DSTC Meetings – Agenda and Minutes

DSTC Committee Meetings are held twice a year, typically in June at ICC and in December at Globecom. All are welcome to attend.

• DSTC 2022, Online Meetings Minutes
• DSTC 2021, Online Meeting Minutes
• ICC 2021, Online Meeting Minutes
• ICC 2020, Online Meeting Minutes
• Globecom 2019 in Waikoloa, HI, USA Minutes
• ICC 2019 in Shanghai, China  Minutes
• Globecom 2018 in Abu Dhabi, UAE  Agenda
• ICC 2018 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA  Agenda – Minutes
• Globecom 2017 in Singapore Agenda– Minutes
• ICC 2017 in Paris, France Agenda – Minutes
• Globecom 2016 in Washington, D.C., USA.  Minutes
• ICC 2016 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Agenda – Minutes
• Globecom 2015 in San Diego, California. Agenda – Minutes
• ICC 2015 in London, UK. Agenda – Minutes
• Globecom 2014 in Austin, Texas, USA. Agenda – Minutes
• ICC 2014 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Agenda – Minutes
• Globecom 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Agenda – Minutes
• ICC 2013 in Budapest, Hungary. Agenda – Minutes
• Globecom 2012 in Anaheim, California, USA. Minutes
• ICC 2012 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Minutes
• Globecom 2011 in Houston, Texas, USA. Minutes
• ICC 2011 in Kyoto, Japan. Minutes
• Globecom 2010 in Miami, Florida, USA. Minutes
• ICC 2010, Cape Town, South Africa. Minutes
• Globecom 2009 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Minutes
• ICC 2009 in Dresden, Germany. Minutes
• Globecom 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Minutes
• ICC 2008 in Beijing, China. Minutes

Minutes going back to Globecom 1998 are available below, as well.

DSTC Meetings 2022

Minutes of DSTC meeting held on 11/29/2022 11:30am -12:00pm Eastern Time

Attendees: Xinmiao Zhang, Seyhan Karakulak, Ahmed Hareedy, Benjamin Belzer, Cai Kui, Eitan Yaakobi, Pascal Lorenz, Roman Pletka, Shiwen Mao, Suayb Arslan, Yuval Cassuto

Meeting Notes

1. Xinmiao summarized the current TC restructuring efforts and its difference to the current TC structure.
2. Xinmiao gave the status update of the ICC 2022/2023 and Globecom 2022; the number of papers submitted to the data storage section or related ones, and acceptance rates.
3. The two papers that won the best paper awards were announced.
4. The criteria and the approval process for the best industry paper award were discussed; focus on practice and performance.
5. Xinmiao announced the TC officer candidates for the upcoming election and went through the election process and its deadline.
6. Xinmiao announced NVMW 2023 and new tracks in NVMW.

Minutes of DSTC meeting held on 05/06/2022 10:00am -11:00am Eastern Time

Attendees: Xinmiao Zhang, Jeongseok Ha, Paul H. Siegel, Cai Kui, Seyhan Karakulak, Lara Dolecek, Pascal Lorenz, Cyn Sikora, Anxiao Jiang, Chao Tian

Meeting Notes

1. Jeongseok summarized the JSAC proposal progress and went through the submission statistics for data storage. There was a discussion on the areas to cover in the JSAC and the current popular topics in data storage.
2. There was a discussion on the rejection of high quality papers at the IEEE Trans. in Communications submitted by data storage experts. Some of these high quality papers had significant contributions in machine learning but the reviews were not fair. Such unfair reviews will lower the number of high quality submissions by data storage experts.
3. Xinmiao summarized the Comsoc TC restructure progress and went through the TEA-C Technical Committees’ Board Discussion in December.
4. Xinmiao went through the Globecom 2021, ICC 2022, Globecom 2022 submission statistics and advertised the upcoming conferences ICC 2023, Globecom 2023, ICC 2024.
5. DSTC members were encouraged to nominate for DSTC Best Paper Award 2020-2021.
6. DSTC members were encouraged to contribute submissions for the special issue of the IEEE BITS Magazine (the IEEE Information Theory Magazine) on data storage. The Call for Papers will be announced soon.
7. ITW deadline (May 13) for submission was reminded and the themed session on machine learning and data storage at ITW was advertised.

DSTC Meeting 2021

Minutes of DSTC meeting held on 11/16/2021 10:00am -11:20am Eastern Time

Attendees: Vincent Chen, Cyn Sikora, Paul Siegel, Yuval Cassuto, Yongjune Kim, Ahmed Hareedy, Ben Belzer, Bane Vasic, Hironori Uchikowa, Anxiao Jiang, Chao Tian, Jeongseok Ha, John Barry, Shayan Srinivasa Garani, Seyhan Karakulak, Xinmiao Zhang (Host), Suayb S. Arslan

Meeting Notes

1. Xinmiao opened our TC committee meeting with a warm welcome.
2. She invited Prof. Vincent Chan from MIT to share his views on new topics. Particular emphasis has been made on Storage for HPC. He mentioned IBM accelerators for computing and storage among other things.
3. Jeongseok presented about the JSAC special issue, topics, issues. He also provided us with some statistics on the distribution of storage-related papers – which journals they are published etc.
4. Jeongseok tossed the critical question of how to increase the submission numbers. 
5. Shayan shared his past experience on dealing with such an issue, expansion of the topics covered etc. Ahmed shared his views on the statistics presented. The time component was missing in the presented data such as how the numbers have changed over time etc. 
6. The issue of low submission rates is still with us regarding Globecom and ICC conferences as indicated by the presented numbers by Xinmiao.
7. To increase/expand the reach-out and invite more papers, several computer science related conferences are suggested such as Usenix FAST, Hotstorage as well as conferences on cloud/dependable systems. 
8. Xinmiao opened up the subject of our policy of admitting new members to DSTC. This new policy change has sparked a few discussion grounds. 
9. Paul suggested that the requirements of the new policy might be a bit more stringent than that of the previous policies and suggested that lowering the bar might be a good idea to increase the participation levels. He continues to suggest that some people who could be extremely useful to the committee might be invited rather than expecting them to join themselves. 
10. Chao also agreed with Paul and asserted the importance of lowering the bar for new professionals. He suggested that sending just a “cv” could be sufficient for becoming a member.
11. Xinmiao shared her experience on emailing and various difficulties of getting people around the same table. 
12. TC participation is thoroughly discussed by a few more participants of the meeting. In particular, Shayan mentioned that there may be individuals who are not necessarily working in the area of data storage and yet have been very useful in the past. 
13. Xinmiao continued to present the statistics on Globecom 2021, ICC’22, and the chairs of storage track of the upcoming ICC and Globecom conferences. She mentioned that the ICC’23 storage track chair is still to be determined. 
14. Meeting ended in about 1 hour 20 minutes. 

ICC2021

ICC2020

Minutes of DSTC meeting held on June 22 8:30-9:55am EST over WebEx.

Attendees: Shayan Garani, Stefano Galli, Vincent Chan, Xinmiao Zhang, Hironori Uchikawa, Jeongseok Ha, Seyhan Karakulak, Warren Gross, Suayb Arslan, Pascal Lorenz, Borja Peleato, Omer.

• Shayan Garani gave an overview of DSTC goals, activities, and DSTC officers.
• Confirmed that the minutes of the meeting will be posted on DSTC webpage shortly.
• Shayan explained how to become a member and an active member, respectively, of DSTC. Action item: i) need to count the active members and make a list within a month; ii) need to decide the eligibility of voting members.
• Shayan Garani presented status of ICC 2019, Globecom 2019, ICC 2020 and Globecom 2020. ICC 2020 has been converted to a virtual conference due to COVID-19.
• Presented and discussed the trends of the numbers of paper submissions over 2013-2020. The increased submission in Globecom 2019 is due to the merge of the data storage and cloud computing tracks.
• Discussed possible ways to advertise the DS track and increase submissions. Stefano Galli and Vincent Chan pointed out possible collaborations with other TCs and communities, such as Photonics and Computer Societies and an emerging TC on quantum related research in Comsoc. Vincent Chan will provide contacts of the Photonics and Computer Societies.
• Shayan gave an update on the best paper award.
• Action item: P&P document should be posted on the DSTC webpage
• Discussed possible JSAC special issues and tutorials to increase the impacts of DS track.
• Quantum storage will be a new thrust for DS track.
• Discussed the possibility of starting a new transaction on data center and storage. May start with JSAC special issues, and converted into a regular journal in 2-3 years in collaboration with other societies interested in common topics, such as Computer, Signal Processing, and Circuits and Systems.
• Discussed how to increase the participation of DSTC and meetings. Working with local chapters may help. Xinmiao and Jeongseok pointed our FMS and NVMW may be potential venues to advertise the TC. Stefano will look at the possibility of technical sponsorship.

Globecom 2019

Waikoloa, HI, USA. December 12, Thursday

12:30 pm – 2:30 pm

Place: Naupaka Salon 3

Chair: Shayan Garani Srinivasa and Yongjune Kim

5 attendees (3 in-person, 2 dial-in)
Yongjune Kim, Western Digital
Jeongseok Ha, KAIST Jeongseok Ha, KAIST
Ahmed Hareedy Duke University
Shayan Garani Srinivasa (Indian Institute of Science) <dial-in>
Xinmiao Zhang (Ohio State Univ.) <dial-in>

1) Shayan Garani presented DSTC achievements from the last meeting held during ICC 2019 to all those who were present. He also shared the TC P&P document for comments.

DSTC Conference Track

• Globecom 2019 DSTC track had many submissions (118 submissions, 50 accepted papers) and had 6 sessions.
• There were several good quality papers on the traditional DSTC topics; The number of submissions on mobile/edge computing is increasing.
• ICC 2020 (Track chairs: Jeongseok Ha and Marcelo Marotta): Reviews are in progress
• Globecom 2020 track chair nominee: Bane Vasic
• ICC 2021 track chair nominee:

2) The attendance was very thin for the DSTC meeting, both in person and for remote presence. The in-person attendance could have been due to the hotel venue change for the meetings and any confusion. Most of those who attended debated how best one can get active members to participate in the meetings.

3) Ahmed Hareedy mentioned that Journal on Special Topics in IT has been started. Ahmed and Yongjune suggested if DSTC could work towards special issues within IT, as well as, continue with JSAC in a ping-pong manner.

4) Shayan discussed if hosting interesting webinars can help more active participation in large numbers. He also suggested to have regular tutorials to put DSTC work more visible and relevant within ComSoc.

5) Jeongseok Ha volunteered to steer a new proposal for JSAC special issue.

Journal Special Issue

• The last special issue on DS was JSAC 2016.
• Preparing JSAC special issue proposal.

6) Xinmiao mentioned that DSTC can co-sponsor some conferences, particularly with IEEE CAS society where data storage has relevance.

7) Shayan suggested if a technical achievement award can be set up within DSTC under ComSoc to recognize long term individual achievements.

8) Other Discussions

Discussion and Suggestions on Journal and Conference

• JSAIT (new journal of IT society) would be a good venue for DSTC special issues.
• Try to have DSTC special issues every year by alternating JSAC (practical work) and JSAIT (theoretical work).
• Propose new DSTC sessions at other conferences (e.g., ISIT, architecture and circuit conferences); Or encourage researchers at other conferences (and societies) to submit their work to DSTC tracks at ICC and Globecom; Bigger exposure is important in any ways.
• Deliver tutorials at FMS, NVMW, ISIT, ICC, Globecom.
• Invite selected (high-quality) conference papers of DSTC tracks (1 or 2 papers per each conference) to DSTC special issues at JSAC (and JSAIT) as other IEEE journals (e.g., JSSC, TCAS-I); however, these journals (JSAC and JSAIT) have their own policy; DSTC may not change the journal policy; JSSC and TCAS-I invitation would be the society policy rather technical committee poly. 

Discussion and Suggestions on Active Members 

• How we can determine active DSTC members; we have many people submitting papers but quite few contributing to the meetings.
• One helpful suggestion here was checking those who published in related topics at ICC or GLOBECOM in the past few years.
• Motivating members to attend by sending the agendas ahead and highlighting the important topics to be discussed is also important.
• Arranging some webinars was also an additional suggestion to engage DSTC members.

Suggestions:

• One of the intriguing suggestions was an “Achievement Award” to be given to those with impactful results in the field of data storage in the past five years:
• It was discussed that we need to increase the prestige of the award because there are other awards of similar nature.
• Among the suggestions for that are asking industry to pitch the awards more plus providing a cash incentive.
• There was an agreement that we all need to spread the information from the meeting more in both academia and industry (about special issues, tutorials, awards, etc.).

ICC2019

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at ICC 2019, Shanghai, China. May 23, Wednesday  1:00 pm – 3:00 pm.
Place: Pudong Shangri-La Hotel.

Chair: Xinmiao Zhao

1) Xinmiao gave an overview of the DSTC mission, goals and objectives

2) Xinmiao presented the status of the organization of DSTC sponsored tracks at ICC and Globecom 2018 and 2019, and plans for 2020.

3) Bane pointed out an increase of cloud and networking papers compared to traditional papers on communications, coding and information theory emphasize

4) The storage track is now combined with cloud and networking tracks into one track, and new papers often lack theoretical contributions

5) In the call for papers, change the description of topics, make it clear that theoretical contributions are required, include more bullet points on signal processing topics

6) Advertize data storage track at future conferences

7) Organize a workshop at one of the next conferences related to coding and signal processing, perhaps combined with optical comm. for data center networks, invite industry participation, perhaps to present overview and system-level papers

8) Use the list of NVMW participants to advertize ICC and Globecom storage tracks

9) Jeongseok suggested to propose a JSAC special issue on storage in the future

10) Bane offered to share with Jeongseok the previous JSAC proposals

11) Xinmiao presented the status of the award committee, papers that were selected for the award

12) Andrew and Bane are chairing the next award committee, the call for nominations was posted but a reminder needs to be sent, the deadline for nominations is July 31.

13) Xinmiao went over the rules for having a status of a voting member, number of members of DSTC

ICC2018

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at ICC 2018, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. May 23, Wednesday  10:10 am – 10:57 am.
Place: Westin Hotels & Resorts.

