony) Xia (TPC chair), Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA

5) Scheduling of talks at GLOBECOM and ICC: Shaohua Yang stated that it would be best if data storage papers appeared closer to the coding sessions. Unfortunately, it was not clear how to implement this suggestion because the talk scheduling is not in the hands of the SPS TC. We will make efforts in the future to better schedule the talks. Already at ICC206, Erozan Kurtas has taken on the task to organize the sessions for signal processing for data storage.

6) Review process: Tiffany Jing Lee asked whether the review process could be shortened because it is too long. This decision is not in the hands of the SPS TC, but in the hands of conference organizers. Alek Kavcic has agreed to raise this issue at the next GLOBECOM and ICC meeting.

7) Next meeting: at ICC 2006 in Istanbul.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Seoul, Korea,   May, 18, 2005

Attendees:

Zhi Ding (from the Globecom2006 Organizing Committee), Tolga Duman, Aleksandar Kavcic, Jaekyun Moon

1) Technical committee activity: The activity of the technical committee is dangerously low.

- There is a lack of coordination between the technical committee and Globecom and ICC organizing committees. The result is a scattering of papers in data storage among may different symposia, often in overlapping sessions.  The committee needs to delegate dedicated members to represent the committee at future conferences. This means that the delegate will need to visit 2 ICCs/GLOBECOMs prior to the one he/she is responsible for, and the one he/she is responsible for. This also means that the representative will need to visit the organizing meetings, and actively campaign to have a separate symposium on Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage. If such a symposium is not possible, then the representative should campaign for contiguous sessions that cover papers for data storage. The representative should also make sure that ALL papers in data storage be sent to him/her for review, regardless of which symposium they are submitted to.

-  SPS TC must actively co-sponsor symposia at ICCs and GLOBECOMs.

-  The student paper award has not been awarded for 2 years. The student paper award needs to be reinstalled. Efforts are under way to identify the best student paper in 2004. The winner will be announced by GLOBECOM 2005.

-   In 2006, all technical committees of the Communications Society will be reevaluated. They need to demonstrate activity and accomplishments in order to be allowed to exist. It is crucial that the SPS TC be able to demonstrate a satisfactory level of activity in order to be recertified.

2) Technical committee representatives: Representation at future conferences must be improved. The representatives MUST attend organizing committee meetings at 2 ICCs and GLOBECOMs prior to the actual conference. They also MUST campaign for the causes of SPS TC: the paper review process must be handled by SPS TC representatives, papers need to appear in contiguous sessions, conferences need to be advertised. The following are the SPS TC representatives at future conferences:

        -  GLOBECOM 2005 (St. Louis): Shaohua Yang, Hitachi Global Storage, Almaden Research, Almaden CA

-   ICC 2006 (Istanbul), Erozan Kurtas, Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA

-   GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco): Erozan Kurtas (symposium chair), Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA, and Nedeljko Varnica (TPC chair), Marvell, Santa Clara, CA.

-   ICC 2007 (Glasgow) Representative has not been identified yet. Also, it is still not clear whether ICC 2007  will  allow a symposium on data storage, or whether data storage will need to co-sponsor other (lager) symposia.

3) Student paper award: The best student paper award has not been awarded for 2 years. This trend needs to be reversed immediately. The student paper award committee was inactive for 2 years, and a new student paper award committee has been formed in 2005. Efforts are under way to award the best student paper award for 2004 

-   Harvey Freeman, the Vice President of ComSoc for Technical Affairs, has urged the Technical Committees, to spend the $500/year. SPS TC will try to use the $500 as a monetary award for the best student paper.

-   A motion has been made to award the best paper award, rather than the best student paper award. Inquiries with ComSoc will be made.

4) Poster Sessions at ICCs and GLOBECOMs: At future ICC and GLOBECOM conferences, there will be poster sessions. This was a top-down directive from ComSoc, aimed at increasing the revenues at ICCs and GLOBECOMs. The acceptance rate of papers will go up to 45%-50% in future ICCs and GLOBECOMs. Papers designated for poster sessions will NOT be selected based on quality and there will be NO distinction between oral and poster paper in the conference proceedings.

