From the President

I send my greetings to all of you neural networkers. By that I do not mean just those whose interests are in neural networks. I include all those who are interested in neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, computational intelligence, and all related fields.

I am pleased to report to you the Neural Networks Council is in good health. This past year we have accomplished a lot, as I will report to you. Yet a lot more can be, and will be done.

In the student education area, we initiated the NNC Summer Student Research Support program. This year we have selected the following five students to receive summer research grants:

George Chronis
Karen Haines
Serdar Iplikci
Chung-Chu Leung
Slawo Wesolkowski

The evaluation and selection process was directed by the NNC VP for Technical Activities, Prof. Fathi Salam, to prevent any potential conflict of interest situation. I will say, the selection is based entirely on the quality of the proposed research by the students. We had eight applicants, and all of them are high quality and are deserving of support although regretfully we can fund only five of them. I want to thank all of them for submitting their applications for consideration, and congratulate these students. This is a worthwhile investment on the future of computational intelligence.

Earlier this year the NNC was able to push through the following four individuals amongst us to the grade of IEEE Fellow:

Jim Keller
Erkki Oja
Terry Sejnowski
John Yen

Last year, the NNC ADCOM approved the creation of Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award and the NNC Meritorious Service Award. It is my pleasure to announce that Prof. Robert Marks, III has been selected to receive the first NNC Meritorious Service Award. As the founder of the IEEE Neural Networks Technical Committee which led to the formation of  the Neural Networks Council, as the first President of the NNC, and as the founding editor of the Transactions on Neural Networks, Bob's service to the Council and the Computational Intelligence community is without question and he is most deserving to receive this Award.

Because of the late start, we have selected two fuzzy logic pioneers to receive the Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Awards, and one EC pioneer as follows:

Dr. Lotfi A. Zadeh, NNC Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award
Dr. Michio Sugeno, NNC Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award
Dr. George Box, NNC Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award

In addition to these awards, we have also selected best paper awards from the TNN, TEC, and TFS. To further recognize outstanding individuals in the field of computational intelligence, we have submitted to the IEEE a proposal for a Technical Field Award (TFA) on Computational Intelligence. This TFA is an extremely prestigious IEEE-wide award that will be sponsored and paid for by the NNC.

In the area of publications, we have solved the page-count problems in connection with the startup of TEC and TFS. In order to reverse the decline in number of subscribers to TNN, TEC, and TFS, Jim Keller has put together a flyer to recruit more subscribers. We made a proposal to IEEE to bundle together the three NNC transactions: TNN, TEC, and TFS. Currently as a member, it costs you $64 to subscribe to all three transactions. When the proposal is approved, the three transactions will be bundled together, at a reduced cost of $50 for all three transactions. Similarly the cost for student will be reduced from $35 to $25 to subscribe to all three bundled transactions. We feel that is an excellent way to promote greater educational value to the computational intelligence community.

The quality of our transactions consistently rank among the highest in the IEEE transactions and commercial journals. We are also shortening the time from submission to review to publication. A lot of credit goes to the three transactions editors: Jacek Zurada, David Fogel, and Jim Keller, as well as all the associate editors who unselfishly spent the time in reviewing the papers.

In the area of conferences, we have been able to close the conference books in record time, and have avoided the payment of penalties for late closing. Much credit goes Enrique Ruspini for setting in place the procedures and policies in conference approval and closing. We have caught up with the backlog in terms of upcoming conferences (CEC, FUZZ-IEEE, IJCNN, WICI, etc.). However, we can always use more help in organizing high quality conferences. I urge you to make contacts with young and energetic neural networkers to propose to organize workshops and conferences.

Financially we are in the best shape ever. We have a total over $3M in assets, and about $2.5M in cash reserves. We are ranked first in reserves and second only to Control Systems Society in assets for all six societies and two councils within IEEE Division X. You may recall that NNC's finances were in the red in the not too distant past. But during the past few years under the leadership of VP for Finance, Piero Bonissone, we have consistently had surpluses to build up our reserve. Not only we have done that, we have not been frugal with our support of student activities. We have provided student travel support to attend conferences, have created the summer student research support, and have created numerous awards to recognize the outstanding individual efforts amongst us. I give Piero a lot of credit for his excellent management of the Council's finances.

In closing, I feel very fortunate to have had the excellent support from the VPs, the chairs of various committees, and the editors. In particularly I thank Mary Lou Padgett for the excellent job she has done as Awards Committee chair, and Karen Haines for the excellent job as Educations Committee chair. Last but not least, Tomasz Cholewo as NNC Webmaster has done a super job in keeping the webpage up to date, in spite of the constant changes.

The NNC, and the CI community is only as good as all the individuals who participate in them. As President, I cannot do everything by myself alone. It is the team effort that makes the NNC such an active and invigorating community. I welcome your advice and input on how to improve the services to you, the membership. Particularly I welcome members of the NNC ADCOM and EXCOM to take an active role in guiding the future of the NNC. My email address is lauc@onr.navy.mil.