6 attendees (4 in-person, 2 dial-in)
Tolga M. Duman, Bilkent University, Turkey
Shanwei Shi, Georgia Institute of Technology
Suayb S. Arslan, MEF University
Eric Renault, | l’Institut Mines-Télécom
Aditya Ramamoorthy (Dial-in), Iowa State University
Brian Kurkoski (Dial-in), Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)

Meeting began at 10:10 am
Brian began the meeting
Agenda:
▪Committee Mission and Officers
▪Data Storage Tracks at ICC/Globecom
▪Paper submission data
▪Best Paper Award committee status report
▪Membership report
▪Mailing List Activity

Goals and activities:
• The technical committee under IEEE Communications Society to promote data storage related technologies and their applications.
• The Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC) promotes advances in state-of-the-art communications, signal processing and coding technologies to enhance data storage systems, in order to achieve high storage densities, fast access, and low error rates.
• Activities: sponsoring / co-sponsoring technical sessions at major conferences, organizing workshops and tutorials, and organizing special issues of IEEE journals and magazines.
• Bridge between storage industry and universities to engage research Collaboration

ICC 2018 Kansas City
10 papers submitted and 3 papers accepted.
Question by Eric: why only few submissions? Answer by Brian: possible random variation Globecom 2018
Data storage track was merged with cloud computing, TPC chair is outside of DSTC

Globecom 2019
Chair Anxiao Jiang

ICC 2020
No call for chair yet received. Suggestion to send a short email.

DS number of submissions
Goal is to get more submission
Suggestions by Tolga: data storage is a narrow scope and we can add more interesting topics when calling for paper
Suggestions by Eric: data storage does not get involved in networking. So we may call for papers in other community such as HPC and probably get more submissions.

Best paper/award 2016-2017
Merge two years because the committee was not formed in 2016. Still two awards: Best Paper and Best Student Paper
Question by Suayb: how many nominated papers in 2015?
A: about 10
Question by Eric: Do nominated paper come from ICC only?
A: No. It can be published anywhere.

Discussion and Comments:
Brian: Some new issues are proposed on JSAC such as distributed coding.
Tolga: New issue need proposal and then research.
Eric: We can focus on cloud storage because there are more temporary data on the cloud and optimization of MapReduce things can be done.
Suayb: Coding for flash memory used to have a lot of paper. Do they solve all the issues?
Brian: This was a topic of a past JSAC issue (could propose it again).
Tolga: Someone need to step up to summarize current special issue for this track for example, Shayan. Because no special issue on top of my head.
Brian: Shanyan did this before — maybe others should do this.

Minutes by Shanwei Shi
Meeting finished at 10:57 am

Globecom 2017

IEEE Globecom 2017 Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC) Meeting
Dec. 06, 2017
Marina Bay Sands (Lotus 4E), Singapore
13 attendees (10 in-person, 3 dial-in)

1. Cai Kui (SUTD)
2. Euiseok Hwang (GIST, euiseokh@gist.ac.kr)
3. Filip Paluncic (U. Pretoria, filip.paluncic@up.ac.za)
4. Qin Huang (Beihang U., qinhuang@buaa.edu.cn)
5. Mu Zhang (SUTD, zhang.mu@sutd.edu.sg)
6. Chi Nguyen (SITD, qinchi.nguyen@sutd.edu.sg)
7. Guanghui Song (Doshisha U., qsong2017@gmail.com)
8. Liuguo Yin (Tsinghua U., yinlg@tsinghua.edu.cn)
9. Li Chen (Sun Yat-Sen U. chenli55@mail.sysu.edu.cn)
10. Yi-Sheng Su (Chang Jung Christian U., yssu@mail.cjcu.edu.tw)
11. Brian Kukoski (JAIST)
12. Shayan Garani (Indian Institute of Science)
13. Qi Qi (Broadcom)

Meeting began at 12:45 pm.

1) Cai leads the meeting with slides.

2) Brian explained the Globecom 2018 issue- there will be no data storage dedicated session in SAC, while the cloud computing and networking do have data storage as its topic. To promote data storage activity, organizing data storage dedicated workshop may be a good idea, and need discussion for that.

3) Brian raised the low submission issue for recent years, around 10 to 20 submissions, and 20-40% acceptance. Definitely more submissions are needed.

4) Cai raised the low submission issues from the US, and particularly for ICC 2018 in the US. Shayan mentioned that TPC should encourage submissions for physical data storage and emerging area.

5) Cai mentioned the need to organize the best paper award committee with 2 co-chairs and 5 committee members for the 2016-2017 term.

6) Brian raised the issue of active members, not so active as expected. Need to bring more open discussion with members. Cai mentioned that the active members growing slowly.

7) Brian suggested improving the visibility of DSTC, and enhancing the mailing list activity, and may include other conferences, and attendees add NVMW, Inter-mag, TMRC, ISIT, ITW, etc.

8) Shayan suggested tutorial session in Globecom or ICC.

9) Li mentioned potential chances in ITW 2018, invited papers and tutorials (proposal due in March 2018)

10) Shayan suggested to broaden the DSTC focus from the channel side to analytical perspective of data storage. It goes from modeling all the way to signal processing, coding, analysis, VLSI architectures and systems of interest.

Meeting ended at 1:40 pm.
Minutes by Hwang Euiseok

ICC2017

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at ICC 2017, Paris, France, USA. May 23, Tuesday 12:30-14:00.

Place: Hyatt Regency Etoile, room Batignolles.

7 attendees (7 in-person, 0 dial-in)

Brian Kurkoski, JAIST
Shayan Garani, Indian Institute of Science
Suayb S. Arslan, MEF University
Cai Kui, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)
Mehran Elyasi, University of Minnesota
Soheil Mohajer, University of Minnesota
Yuval Ben-Hur, Technion

Meeting started at around 12:55pm. (we waited for around 25 mins for participants as well as dial-ins)

1) Brian commenced the meeting by giving brief information about IEEE ComSoc DSTC, goals and activities. He also introduced 2017-2018 DSTC Officiers and presented the award winners. At the end of the meeting, he presented two certificates to Cai for her two key roles in DSTC in the past five years.

3) Cai reported on Globecom 2018 DST. The DST at Globecom 2018 had initially 21 papers submitted, 3 papers appeared to be out of scope and have been re-assigned to other tracks/symposia. The 18 papers have been assigned at least 3 reviewers each. Reviews reports expected by June 1.

4) ICC 2018 will be held in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. TPC members are being populated at this stage by Shayan.

5) Suayb reported on ICC 2017 DST. He shared the number of submissions, the profile of papers, acceptance rate, and suggestions looking forward. 18 papers have been submitted to ICC 2017 Data Storage Track, only 7 have been accepted. The acceptance rate is around 39% (usually imposed by the society regulations). TPC agreed that good-quality papers had to be rejected.

6) Shayan reported on JSAC special issue on channel coding and signal processing for novel physical memory devices and Systems. Totally, 19 papers were accepted out of around 30. It is argued that JSAC papers are seen to increase the visibility of data storage field in IEEE ComSoc.

7) Brian commented on the fact that many papers under data storage title goes and lists under communication and other related fields. The data storage papers have been actually widely distributed over other technical sessions in ICC.

8) Within ComSoc and particularly data storage, education is brought to attention. Technical & Educational activities meeting is reported to clarify the educational objectives. Also, recertification is brought to attention and the overlaps with other committees are discussed, in particular with communication theory.

9) Committee agreed that physical storage (layer) aspects of data storage is reflected very well with the submitted/accepted papers to DS track. To increase involvement and the number of submission with diverse fields, it is argued to have a future workshop.

10) The mailing list of the data storage group contains 25 active 195 inactive (total 210) members.

11) A new JSAC issue is projected to be organised in 2018. The chair and work break-down is to be determined.

Meeting finished 1:48 pm.

Globecom 2016

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at Globecom, Washington, D.C., USA
Wednesday, December 7, 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Washington Hilton, Morgan, Lobby Level

Attendance:

• Lara Dolecek UCLA
• Sandeep, Sandisk
• Shiv, Broadcom?
• Bane Vasic, University of Arizona
• O. Ozan Koyluoglu, University of Arizona
• Mohsen Bahrami, University of Arizona
• Jinhong Yuan, Univ. New South Wales
• Xinmiao Zhang, San Disk
• Seyhan Karakulak, Western Digital
• Ruidong Li

12:30 Attendees are given 15 minutes to connect, and onsite attendees to get together after the previous session and bring lunch ordered to room.
12:45 Meeting is started with introduction and attendees introducing themselves.
12:47 Bane Vasic started his presentation on DSTC updates (all items below are from this presentation except the last one).
12:50 Review of updates from conference tracks.
12:57 JSAC special issue is discussed. Bane Vasic mentioned reviewer reminder emails were found to be excessive, this was partly due to handling JSAC settings. Ploucy/rules of acceptence also mentioned by Bane Vasic.
12:59 DSTC website is updated, template by Comsoc and most work is done by Brian
Kuroski. Bane Vasic mentioned the content should be the same.
13:01 2015 best paper award committee and updates on selection is discussed by Bane Vasic.
13:03 2017-2018 selected DSTC officers are introduced.
13:05 Meeting is concluded.

ICC 2016

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at ICC 2016, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
May 25, 2016, 12:30-14:00
Place: Mandarin Hotel, Parkview 3

6 attendees:

1. Qi Qi, Broadcom
2. V. Bhagavatula, CMU
3. Jeongseok Ha, KAIST
4. Dapeng Wu, U. Florida
5. John Barry, Georgia Tech.
6. Jungwoo Lee, Seoul National University

Additional details were not recorded, please refer to the agenda

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Globecom 2015

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at Globecom 2015, San Diego, California, USA
December 8, 12:30-13:30
Place: Gaslamp 3 room of the Omni San Diego

14 attendees (9 in-person, 5 dial-in)

1. Bane Vasic, University of Arizona
2. Jeongseok Ha, KAIST
3. Jinhong Yuan, Univ. New South Wales
4. Tony Xia, Avago Technologies
5. Bo Yuan, City University of New York
6. Siddhartha Kumar, Simula
7. Fredrik Brannstrom, Chalmers University of Tech
8. Alexandre Graell i Amat, Chalmers University of Tech
9. Iryna Andriyanova, ENSEA/University of Cergy-Pontoise/CNRS
10. Shayan Garani, Indian Institute of Science (dial in)
11. Borja Peleato, from Purdue University (dial in)
12. Qi Qi, Avago Technologies (dial in)
13. Warren J. Gross, McGill University (dial in)
14. Brian Kurkoski, JAIST (dial in)

Meeting stated at 12:30.

1) The data storage track at ICC 2015 was merged with the cloud computing track. As a result – many submitted papers on cloud computing.

2) 17 papers on data storage have been submitted to Globecom 2015, only 6 have been accepted. The acceptance rate is 35% (fixed by the society). Good-quality papers had to be rejected.

3) The data storage track at ICC 2016 received 62 submitted papers, they are handled by 13 TPC members. The TPC review assignment is expected to be completed by December 15.

4) The DSTC received 10 nominations for he 2014 Best Paper Award. The decision on the winner is expected to be taken by the end of the year. The DSTC wishes to make more advertisement of this award in 2016, with the aim to get high-quality nominations in the future.

5) The DSTC supports applications for IEEE awards (i.e., Fellow, Distinguished Lecturer).

6) Bane reported on the ComSoc committee meeting he attended. One interesting item, another technical committee has a website and a newspaper that resembled a journal. The format of the newspaper is to be clarified. Another item: the DSTC committee is stable and has a long history, but other committees tend to fade, or now exist only on paper — ComSoc was discussing giving such committees a fixed time to stabilize.

7) Within ComSoc, education is becoming increasingly important. The DSTC can participate in organizing educational courses for PhD students, in joint with conferences.

8) The process of promotion of the technical committee is to be discussed soon.

9) The data storage track makes parts of the tracks names SAC (Selected Areas in Communication). The mailing list of the data storage group contains 218 participants up to now.

10) A new special issue of JSAC on data storage is going to be announced in a near future.

Commentary: Shayan commented that data storage papers are actually widely distributed over other journals such as t-comm, it trans, etc. Bane: we want to keep the theoretical spirit of the committee, while expanding to newer areas like distributed data storage. Bane commented it would be good to have more advertising, e.g. IT Soc web site. He also commented to have good “knowledge transfer” to people who do these activities in the future.

Meeting finished 1:08 pm.

——————– Minutes by Iryna Andriyanova

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ICC 2015

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at ICC 2015, London, UK
June 10, 2015, 14:00-15:20
Place: ExCel London Exhibition and Convention Centre

18 attendees (16 in-person, 2 teleconference):

1. Bane Vasic, University of Arizona, Meeting Chair
2. Veeresh Taranalli, UCSD
3. Bing Fan, UCSD
4. Naveen Kumar, SK Hynix Memory
5. Euiseok Hwang, Gwangju Inst. Sci. & Tech.
6. Stojan Denic, Toshiba Research Europe Limited
7. Magnus Sandell, Toshiba Research Europe Limited
8. Borja Peleato, Purdue University
9. Vijayakumar Bhagavatula, CMU
10. Ricardo Raheli, University of Parma
11. Francois Leduc Primeau, McGill University
12. Jeong Seok Ha, KAIST
13. Jinhong Yuan, UNSW
14. Khoirul Anwar, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
15. Filippo Tosaro, Toshiba Research
16. Cai Kui, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)
17. Brian Kurkoski, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (dial in)
18. Shayan Garani, Indian Institute of Science (dial in)

Meeting minutes:

1. The attendees introduced themselves at the beginning of the meeting.
2. Bane introduced goals and activities of DSTC, and invited new members to join in.
3. ICC 2014: Bane emphasized that there were not many paper submissions for the data storage track. We shall try to retain our track in ICC/Globecom.
4. Globecom 2014: We shall try to include more areas and topics in Globecom and ICC in order to encourage more submissions.
5. ICNC 2014: Vijayakumar said the attendance is very poor. Brian and Cai Kui introduced the background of DSTC’s involvement in organizing ICNC. Bane suggested monitoring the status of ICNC.
6. ICC 2015: Vijayakumar said this time the data storage track has two oral sessions, which is an improvement over the past years.

