Welcome message from the EUSIPCO 2015 technical programme chairs

Welcome to Nice and the 23rd edition of the European Signal Processing Conference, EUSIPCO 2015!

This year EUSIPCO attracted over 900 submissions to the 16 regular tracks and a record 29 special sessions. Interestingly, almost 25% of this year’s EUSIPCO authors come from beyond European boarders – evidence of the growing international reputation of EURASIP’s flagship signal progressing conference.

The TP chairs made a few changes this year in order to streamline the peer-review process. Among the most significant of these was the addition of a larger number of area chairs and the removal of one level of reviewing. Papers submitted to EUSIPCO 2015 were handled by one of 86 area chairs. On average, each of them handled 9 papers, assigning each of them to a minimum of 3 reviewers. The TPC membership was also significantly increased this year with a total of 615 reviewers accepting invitations to serve, and with many more being invited directly by the area chairs. Combined with area chair recommendations, their reviews were used to select 458 regular submissions and 143 submissions to special sessions handled by the special session chairs Marco Carli, Thierry Dutoit and Jean-Yves Tourneret.

While the process could still be improved, we hope the changes introduced this year have reduced the burden on area chairs and reviewers and improved the overall efficiency of the peer-review process. We were particularly pleased that the schedule was more-or-less respected, with final accept/reject decisions being sent on time on 22nd May.

The technical programme is supplemented with tutorials and plenary presentations. The tutorial chairs, Touradj Ebrahimi and Patrick Naylor selected 8 excellent tutorials from the 28 submissions received. At the time of writing, two of these have attracted over 50 registrations. The plenary chairs, Josiane Zerubia and Sergios Theodoridis have compiled a first-class lineup with talks from Dr. Maureen Clerc (INRIA, France), Prof. Emmanuel Candes (Stanford University, USA), Prof. José M. F. Moura (Carnegie Mellon University, USA), Prof. Mérouane Debbah (Huawei, France) and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Vary who opens the technical programme with this year’s EURASIP Fellow Inaugural Lecture.

The 23rd edition of EUSIPCO also features a Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition organized by our student activities chairs, Ana Perez and Christophe Beaugeant. Launched by EURASIP to promote transversal skills, 3MT is a research communication competition through which PhD students are challenged to present a compelling oration on their thesis and its significance to a non-specialist audience. You are warmly invited to attend the 3MT session on Thursday morning.

The TP chairs wish to thank their organizing committee colleagues, plenary speakers, tutorials presenters, reviewers, area chairs, session chairs, authors and presenters for their contributions to a successful EUSIPCO 2015. You have all helped to create a technical programme of the greatest interest and highest quality. We hope you enjoy it!

Marc ANTONINI, Nicholas EVANS, Cedric RICHARD
EUSIPCO 2015 Technical Programme Chairs