Message from the President of APSIPA

On behalf of the Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA) it is my great pleasure and honor to welcome each of you to the APSIPA Annual Summit and Conference (ASC), to be held as a hybrid in-person/ online event in Tokyo, Japan from December 14-17, 2021. This is the 13th APSIPA ASC as the ASC returns to Japan after twelve years. The very first APSIPA ASC was held in 2009 in Sapporo, Japan. Since that time APSIPA has become a vibrant community of researchers and educators in signal and information processing. APSIPA now has many activities for our members including distinguished lecturers, seasonal schools, technical committee activities, and local chapter activities. In addition, we have the APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing and the APSIPA Newsletter. Our premier event and most visible activity continues to be our Annual Summit and Conference. We hope that all of you can enjoy, learn, and benefit from this year’s ASC.

This year, because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic the ASC will be a hybrid conference with both local and virtual participants. The 2020 APSIPA ASC that was held in Auckland, New Zealand was entirely virtual and had a record number of participants. The virtual 2020 APSIPA ASC allowed for many new participants (that could not participate in previous APSIPA ASC because of long distances and high travel costs) and similarly, we hope that this year’s APSIPA ASC to be held in Tokyo can also attract many new participants from the Asia Pacific region and around the world. This year’s hybrid ASC allow for novel engagements among presenters and attendees from both in-person and virtual participants.

We give our sincere thanks to the entire organizing committee with special thanks to the General Co-Chairs: Prof. Yoshinobu Kajikawa, Prof. Koichi Shinoda, and Prof. Toshihisa Tanaka. They have worked hard to put together a great program that includes keynote talks, overview sessions, special sessions, regular sessions, and an industrial forum. Additionally, there will be a winter school to be held on Dec. 13th before the start of the ASC and then the first APSIPA women’s event to be held on December 16th. We would also like to thank our keynote speakers, authors of special session and regular papers, and all attendees.

We look forward to a very successful APSIPA ASC and I hope to interact with many of you.

Best wishes and thank you,
Anthony Kuh
President, APSIPA (2021-2022)