Francois Leduc Primeau said the attendance of DSTC meetings has been kept low. There is a need to improve the influence of our committee. If we do not change, our committee may shrink.

Bane said we may consider including some new topics into the data storage track, such as security.

7. Globecom 2015: San Diego. 35% acceptance rate.
8. 2014 Best Paper Award: Shayan Garani made an update. Welcome for more nominations. Vijayakumar said 2013 Best Papers has a neural network paper, which seems not very relevant to data storage. Bane said not enough nominations for the best paper award. Suggest the committee members to nominate or self-nominate.
9. IEEE Distinguished Lecturer program: Vijayakumar suggested nominating Roger Wood.

Meeting adjourned 15:20

——————– Minutes by Cai Kui

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Globecom 2014

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at Globecom 2014, Austin, Texas, USA
December 11, 2014, 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Place: Hilton Garden Inn, Red River, 18th Floor

9 Attendees (6 in-person, 3 dial-in)

1. Haitao (Tony) Xia (haitao.xia@avagotech.com)
2. Xinde Hu (xinde.hu@sandisk.com)
3. John Barry (Georgia Tech)
4. Jinsong Wu (Alcatel-Lucent)
5. Pretum Nakkiran (UC Berkley)
6. Akshay Kumar (Viginia Tech)
7. Bane Vasic (University of Arizona) (dial-in)
8. Lara Dolecek (UCLA) (dial-in)
9. Warren Gross (McGill University) (dial-in)

Meeting minutes:

1. a. New leadership team is elected and announced. 2014 ~ 2016 team
   1. Chair: Bane Vasic
   2. Vice Chair from Industry: Xinde Hu
   3. Vice Chair from Academia: Kui Cai
   4. Secretary: Brian Kurkoski
   5. Treasurer: Qi Qi
2. b. Conference update
   1. i. ICC 2014
   2. ii. Globecom 2014 (managed by Lara). Very successful conference
   3. iii. ICC 2015 update (Xinde Hu)
      1. – Combined with Cloud computing to form one big track
      2. – 76 tpc members recruited and 91 papers submitted (81 final papers after withdrawn)
      3. – The committee need to make a decision about future conference whether or not to keep DS and cloud computing together or separate
         1. • Current committee is leaning towards proposing separate the two tracks since the expertise are different
   4. iv. ICNC/Globecom 2015 update
3. c. JSAC Special Issue on Data Storage is published this year (Lara)
4. d. Recommended promotion
   1. i. IEEE Distinguished lecture/Fellow/Senior Member
5. e. Outstanding paper award to be given out early next year
6. f. Update from Brian
   1. i. New website (Looks great)
   2. ii. New mailing list
   3. iii. And Linkedin group added

Meeting adjourned

——————– Minutes by Xinde Hu

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ICC 2014

Minutes of DSTC meeting held at ICC 2014, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
June 12, 2014, 12:30-13:30
Place: Sheraton on the Park Hotel, Boardroom I

10 attendees (9 in-person, 1 teleconference):

1. 1 Brian Kurkoski, JAIST, meeting chair
2. 2 Roberto Rojas-Cessa, NJIT
3. 3 Seyed Mehrdad Khatami, University of Arizona
4. 4 Peter Mueller, IBM Zurich Research
5. 5 Ethan Elenberg, Univ. of Texas at Austin
6. 6 Chin-Tser Huang, Univ. of South Carolina
7. 7 Zhiyuan Yan, Lehigh Univ.
8. 8 Shayan Garani, IISC
9. 9 John Barry, Georgia Tech
10. 10 Xindu Hu, San Disk (dial-in)

There were also around 19 people attending the Data Storage technical session (SAC-DS-01) in the afternoon session.

1. Brian discussed the agenda for the meeting and shared the new website which is much better and organized.
2. ICC and Globecom: This year there were 15 papers submitted for ICC 2014 in the storage track (8 papers related to cloud storage and 7 non distributed storage stuff). The acceptance rate ~ 40%. We need to encourage more participants for ICC and Globecom to have a reasonable pool of papers. Xinde Hu will be the general chair for ICC 2015 and Tony Xia for Globecom 2015. Xinde shared a video for ICC 2015.
3. JSAC 2014 was more successful with 22 papers and an acceptance rate of 40%. We need to increase the frequency of the journal submissions, say once in 2 years. This requires more planning and advance notice to prospective authors.
4. The active list of participants is to be maintained within listserv@listserv.ieee.org
5. Election of officers will be in 2014, chair 1 term, All the rest 2 terms. Bio-data of candidates to be circulated by Sep 2014.
6. We need to promote more workshops and tutorials similar to the lines of erasure coding workshop held at ICC 2014.
7. Ensure update website and mailing list of active members.
8. Encourage industry participation.

Meeting adjourned 13:27

Minutes by Shayan Garani

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Globecom 2013

IEEE Communication Scoceity Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC)

Committee Meeting held at Globecom 2013, Atlanta, Georegia, USA. Room 408/4th Floor

December 11, 2013, 13:00-14:00

The 15 attendees for the DSTC meeting are (10 in-person, 5 dial in):

1. (1) Sarwat Nasir, gatech.edu
2. (2) Saima Ahmed, nus.edu.sg
3. (3) Khoirul Anwar, JAIST
4. (4) Tiffany Li, lehigh.edu
5. (5) John Barry, ece.gatech.edu
6. (6) Danpu Liu, bupt.edu.cn
7. (7) Zhisong Bie, bupt.edu.cn
8. (8) Yang Liu, lehigh.edu
9. (9) Qi Qi, lsi.com
10. (10) Xinde Hu (dial in)
11. (11) Lara Dolecek (dial in)
12. (12) Bane Vasic (dial in)
13. (13) Warren Gross (dial in)
14. (14) Yiling Xu (dial in), shspc.org.cn
15. (15) Haitao (Tony) Xia, LSI

There are also around 20 people attended our Data Storage Session, and I attach authors email addresses, which you can add to our mail list as well as those who attended our DSTC meeting.

I have also attended the TAC meeting, and following are my take-aways:

1. (1) Best readings: each TC should recommend some best readings to comsoc society
2. (2) This year’s IEEE Fellow Evaluation, the comsoc society has selected 28 out 86 candidates
3. (3) Distinguished Lecturer Selection: 41 candidates, 13 new DL chosen, giving a pool of 39 for 2014
4. (4) TC recertification:
   1. a. P&P template can be found at IEEE website
   2. b. Enforce existing P&Ps that define “voting member” and electronic voting process. IEEE has ballot can be used for vote.
   3. c. Keep accurate list of voting members. For electronic voting, the voter needs to register in order to be eligible for vote.

Based on the TAC meeting, I think we need to address those questions ComSoc returned to us during TC recertification.

1. (1) Brian, please help to update website, website link, remove mail list, etc accordingly.
2. (2) Keep a list of voting members, and we should send the list of voting members out to our members after ICC 2014 since we will have election at the end of next year.

——————– Minutes by Haitao (Tony) Xia

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ICC 2013

IEEE Communication Scoceity Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC)

Committee Meeting held at ICC 2013, Budapest, Hungary

June 12, 2013, 12:00-13:30Place: Sofitel Hotel, Rippl Ronai

8 attendees (7 in-person, 1 teleconference):

1. 1. Brian Kurkoski, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)
2. 2. Edward Au, Huawei
3. 3. Naveen Kumar, SK Hynix Memory Solutions
4. 4. Bane Vasic, Univeristy of Arizona
5. 5. Vijayakumar Bhagavatula, Carnegie Mellon University
6. 6. Symeon Chatzinotas, University of Luxembord
7. 7. John Barry, Georgia Tech
8. 8. Haitao (Tony) Xia, LSI Corporation (via teleconference)

Meeting called to order at 12:07

Meeting Chair: Edward Au/Tony Haitao Xia

1) Introduction of Officers

2) Introduction of Goals and Activities of DSTC

3) IEEE Listserv. Currently moving DSTC mailing list from university mail servers to IEEE Listserv. Benefits include stability when secretrary changes, consistency for members, more features.

4) ICC2013 report. 25 papers submitted; 6 presentaitons in today’s Data Storage session. There were a couple of distributed storage papers not in the session (SAC-P1).

5) Globecom 2013 report. 18 papers submitted. Increased submissions in distributed storage and flash, fewer papers on security. Decisions coming soon.

6) ICC 2014 report in Sydney Australia. Currently forming TPC committee. Paper submission deadline is in September. Discussion on how to increase the number of submission through construction of the commmittee. Some discussion about refreshing the CFP, to broaden the appeal.

Edward mentioned that Data Storage track is not gaurarnteed a place in ICC 2015 because we have a low number of papers at recent data storage tracks.

7) JSAC report. Submission deadline was May 15. Bane Vasic reported that the number of submissions was very strong, varied topics: distributed storage, coding for flash, modeling. 2-3 reviewers per paper.

Comment from Prof. Kumar: why were there so many submissions to JSAC and so few to ICC/Globecom? Suggestions to invite distributed storage people to TPCs.

8) Best Paper Award and Best Student Paper Awards. Few nominations received. Proposal to combine 2011 and 2012 Best Student Paper Award drop Best Paper Award. Solicitation to join the committee.

Comment: if the Best Paper Award Committee is too big, it will be unable to give awards due to conflicts of interest.

9) Membership report by Tony Haitao: Distigished Lecturer, Fellow, Senior Member.

10) Report from Technical Activites Committee by Brian. Recertification is on track, exepct inquires over next few months, decisions at Globecom 2013.

Meeting adjourned 12:57

——————– Minutes by Brian Kurkoski

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Globecom 2012

IEEE Communication Scoceity Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC)

Committee Meeting held at Globecom 2012, Anaheim, California, USA

December 5, 2012, 11:00-13:00

Place: California Grand Hotel

Meeting Chair: Tiffany Jing Li

15 attendees (11 in-person, 4 teleconference):

1. Haitao (Tony) Xia, LSI Corporation
2. Xinde Hu, STEC-Inc
3. Ned Varnica, Marvell Semiconductor
4. Brian Kurkoski, Japan Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)
5. Alex Dimakis, University of Southern California
6. Robert Qiu, TTU
7. John Barry, Georgia Tech
8. Chau Yuen, SUTD (Singapore)
9. Edward Au, Huawei Technologies
10. Tiffany Jing Li, Lehigh University
11. Peter Müller, IBM Zurich
12. Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma (via teleconfrence)
13. Lara Dolecek, UCLA (via teleconference)
14. Warren Gross, McGill University (via teleconference)
15. Sedat Olcer, IBM Zurich (via teleconference)

Meeting called to order at 11:15

1) Self-introductions by attendees

2)  Current (outgoing) officers, elected in 2010 are finishing their terms Dec. 2012.  Four officers are stepping down, and there are four open offices.

Conference Representation 3) – 9)

3) Globecom 2012.  Chair: Zinging Wu.

4) ICC 2013 (Budapest, Hungary).  Chair: Tiffany Jing Li.  25 papers submitted, 22 considered “active”.  Reviews are currently underway, few submitted.

5) Globecom 2013 (Atlanta, GA, USA).  Chair: Edward Au.  TPC Formed with 22 members (7 from industry 15 from universities/institutes).   CFP has been posted.   Areas of interest are similar to previous confrences.   Schedule: Paper submission deadline March 15, review assignment, etc.  Next step: Circulate CFP start in early 2013, attend TPC meetings.  Three reviews per paper required.  Each TPC mmeber is responsible for one review per assigned paper.   Member can do review, or can assign.  Tiffany Jing Li: Recently we’ve been receiving papers in security, file systems, etc., and so the TPC should include people with such expertise.

6) ICC14 (Syndey, Australia). Chair: Brian Kurkoski.   Will be looking for TPC volunteers.   TPC chair meeting will be held following day (Dec. 8).

7) Globecom 2014 (Austin, TX, USA). Chair: Lara Dolecek.   Proposal has been accepted.   Acceptance rate will be around 40%.

8) ICC2015 (London, UK).   No Chair at this time, volunteers are welcome.   Chair is obliged to attend at least two/three TPC meetings at the ICC/Globecom conferences immeidately prior to the proposed meeting.  If you can’t attend, find a replacement.

9)  Globecom 2015 (San Diego, USA). Tony Haitao voluneteered to chair.

10) Charter Revisit

Tiffany Jing Li summarizes GC2010 meeting: Committee Chair should be the best available, from either industry or academia.  Term set to 2 years.  Pending issues: (A) Voting members.  (B) Terms of other officers (previous term was 3 years, problems of synchronization)

(A) Anyone can be a member.  Active voting members must satisfy one of 4 conditions:

1. Particiapte in 2 previous meetings out of 5 prior meetings.
2. Officer and actively involved
3. Organize chair data storage track ICC/Globecom
4. Serve on TPC 2 times in 3 years

Some discusson of qualifications to be a voting member.  Should ICNC TPC chiars be included in the criterea (in addition to ICC/Globecom)?  Allow non-voting members petition to become voting members?   No consensus was reached.

(B) Tony suggested that non-president officers be limited to maximum of two 2-year terms (total of 4 years).  Others agreed, and there appeared to be consensus. After consulting the P&P, it was decided to defer the vote to electronic voting of active members.

11) Elections

The list of voting members was displayed.

The open offices and candidates are:

Chair

* Dr. Haitao (Tony) Xia

* Dr. Riccardo Raheli

Vice-Chair (Industry)

* Dr. Xinde Hu

Vice-Chair (Academia)

* Dr. Sedat Olcer

Secretary

* Dr. Brian Kurkoski

That is, the Chair is the only contested position.

Peter Müller made a statement on behalf of Sedat Olcer, and distrubed Olcer’s statment/CV.

Statement via Skype from Riccardo Raheli.  Hard drives, tape, while expanding to flash, cloud/distributed storage. Active in many TC meetings.   Summary by Tiffany Jing Li.

Statement by Haitao Tony Xia.   Emphasized focus on data storage technologies.  Wants to support IEEE senior member/fellow applications.   Increased industry/academia interaction.  Training of more students in data storage area.  Encourage more people to participate.   Summary by Tiffany Jing Li.