5) Next meeting: at GLOBECOM 2006 in St. Louis.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Dallas, USA,   Nov. 29, 2004

Meeting scheduled, but only the SPS-TC Chair attended. As a result, elections were successfully held via email.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Paris, France,   June 24, 2004

No officers able to attend to chair meeting.

----------------------minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, San Francisco, USA,   Dec. 4, 2003

Attendance:

Ajay Cholakia, Yuan Xing Lee, Stefan Schmermbeck, Martin Hassner, Oke

Ugweje, Saeid Taheri, Andre' Immink, Jing Li (Tiffany), Vijayakumar

Bhagavatula, Ron P. Smith, Chimming Qiao, David Berman, Michael Melas, gReg

Silvus

1) Monetary Award for Best Student Paper

 Alek reported to gReg before the meeting that it looks like no monetary

award will be given. Ron Smith suggested that a gift be given instead. His

experience is that Comsoc is much more amenable to gifts because under a

certain value, there are no tax ramifications. Tiffany suggested the award

should be an internship. The group thought her idea good, but wondered how

we would secure guaranteed corporate sponsorship.

2) Globecom 2003 Report (Yuan Xing Lee)

 Yuan Xing felt Globecom 2003 was poorly organized. His e-mails to the

organizers were not returned; his duties were strictly to organize the

reviewers. He was not even informed which papers were accepted or rejected.

This is contrary to the way ICC 2001 was done. He knows that 9 papers were

submitted, but the vice chair assigned papers to sessions. Many of these

assignments were questionable. Kumar's paper on Timing Recovery for Storage

Channels ended up in a session entitled "Billing & Misc." Also, overlap in

interest between sessions was high. Thursday afternoon often had three

papers of interest in the same slot. Clearly, this is unacceptable.

The group agreed that guidelines for the upcoming organizers would be

desirable. That is, when someone agrees to run the SPS session, they would

be given a checklist by this TC, and would meet (perhaps on the phone) with

the previous year's organizer to learn of things which should be watched

for and deadlines that must be met. The guidelines would also offer

resolution techniques. For example, if e-mails are not returned, one

resolution technique might be to get the TC chair or other officers

involved.

Action: Yuan Xing said he would contact Tolga Duman to discuss some of

these issues.

Action: gReg said he would make a rough draft of the guidelines to be added

to and approved by the TC.

Tiffany volunteered to organize ICC 2005 in Seoul, Korea.

3) We further discussed ways to improve the visibility of the SPS at these

conferences. Here are some ideas:

a) Suggest that the conference use a paper and keywords to create the

sessions and make sure that overlap

b) Drive toward letter the TPC leads help organize the sessions and approve

the final list and scheduling of papers.

c) Demand more sessions. Have stats ready to argue the case.

d) Know when the TPC organizers meeting announcement should occur; inform

new organizers that they should expect this meeting to happen.

4) Regarding ICC 2005, we voted to participate in the Symposium "Signal

Processing for Communications." Other options included being in the general

session and being in the "Communications" symposium. We opted out of the GC

to avoid having our papers spread everywhere. We decided on Signal

Processing because most attendees felt that Sig Proc included

Communications, but not vice versa.

5) Action: Kumar took the action to talk to Jaafar (the organizer of

Globecom 2004) about how to intercept papers that should go to SPS.

6) Ron Smith spoke about the TAC meeting:

a) IEEE Books is looking for ideas on manuscripts

b) Are we aware of online tutorials? Do we have ideas for new ones?

c) Do we know about "Emerging Technologies" and new Communications Society

Magazine?

7) Ways to further our cause:

a) Find out how we get articles into IEEE Proceedings (Kumar mentions that

it's about time for that to happen again).

b) How do we get more visible? (only a little discussion followed, nothing

concrete)

c) Organize tutorials and workshops at the conferences

d) JSAC overview articles

 Adjourn

 ----------------------minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Taipei, Taiwan,  Nov.19, 02

A SPS Technical Committee meeting was held on November 19 during Globecom
2002 at Taipei. There were nine in attendance. I wanted to alert you about
the decisions and discussion at this meeting.

