Ajman University Hosts 9th IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology

Tuesday, Dec 15, 2009
Ajman University Hosts 9th IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology

Ajman University of Science and Technology (AUST) has hosted the 9th IEEE international Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology in cooperation with the IEEE Signal Processing and Computer Societies. Under the auspices of H.E. Dr. Saeed Abdullah Salman, AUST's President, the symposium opened with the reading of verses from the Holy Quran, which was followed by the opening session. On behalf of Dr. Salman, Dr. Ahmed Ankit, AUST Vice President for External Relations of Culture and Affairs, delivered the opening address in which he welcomed the distinguished guests to the symposium, expressing his satisfaction that almost 100 researchers, specialists, and engineers from different countries had been able to attend. He added, "We trust that this event will provide an opportunity to all participants to exchange their expertise and enrich their experience in engineering, information technology, signal processing and showcase the latest research work in other related fields." He concluded by thanking the sponsors, organizing committee members, and all attendees from AUST and other UAE universities.

Afterwards, Dr. Eesa Bastaki, Chair, IEEE UAE section, presented the IEEE UAE section welcome address in which he thanked AUST members for their continuing efforts, and then introduced the history of IEEE, its vision, mission and role in widening the scope of techno-electrical computing awareness in society. He added that IEEE has 375,000 members in more than 160 countries, with 80,000 students, 129 sections in ten geographic regions worldwide, comprising 1,860 chapters and 1,789 student branches. Moreover it has 45 societies and councils (38 societies and seven technical councils with 144 transactions). Dr. Eesa also outlined some student activities in 2008, which included visits to industry, workshops, social activities, seminars, inter-branch competition, and community service. He added that the association has received many awards worldwide and become involved internationally in teaching Wireless Communication Engineering, launching the Wireless Communication Engineer Certificate (WCET) with the aim of developing better engineers. Regarding industrial trends, the association has 2.6 billion mobile users, a figure which is expected to grow to 4.1 billion by 2014.  

For his part, Dr. Adel Elmaghraby, Co-Chair and ISSPIT Steering Committee Chair, and Professor at the University of Windsor, Canada, started his presentation by giving an overview of the history of the ISSPIT conference that started in Egypt in 2001; this year it is held in Ajman and next year will return to Luxor in Egypt as planned.

Dr. Pan Agathoklis, from the University of Victoria, Canada, spoke in the first plenary session on Applications of Image Reconstruction from Gradient Data using a Wavelet Base. He mentioned many applications in the reconstruction of images from gradient data such as Gradient Camera, Adaptive Optics System, Poisson Image Editing and High Dynamic Range Compression. He stated that all these applications are useful in reconstructing pictures and recreating them from Gradient Data using the Gradient Sensor.