Statement by Brian Kurkoski.

Statement by Xinde Hu.   Gave personal background, attendence since he was a student, encourage talented people to enter data strorage.

List of voting members.   On-line voting until next Sunday.  Dec. 16.  Reminders to be sent.

12) Recognition of outgoing officers — certificates were distributed.

13) Best Paper/Best Student Paper awards. 2011.  Haitao Tony Xio, chair.  Nomination deadline was December 2, 2012.   Tiffany Jing Li reviewed general policies for awards.

Meeting adjurned at 12:35 pm.

——————–Minutes prepared by Brian Kurkoski

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ICC 2012

IEEE ComSoc Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC)
Committee meeting held at ICC 2012, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Date: June 14, 2012Time: 12:00 – 13:30
Place: Westin Hotel

9 attendees:

Tiffany Jing Li (Chair)
Warren Gross
Xinde Hu
Cai Meng
Phong Nguyen
Riccardo Raheli
Zining Wu
Liang Xiao
Yifan Yu

The Chair called the meeting to order at 12:25 PM.

1) ICC 2012 Workshop on Emerging Data Storage Technologies Report

Chair: Warren Gross
Co-Chair: Kui Cai
Co-Chair: Alex Dimakis

12 submissions
5 accepted
Acceptance rate = 42%
2 Invited talks (Prof. Paul Siegel, UCSD and Prof. Shu Lin, UC Davis)
13 Attendees

3) Globecom 2012, Anaheim, CA, USA
Chair: Zining Wu
Data Storage Track
14 submissions
36% guideline
5 or maybe 6 papers
1 oral session with 6 papers
poster session is possible – we will probably not have half of paper submitted related to Flash (7/14)
4 papers on HDD
3 more general – coding/decoding

Suggestion: reach out more to SSD and network storage in future

4) ICC 2013 – Budapest Hungary
Chair: Tiffany Jing Li
ICC schedule is changing to:
Sunday/Thursday tutorials/workshop
Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday technical sessions

Limited amount of travel support for US students
Student early bird award – any student author that submits at least 2 papers at least 2 weeks before the original deadline and if both papers get accepted – eligible for award

Paper award: Student paper award being discussed

5) Globecom 2013: Atlanta, USA
Chair: Edward Au
Chair is obliged to attend at least two TPC meetings at ICC/Globecom immediately prior to the proposed ICC/Globecom

6) ICC 2014, Sydney, Australia
Chair: Brian Kurkoski

7) Globecom 2014, Austin TX, USA
Chair: Lara Dolecek

8) ICC 2015
Nominations are being accepted for ICC 2015 (place and schedule not known yet)
Responsibility: form a TPC, making sure each paper gets at least 3 reviews
make decisions
must attend 2 TPC meetings before (ICC/Globecom):  Globecom 2013/ICC 2014

9) Best paper, best student papers 2011
July 31, 2012 deadline for nominations
must be about data storage
can nominate a paper for both awards, but only one will be awarded
self-nominations are allowed
if you want to serve on the award committees then please email the chair of the committees
chair is usually previous winner of the award
award: plaque and first author gets some monetary award

10) Officer Election at Globecom 2012

Nominations collected in September 2012
New elections at Globecom 2012

Resumes will be collected and posted at least two weeks prior.

Anybody interested please nominate or self-nominate.

A question was raised as to what the official voting procedures are, and who is eligible to vote.
The procedures on the website are dated 2006 and do not conform to ComSoc rules.
On the ComSoc website, under the DSTC page, there are policies listed, different than the TC website:

There are two kinds of members: General member and voting members. (ComSoc rules). Each committee has choice to define who is an active member. Our TC should clarify the definition of active (voting) members.

We should sync the policies on our webpage with that of the new revision (April 2012) on the ComSoc webpage

Our TC has additional requirements for “substantial contributions”

A points system was proposed and debated. Some though the system is too complex and the rules could be relaxed. It was proposed that the participation in TPCs be increased to three previous TPCs. It was decided to stay with 2 TPCs. A vote was taken to stay with the current proposal. The motion carried.

A proposal was made that future votes for Officer elections could be done by Email. The Secretary should maintain a list of active members, and voting is done by email after the meeting. Another proposal was made to nominate an ad-hoc elections committee.

It was suggested that the focus should be on finding good nominees for the positions

First round of solicitations: September 2012, deadline end of November 2012

11) Steering committee : 6 to 8 members
Volunteer and nominations: final approval by officers
5 year term

12) IEEE International Conference on Networking and Communications will be held in San Diego, January 28-31, 2013.

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers to Data Storage Technology and Applications Symposium. The deadline is July 5, 2012.

13) The proposal for a JSAC special issue on Communication and Signal Processing for Emerging Data Storage Systems was favorably reviewed. We expect details soon regarding the CFP and publication dates.

The chair closed the meeting at 1:41 PM

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Globecom 2011

IEEE ComSoc Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC)

Committee meeting held at Globecom 2011, Houston, Texas

Date: 8 Dec. 2011
Time: 12:00 – 13:30
Place: Room 344A, Hilton Americas

12 attendees:

Riccardo Raheli, UParma
Eui Seok Hwang, LSI
V. J. Kumar, CMU
Zining Wu, Marvell
Lara Dolecek, UCLA
Qiang Duan, Pennsylvania SU
Peter Müller IBM Zurich
Ying Y. Tai, SanDisk Corporation
Taisir El-Gorashi, ULeeds
Jaafar Elmirghani, ULeeds
Sedat Olcer, IBM Zurich
Tiffany Jing Li, Lehigh U

Meeting called to order at 12:15. Tiffany Jing Li, DSTC Chair, conducting.

1) DSTC Officers elected @ Globecom 2010

Chair: Tiffany Jing Li
Vice Chair (Industry): Haitao (Tony) Xia
Vice Chair (Academia): Riccardo Raheli
Secretary: Warren Gross
Treasurer: Kui Cai

2) Conference activities

GLOBECOM 2011, Houston, TX, USA – Data Storage Track

Chair: Alex Dimakis (dimakis@usc.edu)
Total number of active (submitted) papers reviewed: 28
Total numbers of TPC-Member Reviewers and Ordinary Reviewers invited: 123
Total number of valid review-reports received: 114
Average reviewing scores for all papers in symposium: 3.2 (computed using the EDAS weighting).

Good number of submissions compared to previous ICC and Globecom in recent years (about 15-20).

2 data storage sessions (12 accepted papers):

SAC03: Storage in Flash and Emergying Memory Technologies
Chair Bane Vasic (university of Arizona, USA)

SAC05: Distributed Storage and Coding Theory
Chair: Alex Dimakis (University of Southern California, USA)

A session related to cloud storage & data centers is present within the Communications QoS, Reliability, and Modeling Symposium:
CQRM01: Cloud and Data Center
Chair: Toktam Mahmoodi (King’s College London, UK)

On the subject of “cloud”, Riccardo Raheli describes the newly formed ComSoc Ad-Hoc Committee on Cloud Communications & Networking (CloudComm). This committee is chaired by Marcus Brunner and had its first meeting on Wednesday (yesterday). The committee is tasked to lead and coordinate ComSoc’s efforts in various communications/networking issues related to Cloud Computing. Current members of the committee on behalf of the DSTC are Alex Dimakis and Riccardo Raheli. Riccardo attended the meeting to point out that there is strong interest of the DSTC on distributed cloud storage. The Ad-Hoc Committee can be reached at http://community.comsoc.org/groups .
Interested DSTC members can join the ad-hoc committee.

ICC 2012, Ottawa, Canada

A Data Storage Track is missing from the technical program, in particular from the Selected Areas in Communication Symposium. As a partial compensation, the DSTC has been granted a half-day workshop on “Emerging Data Storage Technologies”, with Warren Gross, Kui Cai and Alex Dimakis as Co-Chairs.

Workshop topics include: signal processing, coding, control, hard disks and disk arrays, flash memories, distributed storage networks, storage management, visualization and security.

Workshop will be either Monday or Friday (pending decision).

Extended deadline for workshop paper submission: January 7, 2012.

All workshop papers must receive 3 quality reviews in order to be included in IEEExplore. Workshop may include a keynote speech and/or a panel discussion.

Further news about ICC 2012:
* Paperless – Tablet and software/downloadable program.
* Cost for Tablet (~$75), software/data (~$20) – registration fee will still be on same level or lower than that of ICC 2011.

GLOBECOM 2012, Anaheim, California, USA

Zining Wu is the DSTC representative. A Data Storage Track, within the Selected Areas in Communications Symposium, has been granted with Zining Wu as Co-Chair. TPC is formed.

ICC 2013, Budapest, Hungary, June 9-13, 2013

DSTC representative and Symposium Co-Chair: Tiffany Jing Li (Lehigh U),  jingli@lehgih.edu .

TPC will be formed – please volunteer.

GLOBECOM 2013, Baltimore/Washington, Maryland, USA, Dec. 1-6, 2013

DSTC representative and Symposium Co-Chair: Edward Au (Huawei), edward.ks.au@gmail.com .

TPC will be formed – please volunteer.

ICC 2014, Sydney, Australia

DSTC representative: Brian Kurkoski (University of Electro-Communications)
<kurkoski@ice.uec.ac.jp>.

GLOBECOM 2014, Austin, TX, USA, Nov 16-20, 2014

DSTC representative: Lara Dolecek (UCLA) <dolecek@ee.ucla.edu>.

New volunteers to organize a Data Storage Track in future conferences are welcome.

DSTC officers and representatives are expected to track the decision process at GITC meetings until a Data Storage Track at each specific ICC/GLOBECOM conference has been granted.

DSTC representatives are expected to attend TPC Meetings at ICC/GLOBECOM immediately prior to the proposed ICC/GLOBECOM.

ICNC 2012, Maui, Hawaii, January 30 –February 2, 2012.

Data Storage Technology and Applications Symposium @ International Conference on Computing, Networking &Communications (ICNC)

Chairs:  Tony Xia (Haitao.Xia@lsi.com),
Andrew Jiang (ajiang@cs.tamu.edu).

Submission deadline was: July 5, 2011.

AREAS are broad:  Physical layer design/architecture (SAS, SATA,PCI express, serdes); Data storage for cloud computing; Cost versus performance, power issues for data storage centers;  Disk arrays;  Emerging storage technologies such as NAND flash, DRAM, phase change memory;  Coding and data security for storage systems;  Signal processing and coding techniques for magnetic recording systems includes timing recovery, equalization, detection and error-correction codes;  System-on-chip (SOC) architecture and optimization; Data compression for digital storage, including audio/video;  Channel characterization, modeling of media noise and nonlinearity; Noise modeling and analysis for data storage systems; Measurement, testing, and performance optimization; New concepts for data storage systems; and more.

3) Best Paper Award & Best Student Paper Awards

2010 Best Paper Award

2010 Committee Chair: Andrew Jiang (ajiang@cs.tamu.edu).
2010 Committee: Andrew Jiang, Kui Cai (DSI), Sidharth Jaggi (Chinese U of Hong Kong), Yingquan Wu (Link-a-Media), Krishna Narayanan (Texas A&M U).
Nomination deadline was: July 31, 2011.
Papers dealing with data storage and published in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding during 2010 are eligible.

The committee received seven nominations (two papers were doubly nominated).

Award winner:

A. G. Dimakis, P. B. Godfrey, Y. Wu, M. J. Wainwright and K. Ramchandran ,”Network Coding for Distributed Storage Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 56, Issue 9, Sept. 2010.

2010 Best Student Paper Award

2010 Committee Chair: Tony Xia (Haitao.Xia@lsi.com)
2010 Committee: Tony Xia (LSI), Warren Gross (McGill U), Xingkai Bao (Alcatel-Lucent), Alex Dimakis (USC)
Nomination deadline was: July 31, 2011.
Papers dealing with data storage, published in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding during 2010, and having a student as first author are eligible.

The committee received three nominations.

Award winner:

Y. Cassuto, M. Schwartz, V. Bohossian, and J. Bruck, “Codes for Asymmetric Limited-Magnitude Errors With Application to Multilevel Flash Memories”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION THEORY, VOL. 56, NO. 4, APRIL 2010.

2011 Data Storage Best Paper & Best Student Paper Awards

Nomination deadline: July 31, 2012.

Papers must deal with data storage and must appear in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding in 2011.

Student Paper Award: Student author must be first author (or if authors are alphabetically ordered, must have contributed to more than 50% of work).

Nominations and self-nominations for these awards are welcome. Please email the relevant Committee Chair.

4) Policies and Procedures (P&P)

The DSTC current P&P charter is available at:

http://committees.comsoc.org/spfs/policies.html .

The general ComSoc P&P guidelines for Technical Committees are available at:

http://www.comsoc.org/about/documents/pp/7 .

In particular, according to ComSoc P&P, TC Officers must be elected by “active members”:

“A TC voting member shall be any individual who has: 1) “attended”
(physically present, by teleconference, or via electronic means for
virtual TC meetings) two or more of the prior five regularly
scheduled TC meetings; or 2) contributed substantially to the TC
activities. (The TC Secretary shall maintain an attendance list for
each such meeting. That attendance list shall be part of the Meeting
Minutes prepared and issued by the Secretary.”

The P&P of the DSTC must be revised to match the general ComSoc guidelines. In particular, the DSTC wishes to adopt the following P&P, to be approved at the next meeting.

Members: Any one can and is welcome to become a member of the Data
Storage Technical Committee.

An active (Voting) Member must satisfy at least one of the following conditions:

* Participated either in person or through teleconferencing in at least 2 DSTC meetings in the past three years (i.e. in the past 5 prior DSTC meetings)

* Is a DSTC officer and is actively involved in TC activities

* Organized and chaired a data storage track at ICC/GLOBECOM in the past three years

* Served in a Data Storage Track/Workshop TPC at least twice in the past three years at ICC/GLOBECOM.

Only active members have the right to vote for elections and other
issues through a voting process. Electronic voting will be made available
as soon as details are worked out.

5) Special issues

A special issue in IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) could be considered, with the following possible topics:

* Cloud Storage and Data Centers
* Flash memory
* Emerging Technology in Storaged?

