Chair’s Comment
By Stefan Mozar
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the second edition of the resurrected newsletter. As an initiative to further establish and develop our LSTC community we have submitted our intent to convert the newsletter to a magazine to IEEE publications. A magazine will allow future content to be peer reviewed and indexed. The feedback we have indicates that there is a strong need for an avenue to publish content that is of interest to people with an interest in the life sciences, as distinct from bio medical engineering.
Reflecting on 2018, the LSTC committee has worked hard and made good progress towards growing interest in an IEEE Life Sciences Technical Community. Currently we have over 5,000 people associated with LSTC! LSTC thus has created more interest than many IEEE Societies. Thus our committee sees the need to make LSTC a more formal operational unit (OU).
In order to make LSTC an independent OU we still have a lot of work to do. The establishment of conferences is an important step. During October 2018 we held a very successful Life Sciences Conference (LSC) in Montreal. I congratulate Professor Sawan and his team for organizing this highly successful event. This newsletter has an article that reports on the Montreal conference.
During 2018 Professor Hase from Japan proposed a new conference, the Life Tech Conference (LTC), which will be held in Osaka, Japan during March 12-14. Unlike the Life Sciences Conference which roams around the world, LTC will remain in Japan. Professor Hase identified a large community in Japan that justifies a conference to serve it. LTC will serve the community in Japan and East Asia. But it is open to the international community as well. About 180 papers have been submitted to the inaugural LTC, and 122 presentations have been accepted. This second event is a very important step in growing LSTC and making it a viable OU.
Having a successful regional conference is a good step in developing local communities, and as we grow it is very feasible for LSTC to establish more local events.
A next step in growing our community is establishing summer schools and one day events. This is something we will develop as we grow.
As a growing entity, we need more hands to get involved and help, especially with conferences and with the news-letter/ magazine. If you want to get involved, please contact me or if you want to help with the newsletter/magazine contact our Editor in Chief Tobias Cibis.
This year promises to be an exciting year and I look forward to serving the Life Sciences Technical Community!
Stefan Mozar,
Chair
Life Science Technical Committee
s.mozar@ieee.org