MBMC-TC End-of-Year Meeting November 2021 (Virtual) – IEEE Communications Society Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications Technical Committee

Date: Tuesday 23 November 2021
Time: 9am-10:30am EDT, 2-3:30pm GMT
Place: Virtual (Zoom)

Attendees (34):

Weisi Guo, Cranfield University
Fardad Vakilipoor, Politecnico di Milano
Adam Noel (AN), University of Warwick
Maurizio Magarini, Politecnico di Milano
Sudip Misra, IIT Kharagpur
Lin Lin (LL), Tongji University, Shanghai
Nan Yang, Australian National University
Pietro Savazzi, University of Pavia, Italy
Mahtab Mirmohseni, Sharif University of Technology
Malcolm Egan, Inria
Prabhat Kumar Sharma, VNIT Nagpur
Yuting Fang, University of Melbourne
Ji-Woong Choi, DGIST, Korea
Massimiliano Pierobon (MP), University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Maximilian Schäfer, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg
Chan-Byoung Chae (CBC), Yonsei University
Xinyu Huang, Australian National University
Neeraj Kumar, Thapar University Patiala India
Sebastian Lotter, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Josep Jornet, Northeastern University, USA
Tatsuya Suda (TS), University Netgroup Inc
Masoumeh Nasiri (MN), Sharif university of technology
Riccardo Bassoli, TU Dresden
Thomas D. Schneider, NIH
Yesenia Cevallos, IEEE MBS
Kun Yang, University of Essex
Sumei Sun, Institute for Infocomm Research
Andrew Eckford (AE), York University
Masoumeh Nasiri, Sharif university of technology
Werner Haselmayr (WH), Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Urbashi Mitra (UM), University of Southern California, USA
Cyn Sikora (CS), ComSoc Industry Outreach and Technical Activities Director
Mohammad Upal Mahfuz (MUM), University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Lorenzo Mucchi, University of Florence

Minutes:

Call to Order (AE)
1. Call to order at 9:05am EDT by AE
2. AE opening virtual meeting.
  - AE looking forward to in-person events and networking next year, particularly Korean BBQ at ICC 2022 in Seoul
  - No additions made to the agenda
Approval of Minutes of the January 20, 2021 meeting (AN)
1. link: https://mbmc.committees.comsoc.org/mbmc-tc-end-of-year-meeting-january-2021-virtual/
2. Motion by AE to approve without objection; seconded by MP
3. KY noted he is missing from list of attendees. AN will add
Chair’s Report (AE)
1. AE’s final report
2. AE described the TC
  - providing a forum for discussion and broadening professional opportunities of its members, professional resources and support
  - governed by COMSOC and our P&Ps
  - manage the ComSoc flagship conference tracks for MBMC
  - support (does not own) the T-MBMC journal
  - co-sponsor or endorse other events, including 3 in 2021
  - (can) nominate distinguished lecturers and IEEE fellows; this is possible but has not yet been done
  - offering research awards for outstanding papers (this still requires ComSoc approval before it can be implemented)
  - mailing list, all should sign up to maintain membership
    - mailing list has had limited use
    - It would be nice to add a forum for extended discussions
    - TS mentioned TCCC having a separate mailing list for discussion
    - UM asked whether TCCC’s other list is moderated
3. AE provided summary of officers and offered thanks to fellow officers for their support
4. Open for questions
  - UM thanked AE for his leadership over the past 2 years
  - Many attendees echoed sentiments of thanks in the chat for AE and the current officers
IEEE T-MBMC report (CBC)
1. CBC announced that the journal is now listed in E-SCI emerging index
  - Being evaluated annually for consideration in SCI
  - Expect to make it into SCI in about 2 years
2. 2021 submission data (so far)
  - 57 submissions, 24.24% acceptance, 3 issues published (4th will be published in December)
3. Always seeking more submissions
4. 3 special issues are planned for next year
5. PubMed indexing for TMBMC is expected after 4th issue of 2021
6. More citations are needed to get higher citescore and impact factor
7. CBC’s term as Editor-in-Chief will end December 2022
8. Open for questions:
  - AE thanked CBC for his service
Conference reports
1. IEEE Globecom 2021 (WH)
  - Submission deadline was significantly postponed (15 April to 28 May)
  - This will be a hybrid conference with 2 in-person presentations (joint session with quantum)
  - There were 14 submissions (ICC 2021 had 9, GC 2020 had 19)
  - 8 accepted papers (57.1%) (ICC 2021 accepted 4 44.4%, GC 2020 accepted 8 42.1%)
  - Most submissions were of high quality
  - There were 43 TPC members
  - There was a low reviewer load due to large TPC relative to number of submissions (1-2 papers)
  - There were 4 reviews for almost all papers
  - WH thankful for fast reviews (1.5 months) and their high quality
  - Questions
    - AE asked if general trend of submissions is down. WH believed so but did not have general statistics
2. IEEE ICC 2022 (MP)
  - 39 invited TPC members; 30 have accepted
    - TPC members from 12 countries (12 ppl in Europe, 10 America, 5 Asia, 3 Australia)
    - 27 Male, 3 Female
  - Conference will be in-person hybrid
  - 14 submitted active papers; seems consistent with trend across conference
    - MP showed submissions by topic; active or passive transport was biggest category
  - 6 reviews have been assigned per paper
  - 15/30 TPC members have confirmed their assignments. Total of 84 reviews
  - TPC chairs want 4 high quality reviews per paper
  - Review deadline is 24 December and will likely be extended. Notification scheduled for 18 January, camera-ready submission by 15 February
  - An invited talk is being planned
  - Questions:
    - TS raised issue of so many reviews per paper; MP emphasised that TPC chairs wanted so many
    - TS discussed experience of NSF proposals and getting a large number of reviews back to adjudicate
    - UM mentioned that we’re a small close community with a high review response rate and shouldn’t be subject to the same rules of other tracks to invite 6 reviewers per paper
3. IEEE Globecom 2022 (AE presented on behalf of track chair Chun Tung Chou)
  - Will be held in Rio de Janeiro, 4-8 December 2022
  - CFP and EDAS are ready to go live for this conference once GC 2021 finished
  - 40 TPC members recruited
  - Submission deadline 15 April 2022 and notification 25 July 2022
  - Asked support to submit papers to bring numbers up
  - Discussion:
    - TS noted that some conferences have TPC vote on which papers they want to review; believes there has been a shift in what is required for a conference paper in that small changes to a conference paper is insufficient for journal publication
4. Overview of Future Conferences and a call for volunteers to chair the tracks
  - ICC 2023 Rome 28 May – 1 June
    - Michael Barros accepted to be chair
  - GC 2023 Kuala Lumpur 4-8 December
    - MK was just nominated by the TC
  - ICC 2024 Denver
  - GC 2024 Cape Town
  - ICC 2025 Montreal
Election results (MUM)
1. Election was held for upcoming term 1 Jan 2022 – 31 Dec 2023
2. Election organized by the nominations and elections subcommittee (NES)
  - Tadashi Nakano (Chair), Yifan Chen, and MUM were submittee members
3. MUM summarized the timeline and all of the candidates
  - 13 November nominations closed
  - 15 November ballots sent
  - 22 November ballots closed
4. Results
  - 23 eligible voters
  - LL for Chair had 22 yes, 1 abstain
  - AN for Vice-Chair had 22 yes, 1 abstain
  - Secretary
    - 12 votes for NY
    - 5 votes for Qiang Liu
    - 5 votes for PS
5. MUM congratulated the new officers
  - Sentiment echoed by many attendees in the chat
6. AE thanked the officers of the NES, congratulated the successful candidates, and encouraged those who were not elected to stay involved
New business (AE)
1. No new business was raised
Adjournment
1. AE moved to adjourn, MUM seconded, approved without objections.