Lara Dolececk volunteers to propose and guest edit a JSAC special issue.

6) Steering Committee

The DSTC should consider the institution of a Steering Committee composed of 6 to 8 members and based on volunteering & nominations, with final approval by the officers. Members of the committee should run for a five year term, with possibility of renewal.

The following members are asked and willing to be part of the Steering Comittee:

V. J. Kumar, CMU
Zining Wu, Marvell
Lara Dolecek, UCLA
Sedat Olcer, IBM Zurich.

5) Other business

Riccardo Raheli mentions the ComSoc initiative “Best readings in Power Line Communications”. Other similar initiatives are undergoing by ComSoc as he learned by the TAC meeting he attended. The DSTC might consider proposing a similar initiative.

There are no other items for discussion.

The meeting is adjourned at 13:30.

—– minutes prepared by Riccardo Raheli

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ICC 2011

IEEE ComSoc Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC)
Committee meeting held at ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan

Date: 7 June 2011
Time: 12:00 – 13:30
Place: Room 558, Convention Center

Attendees:

1. Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma
2. Lara Dolecek, UCLA
3. Zining Wu, Marvell Semiconductors
4. Vo Tam Van, Toyota Technological Institute
5. Brian Kurkoski, Univ. of Elecro-Communications
6. Byung-Hak Kim, TAMU

Meeting called to order at 12:00. Riccardo Raheli, DSTC Vice-Chair for Academia, conducting. The DSTC Chair Tiffany Jing Li could not travel to Japan due to a visa problem. She wishes to apologize with the attendees.

1) DSTC Officers elected @ Globecom 2010

Chair: Tiffany Jing Li
Vice Chair (Industry): Haitao (Tony) Xia
Vice Chair (Academia): Riccardo Raheli
Secretary: Warren Gross
Treasure: Kui Cai

2) Conference activities

ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan

A Data Storage Track has not been included in the technical program.

GLOBECOM 2011, Houston, TX, USA – Data Storage Track

Chair: Alex Dimakis(dimakis@usc.edu)
Total number of active papers reviewed: 28
Total numbers of the TPC-Member Reviewers and Ordinary Reviewers invited, respectively: 123
Total number of valid review-reports received: 114
Average reviewing scores for all papers in your symposium: 3.2 (computed using the EDAS weighting).

Good number of submissions compared to previous ICC and Globecom in recent years (about 15-20).

ICNC 2012, Maui, Hawaii, January 30 –February 2, 2012.

There will be a Data Storage Technology and Applications Symposium at the International Conference on Computing, Networking & Communications (ICNC). Chairs are Tony Xia and Andrew Jiang. Submission Deadline is July 5, 2011. Web site: http://edas.info/N10291 .

ICC 2012, Ottawa, Canada

A Data Storage Track is missing from the technical program, in particular from the Selected Areas in Communication Symposium. As a partial compensation, the DSTC has been invited to submit a Workshop proposal. The TC has proposed a half-day workshop on “Emerging Data Storage Technologies”, with Warren Gross, Kui Cai and Alex Dimakis as Co-Chairs.
Topics include: signal processing, coding, control, hard disks and disk arrays, flash memories, distributed storage networks, storage management, visualization and security. In addition to contributed papers, invited papers and a Panel discussion could be considered, provided they are compatible with the general ComSoc Conference Guidelines.

GLOBECOM 2012, Anaheim, California, USA

Zining Wu is the DSTC representative. A proposal for Data Storage Track has been submitted with Zining Wu as Co-Chair and decision is pending. A TPC meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. No further news are available to the attendees.

ICC 2013, Budapest, Hungary, June 9-13, 2013

A request for proposals was received on Friday. A proposal for Data Storage Track was submitted by the DSTC Chair, despite the short notice. The presentation at the GITC meeting, held yesterday, included this track within the SAC Symposium.

GLOBECOM 2013, Baltimore/Washington, Maryland, USA, Dec. 1-6, 2013

DSTC representative must be determined.

Lara Dolecek and Brian Kurkoski offer to volunteer as DSTC representatives at coming conferences.

DSTC representatives, must attend at least two TPC Meetings at ICC/GLOBECOM immediately prior to the proposed Conference.

3) Best Paper Award & Best Student Paper Award

2010 Best Paper Award

Committee Chair: Andrew Jiang (ajiang@cs.tamu.edu)
Nomination Deadline: July 31, 2011
Papers must deal with data storage and must have been published in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding during 2010.

2010 Best Student Paper Award

Committee Chair: Tony Xia (Haitao.Xia@lsi.com)
Nomination Deadline: July 31, 2011
Papers must deal with data storage, have a student as first author (if authors are alphabetically ordered, the student author must have contributed to for more than 50% of work) and must have been published in print in a peer-reviewed journal or conference proceeding during 2010.

Nominations and self-nominations for these awards are welcome. Please email the relevant Committee Chair.

4) Policies and Procedures (P&P)

Each TC has to undergo a “recertification process” by ComSoc every two years. The DSTC has to verify that its current P&P, available at http://committees.comsoc.org/spfs/policies.html , are compatible with the the general ComSoc P&P for Technical Committees available at http://www.comsoc.org/about/documents/pp/7 .

In particular, according to ComSoc rules, TC Officers must be elected by “active members”:

“A TC voting member shall be any individual who has: 1) “attended”
(physically present, by teleconference, or via electronic means for
virtual TC meetings) two or more of the prior five regularly
scheduled TC meetings; or 2) contributed substantially to the TC
activities. (The TC Secretary shall maintain an attendance list for
each such meeting. That attendance list shall be part of the Meeting
Minutes prepared and issued by the Secretary.”

During the next DSTC meeting at Globecom 11, necessary revisions of the current P&P will discussed and possibly approved.

5) Other business

There are no other items for discussion.

The meeting is adjourned at 13:15.

———————-minutes prepared by Riccardo Raheli

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Globecom 2010

Minutes of the DSTC meeting, Miami, Florida, USA, December 9, 2010

Attendees:

1. Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma
2. Xinde Hu, STEC-Inc
3. Haitao Xia, LSI Corporation
4. Derek Leong, Caltech
5. Euiseok Hwang, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
6. Cai Kui, DSI Singapore
7. Shu Lin, University of California, Davis
8. Xinmiao Zhang, Case Western Reserve University
9. Qin Huang, University of California, Davis
10. Ting Jin, BUPT
11. Di Li, BUPT
12. Shuguang Cui, Texas A&M University
13. Liuqing Yang, Colorado State University
14. Seungjune Jeon, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
15. Youjian Liu, University of Colorado
16. Guoliang Xue, Arizona State University
17. Tolga Duman, Arizona State University
18. Tao Jiang, Huazhong University of Technology
19. Yuanxing Lee, LSI Corporation
20. Jehoshua Bruck, Caltech
21. Anxiao (Andrew) Jiang, Texas A&M University
22. Vo Tam Van, Toyota Technological Institute
23. Lu Lu, LSU
24. Yang Yang, SHRCWC
25. Zhensheng Zhang, Institute Of Electrical And Electronics Engineers, Inc.
26. Alex Dimakis, University of Southern California
27. Warren Gross,  McGill University
28. M. Fatih Erden, Seagate Technology
29. Tiffany Jing Li, Lehigh University
30. Fanggang Wang, BUPT
31. Francois Leduc-Primeau, McGill University
32. Ravi Motwani, Intel
33. Eitan Yaakobi, UCSD

1) DSTC Officer term of service changes from three years to two years

2) DSTC Officer elections

New DSTC officers have been elected for 2011-2012:

Chair: Prof. Tiffany Jing Li
Vice Chair from Industry: Dr. Haitao (Tony) Xia
Vice Chair from Academia: Prof. Riccardo Raheli
Secretary: Prof. Warren Gross
Treasurer: Dr. Kui Cai

3) Globecom2010, Miami, Florida, USA

TC representative and SAC Symposium Co-Chair is Haitao (Tony) Xia

The DS Track within the Selected Areas in Communications Symposium
received a total of 15 submissions, 7 papers have been accepted and formed into two oral sessions.

The two technical (oral) sessions were successful with an average number of
about 30 attendees.

4) Future conferences

* ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan

TC representatives are Tiffany Jing Li, Leigh University, and Edward Au,
Huawei Technologies. A DS track has not been included in the technical
program. A successive workshop proposal was also not accepted.

A discussion on this matter follows. Strong committment to more closely
follow the decision process for future conferences is essential and
encouraged. In particular, attendance of the following meetings by a
DSTC representative must be secured:

– GITC (GLOBECOM & ICC TECHNICAL COMMITTEE)
– TAC (TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES COUNCIL)
– TPC (TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE) for each specific Globecom and ICC.

* Globecom 2011, Houston, TX, USA

TC Representative is Alex Dimakis, University of Southern California.

* ICC 2012, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

TC Representatives are Warren Gross and Kui Cai.
* Globecom 2012, Anehem, California, USA

TC Representatives are Zining Wu.

5) 2009 Best Paper Award and 2009 Best Student Paper Award

The committee recevied 6 nominations for the 2009 Best Paper Award.
The number of nominations for the 2009 Best Student Paper Award is two.

* 2009 best paper award:
Awardees:  Anxiao (Andrew) Jiang, Robert Mateescu, Moshe Schwartz, Jehoshua Bruck

Paper:  “Rank Modulation for Flash Memories,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 55, pp. 2659-2673, June 2009.

* 2009 best student paper award:
Awardee:  Anantha Raman Krishnan, Rathnakumar Radhakrishnan, Bane Vasic, Aleksander Kavcic, William Ryan, Fatih Erden

Paper:  “2-D Magnetic Recording: Read Channel Modeling,” IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, vol. 45, pp. 3830-3836, October 2009.

6) Other business

– Prof. Duman brought out question regarding to the qualification of active members of Data Storage Society.

———————-minutes prepared by Haitao (Tony) Xia

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ICC 2010

Minutes of the DSTC meeting, Cape Town, South Africa, May 26, 2010

Attendees:

1. Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma
2. Ashish Jagmohan, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
3. Michele Franceschini, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
4. Derek Leong, Caltech
5. Euiseok Hwang, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
6. Damian Morero, UNC Argentina
7. Rajiv Agarwal, Stanford University & Link-A-Media Devices
8. Alek Kavcic, University of Hawaii
9. Pietro Savazzi, University of Pavia

1) DSTC Officer elections

The following positions are open for the next term 2011-2013:

Chair
Vice Chair from Academia
Vice Chair from Industry
Secretary
Treasurer

Elections will take place at Globecom 2010. The current list of
candidates is:

Chair:
* Tiffany Jing Li, Lehigh University, tjl3@lehigh.edu

Vice Chair from Academia:
*Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma, Italy, raheli@unipr.it

Vice Chair from Industry:
* Fatih Erden, Seagate Technology, Fatih.Erden@seagate.com
* Haitao, Xia, LSI, Haitao.xia@lsi.com

Secretary:
* Kui Cai, Data Storage Institute, Singapore, CAI_Kui@dsi.a-star.edu.sg.

Further nominations can be considered. They are particularly sought
for the positions with no candidates (Treasurer).

2) ICC 2010, Capetown, South Africa

TC representative and SAC Symposium Co-Chair is Riccardo Raheli.

The DS Track within the Selected Areas in Communications Symposium
received a total of 14 submissions, of which:
* 2 out of scope papers (which were nevertheless reviewed)
* 3 papers on distributed storage networks.

A team of 10 TPC members secured 42 high-quality reviews by the TPC
members themselves or delegated colleagues. All these colleagues are
gratefully thanked. As a result of the review process and consequent
negotiation within the Symposium, 8 papers were accepted to:
* form 1 technical session with 6 oral presentations
* contribute with 2 papers to a poster session.

The technical (oral) session was successful with an average number of
about 25 attendees.

3) Future conferences

* Globecom 2010, Miami, FL, USA

TC representatives are Haitao (Tony) Xia, LSI, and William Radich,
Seagate. Symposium Co-Chair for DS Track within SAC Symposium is Haitao
(Tony) Xia. Information on number of submissions/expected acceptances
is not available to attendees.

Rajiv Agarwal announces that Globecom 2010 will feature a “Workshop on
the Application of Communication Theory to Emerging Memory Technologies”.
TC members are warmly encouraged to submit and attend. Attendence will
be free of charge for all Globecom 2010 attendees. Deadline for paper
submission is July 2, 2010.

* ICC 2011, Kyoto, Japan

TC representatives are Tiffany Jing Li, Leigh University, and Edward Au,
Huawei Technologies. A DS track has not been included in the technical
program. A successive workshop proposal was also not accepted.

A discussion on this matter follows. Strong committment to more closely
follow the decision process for future conferences is essential and
encouraged. In particular, attendance of the following meetings by a
DSTC representative must be secured:

– GITC (GLOBECOM & ICC TECHNICAL COMMITTEE)
– TAC (TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES COUNCIL)
– TPC (TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE) for each specific Globecom and ICC.

* Globecom 2011, Houston, TX, USA

TC Representative is Alex Dimakis, University of Southern California.

The technical program structure has not been defined yet. TPC meeting
is being held concurrently to this meeting, because it was scheduled
only recently and the collision could not be avoided. Likely, DSTC
is not represented in the concurrent Globecom 2011 TPC meeting.

* ICC 2012, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

TC Representative has not been nominated yet (to the knowledge of the
attendees).

4) JSAC Special Issue

The JSAC Special issue on “Data Communication Techniques for Storage
Channels and Networks”, guest edited by Sedat 謑鏴r, Aleksandar Kavcic,
Bane Vasic, Bruce Wilson, and Lihao Xu, was published in February 2010.
It includes 17 papers.

5) IEEE promotions

The TC actively encourages and recommends the promotion of its eligible
members to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow rank.

The TC is currently sponsoring some candidates for senior membership
and fellowship grade elevation.

Senior Membership:
Dr. George Methew
Dr. Haitao (Tony) Xia
Dr. Indukumar Kalahasthi
Dr. Fatih Erden.

Fellowship:
Professor Bene_Vasic
Professor Vijayakumar Bhagavatula.

