ISIF President’s Message 2010
This year, ISIF will enjoy its 13th FUSION conference in Edinburgh and mark the fifth successful year for JAIF, its flagship publication. Thus, this year we owe special thanks to Simon Maskell and to Dale Blair, the General Chair for FUSION 2010 and the JAIF Editor-in-Chief, respectively. Their contributions combined with those of many other volunteers since ISIF’s inception in 1998 are vital to the continued growth and visibility of our Society.
In addition to FUSION and JAIF, the third activity in which ISIF is involved is to maintain a website (www.isif.org). Historically, this activity has suffered the most through neglect. The recent efforts of Bob Lynch, ISIF VP for Communications, have led to a significantly improved website that provides useful information to the ISIF membership.
Unlike large processional societies such as the IEEE that have a significant full-time staff running the organization, ISIF is a community of scientists and engineers led by those members who choose to share their time and talents on a part-time basis for the good of the community. As we all have day jobs, the time that we can devote to ISIF is limited; this makes it particularly important that many of us step forward to participate actively for the common good.
How can a young or experienced researcher contribute to ISIF? Examples include the following: by volunteering to serve on the FUSION technical program committee; by volunteering to organize a special session at FUSION or to chair regular sessions; by volunteering to hold a tutorial at FUSION on an established or emerging topic; by proposing to host a future FUSION conference; by volunteering to join the JAIF editorial board or to serve as a reviewer; by improving the ISIF website through suggestions for changes or additions; by expressing interest to be put in nomination to serve on the ISIF Board of Directors, so as more directly to steer the organization into the future.
Why should we care to see ISIF thrive as an organization? It is neither too small to be irrelevant, nor too large that we cannot all be heard as we engage in mutually beneficial virtual meetings (through JAIF and the website) and physical meetings (at the annual FUSION gathering). The organization is a misura d’uomo (loosely translated, just the right size), something the Italians like to say about the quality of life in towns that are large enough to offer services to their citizens, but not so large as to create stressful living conditions.
Naturally, being the right size is not enough. What is more important is that ISIF is at the cross-disciplinary center of a number of theoretical and applied technologies relevant to defense, security, medicine, economics, finance, communications, and other fields. Fundamental challenges in these domains include statistical modeling, the extraction of information from vast quantities of noisy data, and the optimal use of scarce resources. These and related topics all fall under the umbrella that we call information fusion. Thus, as individual researchers and as a Society, we are working on relevant topics and towards important discoveries for our world.
Stefano Coraluppi
Senior Scientist, NATO Undersea Research Centre
President, International Society of Information Fusion
coraluppi@nurc.nato.int