IEEE Signal Processing Society Awards: Do they matter?
Steve Young
SLTC Newsletter, July 2009
This is the time of year when the Speech and Language Technical Committee turns its thoughts towards the next round of award nominations which have to be submitted to the Society's Awards Board by October 1st.
Identifying suitable candidates, and then putting together a strong supporting case for an award takes considerable time and effort. So is it worth it? Clearly the recipients of awards enjoy receiving them but do they matter much beyond that, or are they just an example of "mutual back-slapping" with no real consequence?
In fact awards do matter -- indeed, they matter a great deal. Awards are important because they give our field credibility, and this operates at many levels. Within the IEEE itself, they give our area more influence both because they identify individuals whose opinions are listened to, and because they give weight to the area generally. Within our own institutions, awards to our colleagues in the Speech and Language area raises the esteem of not just the individuals but of the research area generally. Awards can also contribute materially to the prospects of promotion which results in more senior people with more influence to change things. Awards can also influence sponsors in the amount of funding they allocate to a sector. They can also be a factor in assessing funding proposals where an award can give an edge when competing for funds, especially when competing with other disciplines. For example, in the UK, all Universities are subjected to a Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) which directly determines a large chunk of their research income. One of the factors that is considered in making this assessment is the esteem of each research area as measured by awards, fellowships and similar.
So awards are important and the SLTC will continue do its best to make compelling nominations. But ultimately, the thing that matters most is the quality of the candidate. So please help us to identify deserving cases. We are looking for candidates for the Society Award, the Education Award, the Meritorious Service Award, and the Technical Achievement Awards. We also looking for candidates for the Best Paper Award, the Signal Processing Magazine Best Column Award, the Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award and the Young Author Best Paper Award. If you have ideas for any of these please forward them to myself (sjy@eng.cam.ac.uk), Philip Loizou (loizou@utdallas.edu) or indeed any member of the SLTC.
For more information, see:
Steve Young is Chair of the Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.
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