6) 2009 Best Paper Award and 2009 Best Student Paper Award

The committee recevied 6 nominations for the 2009 Best Paper Award.
The number of nominations for the 2009 Best Student Paper Award is not
known to the attendees. Both Awards will be presented at Globecom 2010.

The 2008 Best Paper Award Winners (presented at Globecom 2009) are:

* 2008 best paper award:
“A general construction of constrained parity-check codes for optical
recording”, by Kui Cai and Kees Immink, IEEE Trans Com, 2008

* 2008 best student paper award:
Discrete-Input Two-Dimensional Gaussian Channels With Memory: Estimation
and Information Rates Via Graphical Models and Statistical Mechanics, by
Shental, O.; Shental, N.; Shamai (Shitz), S.; Kanter, I.; Weiss, A.J.;
Weiss, Y., IEEE Trans Information Theory, April 2008, pp 1500 -1503.

7) 2009 IEEE Distinguished Lecturer

Professor J.R. Cruz (Fellow, IEEE), University of Oklahoma, was appointed
Distinguished Lecturer for 2009 and 2010 following the nomination of the
DSTC.

8) Other business

– Priority for future conferences: consolidate and increase the number
of submissions in the field of data storage systems and networks.

– Ashish Jagmohan and Michele Franceschini announce that IBM TJ Watson
Research Center is planning to host a workshop on “Non-Volatile Memory
Devices” in October 2010.

———————-minutes prepared by Riccardo Raheli

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Globecom 2009

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Dec. 1st, 2009

Attendees:

(1) Riccardo Raheli, University of Parma
(2) Sedat Oelcer, IBM Research
(3) Alek Kavcic, University of Hawaii
(4) Hao Zhong, LSI
(5) Fatih Erden, Seagate Technology;
(6) Yuan Xing Lee, LSI
(7) Gioreai Cherabin, IBM Research,
(8) Adriaaw J van Wyngaarden, Bell Labs, Murray Hill
(9) Arat Lerner, Open University of Israel
(10) Ananthe Raman Krishan, University of Arizona
(11) Alex Dimakis, University of Southern California
(12) Kan Li, University of Hawaii
(13) Fabian Lim, University of Hawaii
(14) Yiaojun Yuan University of Hawaii

Meeting highlights:

Yuan Xing Lee presented the DSTC 2009 work report and touched upon the activities in various areas such as IEEE grade upgrades and distinguished lecturer program. The session organizers (or co-chairs) briefed paper submission rates and acceptance rates at 2009 ICC and Gbobecom.

It is grateful that S. Oelcer et al finally pushed through the JSAC (Data Communication Techniques for Storage Channels and Networks) for publication in 2010.

The meeting also elected Alex Dimakis as the technical committee representative at Globecom2011.

The members actively brain stormed ideas to grow paper submissions to DSTC technical sessions, and to get more attraction from the areas of network storage and other storage related subjects.

Another point of discussion was to get other DSTC officers more involved in heavy-duty roles to grow DSTC impact in terms of increasing paper submissions, organizing tutorials/workshops, networking with other committees.

The meeting culminated with presenting the 2008 Best Paper Award and Best Student Paper Award.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 pm.
———————-minutes prepared by Yuanxing Lee

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ICC 2009

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Dresden, Germany, June 15th, 2009

Attendees:

Gabi Sarkis, Riccardo Raheli, Satoru Higashino, Bane Vasic, Giovanni Cherubini, Thomas Mittelholzer, Sedat Oelcer.

1) ICC 2009 report

1. Oelcer presented the foils prepared by YuanXing Lee on the DSTC, future conferences, mission of the DSTC, etc. He also explained in detail where we currently stand with respect to the JSAC special issue on data storage. Questions on the number of paper submissions, the acceptance rate, etc. were asked. B. Vasic gave background information on the invited paper by E. Soljanin et al.
2. Cherubini asked how many papers were submitted to Globecom 2009, but this number was not known to anyone in the room.
3. Oelcer mentioned that if there is a volunteer for helping Tiffany Li for the organization of ICC2011, then they could get in touch with Tiffany directly.
4. Raheli indicated that he will attend the next day a meeting regarding the organization of ICC2010, where he is responsible for the Data Storage track. S. Oelcer mentioned to R. Raheli that he will make his list of TPC members available to him so that he can start getting organized.
5. Vasic indicated to R. Raheli that if he needs help for the organization, he could get in touch with Prof. Ferreira, who is located in South Africa where the conference will take place in 2010.
6. Vasic remarked that the “system lacks memory”, in the sense that it would be good to accumulate and document experience for organizing our track from conference to conference, otherwise every time the organizers somehow start from scratch again.
7. Oelcer opened the discussion on how we could attract more contributors to our data storage area in future conferences. The difficulty of this issue was acknowledged by the attendees. B. Vasic suggested to have invited papers, where we could ask the speakers to write a “short paper” instead of a full conference paper. In this way, potential speakers might be more willing to give an invited talk than in the case where they would need to furthermore to deliver a full-length survey paper, which usually is a rather time consuming work. This would encourage them more to attend our track/conference. G. Cherubini suggested that we approach other similar conferences and advertise for our committee and ask for contributions.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:45 pm.

2) Globecom 2009 status

– After the paper submission deadline, we had 17 manuscripts submitted to Data Storage track (similar number compared to previous years, but less than what I was expecting. The recent economy might be a big factor on this)
– The review process for the papers are completed, special thanks to everybody who acted as TPC members for Data Storage track, great job!
– The acceptance rate of the papers was determined as ~34% by the overall conference board (mainly because of the limitations of the venue, and space in conference site)
– This meant 1 session for Data Storage Track, which consisted of 6 accepted papers
– The papers, according to their scores, evaluated, accepted papers identified, and notices will be sent soon.
– The time and dates of the sessions are being defined for the time being.

———————-minutes prepared by Sedat Oelcer and Fatih Erden

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Globecom 2008

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, New Orleans, LA, USA, Dec 3rd, 2008

Attendees:

Yuanxing Lee, Tiffany Li, Bruce Wilson, Xinde Hu, Henry Pfister, Fatih Erden, Alvin Wang, Riccardo Raheli, Sedat Olcer, Mario Blaum, Kui Cai, Xingkai Bao, Phisan Kaewprapha, Nattakan Puttarak, J.B. Soriaga.

1) GLOBECOM 2008 report

GLOBECOM 2008 was successfully organized conference from the perspective of Technical Committee meeting and technical session.

– 17 papers were submitted. 6 papers were accepted and all were presented in one session as part of the General Symposium.

– Chaired by Bruce Wilson and Henry Pfister.

2) Future conferences

At future conferences the Data Storage TC will be represented by a separate track of the General Symposium (or the Symposium on Selected Areas in Communications)

Our representatives, i.e. delegated symposia co-chairs, for the future conferences are:

–   ICC 2009 (Dresden): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich) and Shaohua Yang (LSI, San Jose)

–   GLOBECOM 2009 (Hawaii): Fatih Erden (Seagate, Pittsburgh), and Hao Zhong (LSI, San Jose)

–   ICC 2010 (Cape Town): Riccardo Raheli (University of Parma, Italy)

–   GLOBECOM 2010 (Miami): Haitao (Tony) Xia (Link_A_Media), Bill Radich (Seagate).

–  ICC 2011 (Japan): Tiffany Li (Lehigh University).

3) JSAC special issue

-Special issue on Data Communication Techniques for Storage Channels and Networks.

-Gust Editors: Sedat Oelcer, Alek Kavcic, Bane Vasic, Bruce Wilson, and Lihao Xu

-Deadlines: Manuscript submission: Jan 15, 2009,

Acceptance notification: May 15, 2009

Final manuscript: Sept 15, 2009

Publication: Q1 2010.

4) 2007 best paper awards

-Two papers are to be selected as best papers of 2007, ad the awards were  presented at this meeting.

-2007 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

“Determining and Approaching Achievable Rates of Binary Intersymbol Interference Channels Using Multistage Decoding” by Soriaga, J.B.   Pfister, H.D.   Siegel, P.H. published in Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on April 2007, Volume: 53,  Issue: 4, page(s): 1416-1429

-2007 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

“Error Floor Estimation of Long LDPC Codes on Partial Response Channels”, Hu, Xinde   Kumar, B. V. K. Vijaya   Li, Zongwang   Barndt, Richard, GLOBECOM ’07. IEEE, 26-30 Nov. 2007, pp. 259-264

5) Inclusion of storage area networks and security

-We are encouraged to actively — seek involvement of professionals in the areas of Storage Area Networks and Storage Security to actively participate in the DSTC and publish/present their work at ICC & GLOBECOM conferences. Future calls for papers and conference notifications should be emailed to professionals in these areas. Also, the pending issue of JSAC will seek to include papers in Storage Area Networks and Storage Security.

6) IEEE promotions

-We need to actively seek promotions of our members to IEEE Fellow and Senior Member rank. We are currently sponsoring some candidates for fellowship and senior membership grade elevation.

7) Distinguished lecturers

-Nominated two distinguished lecturers to IEEE COMSOC on August 16, 2008.

8) Misc

– None.

———————-minutes prepared by Yuan Xing Lee

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ICC 2008

Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Beijing, China, May 24th, 2008

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Tony Xia, Moon Ho Lee, Sedat Olcer, Ned Varnica, Zining Wu, Tiffany Li, and Yuan Xing Lee, Zheng Wu, Michael Cheng, Oleg Zaboronski, Tom Parnell, Thomas Mittelholzer.

1) ICC 2008 report

– ICC 2008 was successfully organized conference from the perspective of DSTC.

– 20 papers were submitted. 6 papers were accepted and presented in one oral session, and 2 papers were accepted   and presented in one poster session, as part of the General Symposium.

– ICC 2008 storage session was organized by Ned Varnica and Tiffany Li.

2) GLOBECOM 2008 report

– Preparations for GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans) are under way

– Bruce Wilson and Henry D. Pfister are the representative from DSTC in Data Storage Track of the General Symposium.

– 17 papers were submitted in Data Storage. The paper selection process is still in progress. The number of sessions for Data Storage is to be determined.

3) Future conferences

– Our representatives for the future conferences are:

–   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose) and Henry Pfister (TexasA&M University)

–   ICC 2009 (Dresden): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich) and Shaohua Yang (LSI, San Jose)

–   GLOBECOM 2009 (Hawaii): Fatih Erden (Seagate, Pittsburgh), and Hao Zhong (LSI, San Jose)

–   ICC 2010 (Cape Town): Riccardo Raheli (University of Parma, Italy)

– Since the Data Storage Track is part of general symposium with co-chairs from many different tracks, it is important to keep the communications to flow with other co-chairs when formulating sessions.

– When there is more than 1 session for Data Storage, try to keep the sessions on the same day to facilitate the schedule for industry participants.

– try to find one representative from local for each conference to insure the guaranteed success.

4) JSAC special issue

-Special issue on Data Communication Techniques for Storage Channels and Networks.

-Gust Editors: Sedat Olcer, Alek Kavcic, Bane Vasic, Bruce Wilson, and Lihao Xu

-Deadlines: manuscript submissions Jan 15, 2009, Acceptance notification May 15, 2009, Final manuscript Sept 15, 2009, and Publication Q1 2010.

5) 2007 best paper awards

-Two papers are to be selected as best papers of 2007, ad the awards will be  presented at GLOBECOM 2008 DSTC meeting.

-Paper selection committees: Ara Patapoutian and Tiffany Li chair the selection committees for the Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award respectively.

– 6 papers were nominated for Best Paper Award, and 5 papers were nominated for Best Student Paper Award.

6) Misc

– We need to invite people who are in the areas of network storage and storage security to participate in DSTC.

– continue working on grade level promotion and recommending distinguished lecturers.

———————-minutes prepared by Yuan Xing Lee and Haitao (Tony) Xia

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Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Washington DC, USA, Nov. 29th, 2007

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Tiffany Jing Li, Yuanxing Lee, Bruce Wilson, Xinde Hu, Ruwan Ratnayake, Krishna Narayanan, Henry Pfister, Jing Jiang, Fatih Erden, Alvin Wang, Riccardo Raheli, Tolga Duman, Sedat Olcer, Marcus Marrow

1)  TC Recertification: Once in 3 years the technical committee needs to be recertified by ComSoc. Our technical committee passed the recertification, but two areas were recognized as weak, and should be improved

– It is recommended that at least 2 special issue of JSAC (Journal on Selected Areas in Communications) be sponsored by the TC per decade. It has been almost a decade since the TC sponsored a special issue of JSAC. This should be rectified. It is recommended that a new special issue be kicked off soon. Since the process will take 2-3 years, it is essential that the process be started immediately.

–  Increase activity by organizing workshops at least twice per decade. Efforts are already under way for GLOBECOM 2007. Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are organizing a Workshop on Data Storage with in GLOBECOM 2007.

–  Recognize TC members by successfully promoting them to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow grades.

2) GLOBECOM 2007 report: GLOBECOM 2007 was another successfully organized conference from the perspective of our Technical Committee.

– 14 papers were submitted. 6 papers were accepted and all were presented in one session as part of the General Symposium.

–  Marcus Marrow and Bruce Wilson organized a Workshop on Data Storage as part of GLOBECOM 2007 with 6 invited speakers and attendance of over 20.

3) ICC 2008 report: Preparations for ICC 2008 (Beijing) are under way

– DSTC will be represented in the Data Storage Track of the General Symposium. Ned Varnica is the General Symposium co-chair responsible for the Data Storage Track.

– 20 papers submitted in Data Storage. 7 (or 8) will be accepted. The paper selection process is still under way. Authors will be informed once the final decision is made.

4) Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2008 and onward) the Data Storage TC will be represented by a separate track of the General Symposium (or the Symposium on Selected Areas in Communications)

Our representatives, i.e. delegated symposia co-chairs, for the future conferences are:

–   ICC 2008 (Beijing), Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell) and Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University)

–   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose) and Henry Pfister (Texas A&M University)

–   ICC 2009 (Dresden): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich) and Shaohua Yang (LSI, San Jose)

–   GLOBECOM 2009 (Hawaii): Fatih Erden (Seagate, Pittsburgh)

–   ICC 2010 (Cape Town): Riccardo Raheli (University of Parma, Italy)

5) JSAC special issue: Sedat Olcer will take the lead role and recruit 4 additional guest editors who will start the process of organizing a JSAC special issue on Data Storage. The proposal is expected to be submitted at the beginning of 2008.

