In this post, I am sharing my experiences during my visit to IEEE R10 Humanitarian Technology Conference (HTC 2023) which took place at Marwadi University, Rajkot during October 16-18, 2023.
Day 1
Day 1 started with inauguration ceremony and registration process. The inaugural keynote speech was given by Prof Saifur Rehman(2023 IEEE President and CEO
Joseph Loring Professor & Director
Virginia Tech Advanced Research Institute, USA).
The function was graced by following dignitaries:
- Lance Fung 2023-24 IEEE R10 Director, Emeritus Professor, Murdoch University, Australia
- Kukjin Chun Past IEEE R10 Director
Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea - Deepak Mathur IEEE Vice President Elect – MGA
- Takako Hashimoto Director Elect 2023, IEEE R10
Chiba University of Commerce, Japan (talked about survival informatics in Japan) - Jyotika Athavale Director RAS Architecture at Synopsys | President IEEE Computer Society
- Prof R B Jadeja – General Chair, HTC 2023 (welcomed all guests and delegates to the conference)
After the inaugural function, different parallel tracks started for technical paper presentation. My presentation was scheduled in the “Machine Learning for Humanity” track during the afternoon time. After the lunch, I presented the research work carried out by my student Mr. Harshil Sanghvi with me as a part of our Speech and Music Information Research group at Nirma University.
The evening was spent with a cultural event and dinner.
Day 2
Day 2 was started with another keynote speech by Dr. Rakesh Kumar (Life Fellow IEEE, 2024 VP-elect Candidate IEEE Technical Activities, USA) and then I moved to a parallel paper presentations track to see the work of peers in the field of Machine Learning and Data Science. During the meantime, I was fortunate to have discussions with Dr. K V S Hari (IISc Bangalore) and Dr. Chirag Paunwala (IEEE SPS Chair, Gujarat section) about the growth of IEEE, Signal Processing society and extending its span in the region.
In the post-lunch session, I attended a workshop on “Conference Quality Management” organized by Dr Ashish Phophalia and team with esteemed presence of excellent speakers who gave their insights and views on expectations from IEEE with regard to quality and standards from conference organizers.
ICASSP in India
Dr. K V S Hari described his efforts and experience in bringing the world’s most prestigious conference in the area of Signal processing, ICASSP to India for the first time which is scheduled in Hyderabad in 2025. He nicely talked about the scale of difficulties in winning bids for hosting such a reputed conference is itself a huge challenge and what factors and how much of advanced preparations are required.
Dr R B Jadeja provided the statistics of the HTC 2023 and described his experiences as a host of this this conference and described all types of preparation and planning they did as a teamwork. He mentioned that out of 692 received papers, 218 papers were selected with the acceptance rate of 31.5%.
Dr. Sameer S M (IEEE Kerala section) nicely pointed out the kind of quality and misconducts done by several conference organizers, and how IEEE is stringent about ensuring standard process.
Dr. Michael Ong discussed about process of accepting or rejecting a conference request by IEEE on the basis of certain parameters.
Dr. Maike Luiken (2023 IEEE President-Elect Candidate IEEE Past Vice President, MGA, 2022, Canada) delivered an online talk on Planet Positive 2030 Initiative.
Dr. Shaikh A. Fattah (Professor, Department of EEE, Director, Institute of Robotics and Automation, BUET (IRAB), Bangladesh) discussed his ongoing projects utilizing deep learning approaches. He also put forward certain suggestions to enhance and streamline the conference management processes in a better manner.
This was a superb workshop which gave insights and viewpoints of different experienced people from IEEE bodies.
Day 3
Day 3 was special as after common lectures, I got an opportunity to meet and discuss with Prof Kukjin Chun. It was a memorable experience to have conversation with such a humble and legendry personality who has been given the highest honor of South Korea by their government for his seminal work in semiconductor industry.
This conference gave me opportunity to connect with many researchers working in the similar domain and would be glad to have collaboration with them for future activities.
I congratulate the organizing team of IEEE HTC 2023 for the successful conduction of the event and also express my gratitude to Nirma University for providing me support and opportunity to attend this conference.
e SHM 