Greetings from the New President

It is my great honor to serve as the President of the IEICE Communications Society (IEICE-CS), which has continuously fostered and innovated new communication technologies for the future advanced society. Notably, 2020 is a memorial year when the service of 5th generation mobile communication (5G) started in Japan. I expect that many researchers and engineers from academia and industry join the IEICE-CS activities towards the next-generation communication systems. I will do my best to improve the activities further and to increase their significance for IEICE-CS members.

I would like to look back on the last year 2019 first of all, which is the brief introduction of IEICE-CS activities. We had two big events of cross-field national technical meetings: MIKA2019 (Multiple Innovative Kenkyu-kai Association for wireless communications) and RISING2019 (Cross-Field Research Association of Super-Intelligent Networking). They were supported by many technical committees of not only the IEICE-CS but also other IEICE Societies. In particular, RISING2019 held a topical session collaborating with the Japan Society of Machine Engineers. As a result, both meetings had 200 to 300 participants, respectively, and concluded quite successfully. I sincerely appreciate all the supports to the meetings again, and I am going to utilize the precious experiences fully in our future activities.

In MIKA2019, I provided a keynote address that was entitled "Optimization of Multi-Antenna Systems Bound with Rayleigh Quotient - Longitudinal Study towards Cross-Field Transverse Development." I wanted to say in the talk that a reasonable and logical policy is necessary to develop things transversally over the walls between multiple technical fields. I demonstrated that in my talk about signal processing technologies with antennas. Just like the warp and weft of fabrics, the MIKA and RISING of transverse wefts are passed over and under the technical committees and IEICE societies of the longitudinal warps. For the artistic weaving, the IEICE-CS has to have a consistent policy and flexible sense for all activities. Then, MIKA and RISING can be in full bloom as if the wefts make up beautiful arts together with the tight warps. In this way, IEICE-CS will expand furthermore in all directions with the support of the cross-field activities. I understand that it is my role as the President of the IEICE-CS to weave with the right balance between warps and wefts in the IEICE-CS.

By the way, I had a chance to know SDGs last year. SDGs stands for "Sustainable Development Goals." Recently, I always put an SDGs badge on my jacket for self-enlightenment. As you know, SDGs are a collection of 17 global goals designed to be a "blueprint for achieving a better and more sustainable future for all." For example, Goal 9 is "Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation." So, I made my SDGs. One of my SDGs is "Continuous human-resource development to make a sustainable and resilient society." Society cannot exist without the persons, and I would say that continuously bringing up young people who bear the next generation is the key to forming sustainable communities. I believe that person-making must be an essential infrastructure-making of society.

Unfortunately, because of new coronavirus, our activities are severely limited, so the IEICE is in state of being unable to hold large-scale events, and also, the different styles of meetings are required. On the other hand, there are many things we noticed and learned in such an inconvenient situation. One of them is the delay in the utilization of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in our daily lives. On this occasion, we must construct and develop new and fascinating activity styles, such as virtual participation with online systems. It is time to push forward and practice things that we have hesitated to do or put off until now. Since this year is a 5G-starting year, it is particularly timely to look over the ICT again from various viewpoints for the future society. SDGs would possibly be a guideline to do it. When coronavirus is conquered, and the current restrictions to us are removed, let us make the social distancing quite small and join the IEICE-CS activities with enthusiastic hearts (Heart-to-Heart) having younger people on in our communities. It would be "resilient" connections.

As the next step, the IEICE-CS is planning the cross-field international conference, which is the flagship of the IEICE-CS contributing to new globalization. I hope that the flagship international conference will make three massive pillars with MIKA and RISING in the IEICE-CS. This structure will get the IEICE-CS to be more exciting and enjoyable. I wish my work as the President during only one year would be a small but steady step to the significant future blooming. I would like to conclude this greeting message by asking all of you for your kind supports and contributions to IEICE-CS activities.