6) 2006 best paper awards: Two papers were selected as best papers of 2006, ad the awards were presented at this meeting

–   2006 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

“Iterative Soft-Input Soft-Output Decoding of

Reed–Solomon Codes by Adapting the Parity-Check Matrix,”

by Jing Jiang and Krishna R. Narayanan, IEEE TRANSACTIONS

ON INFORMATION THEORY, vol. 52, No. 8, pp. 3746- 3756,

August 2006.

–   2006 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage:

“Multidimensional Signal Processing and Detection for

Storage Systems with Data-Dependent Transition Noise,”

by Riccardo Pighi, Riccardo Raheli, and Umberto Amadei.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, vol. 42, No. 7,

1. 1905-1916, July 2006,

7)  Inclusion of Storage Area Networks and Security: We are encouraged to actively seek involvement of professionals in the areas of Storage Area Networks and Storage Security to actively participate in the DSTC and publish/present their work at ICC & GLOBECOM conferences. Future calls for papers and conference notifications should be emailed to professionals in these areas. Also, the pending issue of JSAC will seek to include papers in Storage Area Networks and Storage Security.

8) Elections: Alek Kavcic ended his term as Chair of the Data Storage Technical Committee. The following were the nominations for the officers of the Technical Committee

Chair: Yuan Xing Lee (automatic promotion from vice chair position)

Vice-Chair (industry): Bruce Wilson

Vice-Chair (academia): Tiffay Jing Li (continuation)

Secretary: Haitao Xia (continuation)

Treasurer: Fatih Erden

9)  Election results:

Bruce Wilson:        for (13)  against (0)     abstained(1)

Fatih Erden:            for(12)          against(1)      abstained(1)

10) Newly elected officers:

Chair: Yuan Xing Lee (automatic promotion from vice chair position)

Vice-Chair (industry): Bruce Wilson

Vice-Chair (academia): Tiffay Jing Li (continuation)

Secretary: Haitao Xia (continuation)

Treasurer: Fatih Erden

11. Misc: None.

———————-minutes prepared by  Alek Kavcic

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Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, June 24th, 2007

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Yuanxing Lee, Bruce Wilson, Moon Ho Lee, Edward Au, Hua Hu, Sedat Olcer, Mehmet Seskinoz, Lara Dolecek, Stefano Galli

1)  Name Change: The board of Governors approved the name change for the technical committee from “Signal Processing for Storage Technical Committee” to “Technical Committee on Data Storage”. The new name will better reflect all technical areas represented by the community.

2) TC Recertication: Once in three years the technical committee needs to be recertified by ComSoc. Our technical committee passed the recertification, but two areas were recognized as weak, and should be improved:

– It is recommended that at least two special issue of JSAC (Journal on Selected Areas in Communications) be sponsored by the TC per decade. It has been almost a decade since the TC sponsored a special issue of JSAC. This should be rectified. It is recommended that a new special issue be kicked off soon. Since the process will take 2-3 years, it is essential that the process be started immediately.

–  Increase activity by organizing workshops at least twice per decade. Efforts are already under way for GLOBECOM 2007. Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are organizing a Workshop on Data Storage within GLOBECOM 2007.

–  Recognize TC members by successfully promoting them to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow grades.

3)   ICC 2007 report: ICC 2007 was another successful conference from the perspective of our Technical Committee.

– 35 papers were submitted. All 12 accepted papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee appeared grouped in 2 contiguous sessions (one oral session and one poster session) in a single day. No data storage papers appeared in scattered sessions throughout the conference.

– The co-chairs Yuan Xing Lee, Thomas Conway and Haitao (Tony) Xia did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions within the General Symposium.

– The following paper was selected as the Best Paper in Signal Processing and Coding for Storage at ICC 2007.

1. Todd and J. R. Cruz, “Computing Maximum-likelihood Bounds for Reed-Solomon Codes over Partial Response Channels”, University of Oklahoma

4)   GLOBECOM 2007 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC, USA) are under way

– TCDS will be represented in the Data Storage Track of the General Symposium. Alek Kavcic is the General Symposium co-chair responsible for the Data Storage Track.

– Bruce Wilson and Marcus Marrow are co-chairing the Data Storage Workshop within GLOBECOM 2007. Talks by invited speakers will be presented at the workshop.

5)   Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) the Data Storage TC will be represented by a separate track of the General Symposium (or the Symposium on Selected Areas in Communications)

Our representatives, i.e. delegated symposia co-chairs, for the future conferences are:

–   ICC 2008 (Beijing): Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell Semiconductor) and Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University).

–   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Henry Pifster (Texas A&M University).

– ICC 2009 (Dresden, Germany): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich), Shaohua Yang (Marvell Semiconductor)

–   GLOBECOM 2009 (Hawaii): Fatih Erden (Seagate, Pittsburgh).

6)   JSAC special issue: Sedat Olcer will take the lead role to recruit 3-4 guest editors who will start the process of organizing a JSAC special issue on Data Storage.

7)   IEEE promotions: Yuan Xing Lee will recruit an IEEE Fellow from the ranks of the TCDS to start a committee that will nominate TCDS members for promotions to IEEE Senior Member and IEEE Fellow Ranks.

8)  2006 best paper awards:  Two award committees have been formed

– 2006 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Alek Kavcic (University of Hawaii) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by an official ComSoc plaque.

–  2006 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Tiffany Jing Li (Lehigh University) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by a $400 prize and an official ComSoc plaque.

– Award announcement date: October 2007.

– Award presentation date and place: At the TC DS meeting at GLOBECOM 2007 in Washington DC.

9)  Miscellaneous: None.

———————-minutes prepared by  Alek Kavcic

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Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, San Francisco, USA,   Nov. 29th, 2006

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Yuanxing Lee, Zhiyuan Yan, Zhengya Zhang, Lara Dolecek, Bruce Wilson, Shaohua Yang, Marcus Marrow, Haitao Xia, Sedat Olcer, Ksenia Lakovic, Tiffany Jing Li, Jae Moon, Henry Pfister, Ghurunwruhan Ganesan, Shayan Srinivasa, Shashi Chilappagani, Sun-How Jiang, Nedeljko Varnica

1)  Recertification: Once in 3 years all TCs are graded on their activity.

– Outcomes: (1) Recertified (2) 1-year probation (3)Termination.

– Criteria: (1) Regularity and attendance of meeting; (2) Conference co-sponsorship; (3)Transparency of officer elections/web-site; (4) Recognition of members of community: best paper awards, nominations to IEEE senior members and fellows, distinguished lecturers; (5) Organizations of journal special issues.

– Self-evaluation: (1) Positives: meetings, conferences, best paper awards; (2) Improvements needed: promotions, distinguished lecturers, organization of journal issues, officers.

2)  Globecom 2006 report (by Nedeljko Varnica): Globecom 2006 was a success from the perspective of

our Technical Committee.

– The papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee had been grouped contiguously into two oral sessions of 12 papers and poster session of 3 papers in General Symposium.

–  Nedeljko Varnica and Erozan Kurtas did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions.

3)   ICC 2007 report (by Yuanxing Lee): Preparations for ICC 2007 (Glasgow, Scotland) are well under

way.

– At ICC 2007, SPS Society is allowed to have a separate symposium. Dr. Yuanxing Lee is the Symposium Chair, Prof. Tom Conway is the Co-Chair, and Dr. Haitao Xia is the TPC Chair.

– 27 papers were submitted and reviews were organized. Every paper received at least 3 reviews.

– 12 papers will be accepted and organized into one oral and one poster sessions.

4)   Election for new officers:

– Vice President for Academia: Since previous Vice President, George Matthew, went to industry, a new Vice President from academia was needed. Two candidates, Prof. Tiffany Jing Li and Prof. Bane Vasic were nominated, Prof. Tiffany Jing Li has been elected as Vice President.

– Vice President for Industry: Erozan Kurtas resigned, and election for new Vice President for industry will be held at ICC 2007. A call for nominations will be sent out and criteria for nomination will be announced.

5)   News from GITC:

– In future, the symposia names will be fixed (but slow evolving), by which GITC tries to avoid drastic name changes and avoid thematic overlaps.

– Where does DATA STORAGE fit, Signal Processing Symposium or General Symposium?

All the attendees chose General Symposium as the location where future data storage papers need to be submitted.

6)   Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) there will be a  reorganization of Symposia by the GITC. Alek Kavcic will be on the GITC work group that will reorganize the Symposia structures.

Our representatives for the future conferences are:

–   GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC): Alek Kavcic (Harvard University), Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Marcus Marrow (Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA).

–   ICC 2008 (Beijing, China), Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University) and Nedeljko Varnica (Marvell Semiconductor).

–   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Henry Pifster (Texas A&M University).

–   ICC 2009 (Dresden, Germany): Sedat Olcer (IBM, Zurich), Shaohua Yang (Marvell Semiconductor).

7)   Name change for SPS technical committee (TC):

– Because of the phrase “signal processing” in the name of our committee, conference organizers always try to put us in the Signal Processing Symposium.

–  The paper statistics for our paper submission: Coding (45%), signal processing (35%), circuits (10%) and others: information theory, storage networks, (10%)

All the attendees agreed to change our committee name into Data Storage Technical Committee.

8)  Paper Awards:

–   2005 best paper award:

Awardees: Aleksandar Kavcic, Xiao Ma, Nedeljko Varnica

Paper: A. Kavcic, X. Ma, N. Varnica, “Matched Information Rate Codes for Partial Response Channels,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 51, pp. 973-989, March 2005

–   2005 best student paper award:

Awardee: Shaohua Yang

Paper: S. Yang, A. Kavcic, S. Tatikonda, “The Feedback Capacity of Finite-State Machine Channels,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 51, pp. 799-810, March 2005.

———————-minutes prepared by  Haitao Xia

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Minutes of the SPS TC meeting, Istanbul, Turkey, June. 14, 2006

Attendees:

Alek Kavcic, Sedat Olcer, Mehmet Seskinoz, Fatih Erden, Bane Vasic, Tolga Duman, Joseph O’Sullivan, Riccardo Raheli, Erozan Kurtas

1)  ICC 2006 report: ICC 2006 was a success from the perspective of our Technical Committee.

– For the first time in years, the papers whose content was related to the activities of the SPS technical committee appeared grouped in two separate sessions. One session was in the Communication Theory Symposium, and the other session was in the Signal Processing for Communications Symposium. 10 papers were presented in these sessions, and no paper overlapped.

–  Bane Vasic and Erozan Kurtas did a great job in tracking the papers and making sure that they appeared grouped in non-overlapping sessions.

–  There was a glitch with one paper by Singla and O’Sullivan. The paper was accepted and appeared in the advanced conference program, but in the end the paper was not included in the proceedings. Alek Kavcic agreed to follow up with the conference organizers.

2) Globecom 2006 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco) are well under way.

– Initially, SPS TC was allowed to apply for a separate symposium at GLOBECOM 2006. The nominated Symposium Chair was Erozan Kurtas, and the nominated TPC Chair was Nedeljko Varnica.

– 30 papers were submitted and reviews were organized. Every paper received at least 3 reviews.

– Because the number of submissions did not warrant a full symposium, the papers in Signal Processing will be folded into the General conference, and organized into contiguous sessions.

– 15 papers will be accepted and organized into oral and poster sessions.

3)      ICC 2007 report: Preparations for GLOBECOM 2007 (Glasgow) have started

– SPS TC was allowed to apply for a separate symposium at ICC 2007. The nominated Symposium Chair is Yuan Xing Lee, and the nominated TPC Chair was is Haitao (Tony) Xia.

– If we do not get enough papers for a symposium, we will fold the papers into the General Conference.

4)  Future conferences: At future conferences (GLOBECOM 2007 and onward) there will be a reorganization of Symposia by the GITC. Alek Kavcic will be on the GITC work group that will reorganize the Symposia structures. The criteria for organization will be:

– Symposia titles will need to have continuity (thus far only a few symposia, such as the Communication Theory Symposium and the Signal Processing for Communication Symposium) have maintained the stability of Symposia titles.

– Overlap of topics should be avoided between the symposia and sessions should be organized so as to avoid mid-session migrations of attendees.

– Topics that do not generate large numbers of submissions (such as Data Storage) should be organized in the General Symposium.

Our representatives for the future conferences are:

–   GLOBECOM 2007 (Washington DC): Bruce Wilson (Hitachi Global Storage, San Jose, CA) and Marcus Marrow (Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA)

–   ICC 2008 (Beijing), So far, Tiffany Jing Lee (Lehigh University) has volunteered.

–   GLOBECOM 2008 (New Orleans): No representatives from SPS TC have been named yet.

5)      Paper Awards: ComSoc has allowed every technical committee (TC) to present two paper awards per year. Most TCs do that by presenting a best paper award within their Symposia at GLOBECOM and/or ICC. Since our TC is small, and since we do not generate many paper submissions, we present two annual awards: 1) The best paper award, and 2) the best paper student award.

–   2005 best paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Steven McLaughlin (Georgia Institute of Technology) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by an official ComSoc plaque.

–   2005 best student paper award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage: The selection committee headed by Tolga Duman (Arizona State University) has been formed and the selection process is under way. The winning paper will be recognized by a $400 prize and an official ComSoc plaque.

–   Award announcement date: October 2006.

–   Award presentation date and place: At the SPS TC meeting at GLOBECOM 2006 in San Francisco.

6)  Technical Committee Recertification: Every three years ComSoc needs to recertify all Technical Committees (TCs). The main criterion for recertification is activity of the TC. Inactive TCs will cease to exist. Alek Kavcic is involved in preparing the activity report for the SPS TC to present to ComSoc. The report is due in August 2006.

7)   Elections of SPS TC officers: The SPS-TC officers elections are scheduled to take place at the SPS TC meeting at GLOBECOM 2007 in Washington DC. We will start accepting nominations a year prior to the elections.