1. My term as the chair of SPS has ended. Greg Silvus was elected at the
meeting as the new chair --- congrats, Greg! This is in line with our
tradition of chairs alternating between academia and industry.

2. Other officers remain in their current offices. At the meeting, Erozan
Kurtas was nominated to fill the Vice Chair position that Greg is vacating.
I have contacted Erozan and am waiting for his answer.

3. Dieter Arnold was given the 2001 best student paper award. We should
include a little blurb on this on our web site. Greg should be able to
supply the material. I presented to Dieter a homemade certificate that
wasn't too shabby, but we should try to get a few dollars from COMSOC to
support this award. Once again, thanks to Alek Kavcic for pushing this idea
forward and to the Award Committee (Greg Silvus, E. Eleftheriou and G.
Mathew) for the excellent job they have done. I am happy to report that the
award committee will continue for two more years.

4. Here are the SPS reps to upcoming conferences.

ICC 2003 ---- Bane Vasic
Globecom 2003 ---- Yuan Xing Lee
ICC 2004 ---- Tolga Duman

5. It seems that COMSOC is going back to having a "General Conference" in
addition to symposia in the ICC and Globecom after Globecom 2003. That is
good for us since then we may be able to have a session devoted to "Coding
and Signal Processing for Storage" unlike the current situations where the
papers are diffused into multiple sessions.

6. The "Nigeria/Congo" e-mail solicitation problem is plaguing all COMSOC
mailing lists, not just ours. They don't have a clear solution, as far as I
can tell.

7. SPS clearly needs to increase the membership. We should think of
expanding the scope (e.g., channel hardware, NASD, Raid, etc.). Anyway, we
need to  start a discussion on ideas towards this goal.
 

------minutes prepared by Prof. Vijayakumar Bhagavatula <kumar@ece.cmu.edu>
 

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Helsinki, Finland June 11-15, 2001

Agenda
     ICC Participation Report
           Who is in charge of InterMag 2002 ( conflicts w/ICC 2002 timewise?) Were there many submissions for
                   ImterMag? We had 10 papers 4 were accepted.
           ICC 2002 selects papers based only on grade.
           Globecom 2002 (Taipei) will be last autonomous group of sessions.
     Discussion: Communication Theory vs. Signal Processing for Communications Symposium
           Stay w/Comm because most of us are working in this field.
           Go w/Sig Proc because it may be easier to squeeze Coding paper into Sig Proc than other way around
     Should we grade easier?
           We are hard graders, but organizers will look only at numbers and choose a threshold.
     Should we participate at both GLOBECOMs and ICCs, or just one of the two?
           Gather more people at one location
     Table discussion, continue considering problem, make decision later

Student Award
      No monetary award
      Contact co--authors or advisor about amount of work done by student
      3-4 people deciding on winner (at least one industry and one academia member required on committee)
            Have a spare person to break any ties

       Passed!

--minutes prepared by Gregory Silvus

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Nov. 29, 2000, San Francisco, CA, USA

Attendees: 
Hemant Thapar, LSI Logic
C. Mike Melas, IBM
Geregory Silvus, Seagate Technology
Yuan Xing Lee, IBM
George Mathew, DSI
Alek Kavcic, Harvard Univ.

Meeting called to order by Dr. Hemant Thapar.

The election for new officers was held on Nov.29, 2001. The following officers were elected unanimously: 
Prof. Vijaya Kumar (Chair), Prof. Alek Kavcic (Vice Chair), Dr. Geregory Silvus (Vice Chair), 
Dr. Yuan Xing Lee (Secretary) and Dr. Bruce Wilson (Treasurer).

At the meeting, the former chairman Dr. Hement Thapar reviewed what  
had been achieved during the past term. He pointed out that organizing SPS workshops, 
publishing JSAC, and selecting IEEE distinguished lecturer were the three major  
accomplishments for SPS committee. Several other ideas such as organizing workshops
on signal processing and coding for data storage were also warmly discussed.  

 
--minutes prepared by Yuan Xing Lee

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, June 9, 1998, Atlanta, GA, USA

Attendees: 
Viswanath Annampedu, Lucent Tech.
Selaka bulumulla, Univ. of Pennsylvania
Hemant Thapar, Datapath Systems
C. Mike Melas, IBM
Saeed Asgari, Western Digital
Gregory Silvus, Western Digital
Patrick Lee, Western Digital
Marvin Vis, Cirrus Logic
Richard Behrens, Cirrus Logic
Alek Kavcic, Harvard Univ.
Nersi Nazari, Marvell Semiconductor
Anthony Bessios, Texas Instruments (Storage Products Group)
Zak Keirn, Texas Instruments (Storage Products Group)
Hakan Ozdemir, ST Microelectronics
Jay Moon, Univ. of Minnesota
Saptho Nair (consulting engineer)

Meeting called to order by Prof. Jay Moon.

Past officers of the technical committee gave a brief 
summary of how, when and by whom the technical committee 
was formed and for what purpose.

Election of officers: Prof. Jay Moon introduced the candidates.
New officers were elected as the current officers completed 
their terms. The following officers were elected unanimously: 
Dr. Hemant Thapar (Chair), Dr. Nersi Nazari (Vice Chair), 
Prof. Vijaya Kumar (Vice Chair),  Dr. Saptho Nair (Secretary) and
Dr. Yuan Xing Li (Treasurer)

Discussion on how to further enhance the relations with the Comsoc 
and better reach out to the SPFS members:  
Among other things, the participation 
in the Technical Affairs Committee (TAC) and the plans by Comsoc 
to sub-divide the future conferences into several 
mini-conferences were discussed. Proposal to start a 
newsletter was also put forth.

Workshop proposal for ICC 1999: There was a general consensus 
that the topic to propose for the workshop should be on channel 
nonlinearity and nonlinear data recovery techniques,
because this is an area that is gaining significance recently.
One question that was raised was who the 'target audiences' 
for the workshop are. Past conference organizers pointed out that 
the workshop should cater to the interests of a wide audience.
We also agreed that the nonlinear techniques can range from very
simple to very complex, with a wide range of performance indicators.
Therefore, it is important for the workshop to focus on techniques 
that are simple enough for practical implementation.


--minutes prepared by Saptho Nair

Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, June 11, 1997, Montreal, Canada :

Attending: Zi-Ning Wu, Stanford Univ.; Mark Spurbeck, Cirrus Logic Co.;
Rick Behrens, Cirrus Logic Co.; Li Du, Cirrus Logic Co.;
Philip Bednarz, 8x8 Inc.; Bill Ryan, NM St. Univ.; 
Bahjat Zafer, NM St. Univ.; Eric MacDonald, Datapath Systems;
Jay Moon, U of MN; Bob Hutchins, IBM; 
Nersi Nazari, GEC Plessy; Kevin Fisher, Quantum

Meeting called to order by Jay Moon.


1. website up and running.  See www.comsoc.org.  250-300
names are on the website, in addition to some company links.

2. tutorials and/or workshops and upcoming ICC/Globecom conferences.
The TPC rejected our application for Globecom 97.  Jay will now propose
either a workshop or tutorial for ICC98.  Kees Immink of Philips has agreed
to take a leading role.

3. discussion of how to improve/consolidate Signal Processing for Storage
conference activity.  A number of IEEE conferences that have some focus
on SigProc for Storage were identified: SPIE, Intermag, TMRC, Globecom,
ICC, ISIT, ISSCC, Int'l conf on consumer electronics.  All agreed that some
consolidation would be desireable, but we also acknowledged the
amount of work involved.

4. future conferences and SigProc for Storage representatives.
Globecom 97, Pheonix -  Kelly Fitzpatrick
ICC98, Atlanta -  Saptho Nair
Globecom 98, Sydney  - Nersi Nazari
ICC 99, Vancouver - Zak Keirn
Globecom 99  -  Eric McDonald


minutes prepared by K. Fisher