8)    Miscellaneous: The following miscellaneous topics were raised at the meeting.

–   Increasing the activity of the SPS TC:

1. Organize tutorials or workshops at one of the next ICC or GLOBECOM conferences. The issue raised though is that ComSoc views tutorials and workshops as a revenue-generating activity. Hence we need to organize a tutorial or workshop if the conference is organized at a site that can guarantee industry presence (such as the Silicon Valley, or Colorado area).
2. Broaden the scope of activities to general ISI channels. This may not fly with ComSoc because ComSoc wants to avoid the overlap of topics. So, if we start organizing sessions that encompass general ISI channels, they will almost certainly overlap with Communication Theory or Wireless Symposia.
3. Broaden the scope of topics to include: nanotechnologies for storage, optical storage, probe storage, etc. This is a suggestion that can be implemented immediately in the next call for paper.

———————-minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, St. Louis, MO,   Dec. 1, 2005

Attendees:

Aleksandar Kavcic, Tiffany Jing Lee, Jin Xie, Shaohua Yang, Zheng Zhang

1) 2004 Best Student Paper Award: By the decision of the student award committee, the best student paper award for 2004 in the area of signal processing and coding for data storage was awarded to Zheng Zhang who recently graduated form Arizona State University, for the paper:

“Achievable Information Rates and Coding for MIMO Systems over ISI Channels and Frequency-Selective Fading Channels”,

by Zheng Zhang, Tolga M. Duman, Erozan M. Kurtas, IEEE Transactions on Communications,   vol. 52, p. 1698, October 2004.

The winner was presented with a plaque and a $400 monetary prize.

2) Best paper award: From 2006 onward, the SPS TC will award an annual best paper award, in addition to the student paper award. Thus, in the future, SPS TC will award two papers per year, one in the general category, and the other in the student category. Calls for nominations will be distributed in early 2006.

3) Conference organization: At GLOBECOM 2005, all data storage papers appeared in scattered sessions. This is perceived by the TC as a serious problem. Efforts are under way to prevent this from happening in the future. At ICC 2006, all papers will appear in contiguous sessions. From GLOBECOM 2006 onward, there will be a separate symposium on signal processing and coding for data storage, thus all papers in this area will appear in thematically grouped sessions. Erozan Kurtas and Nedeljko Varnica are in the process of organizing the symposium.

4) SPS representatives at conferences: The following people will represent the SPS technical committee at future conferences

–   ICC 2006 (Istanbul), Erozan Kurtas, Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA

–   GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco): Erozan Kurtas (symposium chair), Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA, and Nedeljko Varnica  (TPC chair), Marvell, Santa Clara, CA.

–   ICC 2007 (Glasgow) Yuan Xing Lee (symposium chair), Hitachi GST, San Jose, CA and Haitao (Tony) Xia (TPC chair), Link-A-Media, Santa Clara, CA

5) Scheduling of talks at GLOBECOM and ICC: Shaohua Yang stated that it would be best if data storage papers appeared closer to the coding sessions. Unfortunately, it was not clear how to implement this suggestion because the talk scheduling is not in the hands of the SPS TC. We will make efforts in the future to better schedule the talks. Already at ICC206, Erozan Kurtas has taken on the task to organize the sessions for signal processing for data storage.

6) Review process: Tiffany Jing Lee asked whether the review process could be shortened because it is too long. This decision is not in the hands of the SPS TC, but in the hands of conference organizers. Alek Kavcic has agreed to raise this issue at the next GLOBECOM and ICC meeting.

7) Next meeting: at ICC 2006 in Istanbul.

———————-minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Seoul, Korea,   May, 18, 2005

Attendees:

Zhi Ding (from the Globecom2006 Organizing Committee), Tolga Duman, Aleksandar Kavcic, Jaekyun Moon

1) Technical committee activity: The activity of the technical committee is dangerously low.

– There is a lack of coordination between the technical committee and Globecom and ICC organizing committees. The result is a scattering of papers in data storage among may different symposia, often in overlapping sessions.  The committee needs to delegate dedicated members to represent the committee at future conferences. This means that the delegate will need to visit 2 ICCs/GLOBECOMs prior to the one he/she is responsible for, and the one he/she is responsible for. This also means that the representative will need to visit the organizing meetings, and actively campaign to have a separate symposium on Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage. If such a symposium is not possible, then the representative should campaign for contiguous sessions that cover papers for data storage. The representative should also make sure that ALL papers in data storage be sent to him/her for review, regardless of which symposium they are submitted to.

–  SPS TC must actively co-sponsor symposia at ICCs and GLOBECOMs.

–  The student paper award has not been awarded for 2 years. The student paper award needs to be reinstalled. Efforts are under way to identify the best student paper in 2004. The winner will be announced by GLOBECOM 2005.

–   In 2006, all technical committees of the Communications Society will be reevaluated. They need to demonstrate activity and accomplishments in order to be allowed to exist. It is crucial that the SPS TC be able to demonstrate a satisfactory level of activity in order to be recertified.

2) Technical committee representatives: Representation at future conferences must be improved. The representatives MUST attend organizing committee meetings at 2 ICCs and GLOBECOMs prior to the actual conference. They also MUST campaign for the causes of SPS TC: the paper review process must be handled by SPS TC representatives, papers need to appear in contiguous sessions, conferences need to be advertised. The following are the SPS TC representatives at future conferences:

        –  GLOBECOM 2005 (St. Louis): Shaohua Yang, Hitachi Global Storage, Almaden Research, Almaden CA

–   ICC 2006 (Istanbul), Erozan Kurtas, Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA

–   GLOBECOM 2006 (San Francisco): Erozan Kurtas (symposium chair), Seagate Research, Pittsburgh, PA, and Nedeljko Varnica (TPC chair), Marvell, Santa Clara, CA.

–   ICC 2007 (Glasgow) Representative has not been identified yet. Also, it is still not clear whether ICC 2007  will  allow a symposium on data storage, or whether data storage will need to co-sponsor other (lager) symposia.

3) Student paper award: The best student paper award has not been awarded for 2 years. This trend needs to be reversed immediately. The student paper award committee was inactive for 2 years, and a new student paper award committee has been formed in 2005. Efforts are under way to award the best student paper award for 2004 

–   Harvey Freeman, the Vice President of ComSoc for Technical Affairs, has urged the Technical Committees, to spend the $500/year. SPS TC will try to use the $500 as a monetary award for the best student paper.

–   A motion has been made to award the best paper award, rather than the best student paper award. Inquiries with ComSoc will be made.

4) Poster Sessions at ICCs and GLOBECOMs: At future ICC and GLOBECOM conferences, there will be poster sessions. This was a top-down directive from ComSoc, aimed at increasing the revenues at ICCs and GLOBECOMs. The acceptance rate of papers will go up to 45%-50% in future ICCs and GLOBECOMs. Papers designated for poster sessions will NOT be selected based on quality and there will be NO distinction between oral and poster paper in the conference proceedings.

5) Next meeting: at GLOBECOM 2006 in St. Louis.

———————-minutes prepared by  Aleksandar Kavcic

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Dallas, USA,   Nov. 29, 2004

Meeting scheduled, but only the SPS-TC Chair attended. As a result, elections were successfully held via email.

———————-minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Paris, France,   June 24, 2004

No officers able to attend to chair meeting.

———————-minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, San Francisco, USA,   Dec. 4, 2003

Attendance:

Ajay Cholakia, Yuan Xing Lee, Stefan Schmermbeck, Martin Hassner, Oke

Ugweje, Saeid Taheri, Andre’ Immink, Jing Li (Tiffany), Vijayakumar

Bhagavatula, Ron P. Smith, Chimming Qiao, David Berman, Michael Melas, gReg

Silvus

1) Monetary Award for Best Student Paper

Alek reported to gReg before the meeting that it looks like no monetary

award will be given. Ron Smith suggested that a gift be given instead. His

experience is that Comsoc is much more amenable to gifts because under a

certain value, there are no tax ramifications. Tiffany suggested the award

should be an internship. The group thought her idea good, but wondered how

we would secure guaranteed corporate sponsorship.

2) Globecom 2003 Report (Yuan Xing Lee)

Yuan Xing felt Globecom 2003 was poorly organized. His e-mails to the

organizers were not returned; his duties were strictly to organize the

reviewers. He was not even informed which papers were accepted or rejected.

This is contrary to the way ICC 2001 was done. He knows that 9 papers were

submitted, but the vice chair assigned papers to sessions. Many of these

assignments were questionable. Kumar’s paper on Timing Recovery for Storage

Channels ended up in a session entitled “Billing & Misc.” Also, overlap in

interest between sessions was high. Thursday afternoon often had three

papers of interest in the same slot. Clearly, this is unacceptable.

The group agreed that guidelines for the upcoming organizers would be

desirable. That is, when someone agrees to run the SPS session, they would

be given a checklist by this TC, and would meet (perhaps on the phone) with

the previous year’s organizer to learn of things which should be watched

for and deadlines that must be met. The guidelines would also offer

resolution techniques. For example, if e-mails are not returned, one

resolution technique might be to get the TC chair or other officers

involved.

Action: Yuan Xing said he would contact Tolga Duman to discuss some of

these issues.

Action: gReg said he would make a rough draft of the guidelines to be added

to and approved by the TC.

Tiffany volunteered to organize ICC 2005 in Seoul, Korea.

3) We further discussed ways to improve the visibility of the SPS at these

conferences. Here are some ideas:

1. a) Suggest that the conference use a paper and keywords to create the

sessions and make sure that overlap

1. b) Drive toward letter the TPC leads help organize the sessions and approve

the final list and scheduling of papers.

1. c) Demand more sessions. Have stats ready to argue the case.
2. d) Know when the TPC organizers meeting announcement should occur; inform

new organizers that they should expect this meeting to happen.

4) Regarding ICC 2005, we voted to participate in the Symposium “Signal

Processing for Communications.” Other options included being in the general

session and being in the “Communications” symposium. We opted out of the GC

to avoid having our papers spread everywhere. We decided on Signal

Processing because most attendees felt that Sig Proc included

Communications, but not vice versa.

5) Action: Kumar took the action to talk to Jaafar (the organizer of

Globecom 2004) about how to intercept papers that should go to SPS.

6) Ron Smith spoke about the TAC meeting:

1. a) IEEE Books is looking for ideas on manuscripts
2. b) Are we aware of online tutorials? Do we have ideas for new ones?
3. c) Do we know about “Emerging Technologies” and new Communications Society

Magazine?

7) Ways to further our cause:

1. a) Find out how we get articles into IEEE Proceedings (Kumar mentions that

it’s about time for that to happen again).

1. b) How do we get more visible? (only a little discussion followed, nothing

concrete)

1. c) Organize tutorials and workshops at the conferences
2. d) JSAC overview articles

Adjourn

———————-minutes prepared by  Gregory L Silvus

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Taipei, Taiwan,  Nov.19, 02

A SPS Technical Committee meeting was held on November 19 during Globecom
2002 at Taipei. There were nine in attendance. I wanted to alert you about
the decisions and discussion at this meeting.

1. My term as the chair of SPS has ended. Greg Silvus was elected at the
   meeting as the new chair — congrats, Greg! This is in line with our
   tradition of chairs alternating between academia and industry.
2. Other officers remain in their current offices. At the meeting, Erozan
   Kurtas was nominated to fill the Vice Chair position that Greg is vacating.
   I have contacted Erozan and am waiting for his answer.
3. Dieter Arnold was given the 2001 best student paper award. We should
   include a little blurb on this on our web site. Greg should be able to
   supply the material. I presented to Dieter a homemade certificate that
   wasn’t too shabby, but we should try to get a few dollars from COMSOC to
   support this award. Once again, thanks to Alek Kavcic for pushing this idea
   forward and to the Award Committee (Greg Silvus, E. Eleftheriou and G.
   Mathew) for the excellent job they have done. I am happy to report that the
   award committee will continue for two more years.
4. Here are the SPS reps to upcoming conferences.

ICC 2003 —- Bane Vasic
Globecom 2003 —- Yuan Xing Lee
ICC 2004 —- Tolga Duman

5. It seems that COMSOC is going back to having a “General Conference” in
   addition to symposia in the ICC and Globecom after Globecom 2003. That is
   good for us since then we may be able to have a session devoted to “Coding
   and Signal Processing for Storage” unlike the current situations where the
   papers are diffused into multiple sessions.
6. The “Nigeria/Congo” e-mail solicitation problem is plaguing all COMSOC
   mailing lists, not just ours. They don’t have a clear solution, as far as I
   can tell.
7. SPS clearly needs to increase the membership. We should think of
   expanding the scope (e.g., channel hardware, NASD, Raid, etc.). Anyway, we
   need to  start a discussion on ideas towards this goal.

——minutes prepared by Prof. Vijayakumar Bhagavatula <kumar@ece.cmu.edu>
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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Helsinki, Finland June 11-15, 2001

Agenda
ICC Participation Report
Who is in charge of InterMag 2002 ( conflicts w/ICC 2002 timewise?) Were there many submissions for
ImterMag? We had 10 papers 4 were accepted.
ICC 2002 selects papers based only on grade.
Globecom 2002 (Taipei) will be last autonomous group of sessions.
Discussion: Communication Theory vs. Signal Processing for Communications Symposium
Stay w/Comm because most of us are working in this field.
Go w/Sig Proc because it may be easier to squeeze Coding paper into Sig Proc than other way around
Should we grade easier?
We are hard graders, but organizers will look only at numbers and choose a threshold.
Should we participate at both GLOBECOMs and ICCs, or just one of the two?
Gather more people at one location
Table discussion, continue considering problem, make decision later

Student Award
No monetary award
Contact co–authors or advisor about amount of work done by student
3-4 people deciding on winner (at least one industry and one academia member required on committee)
Have a spare person to break any ties

Passed!

–minutes prepared by Gregory Silvus

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, Nov. 29, 2000, San Francisco, CA, USAAttendees:  Hemant Thapar, LSI Logic C. Mike Melas, IBM Geregory Silvus, Seagate Technology Yuan Xing Lee, IBM George Mathew, DSI Alek Kavcic, Harvard Univ.Meeting called to order by Dr. Hemant Thapar.The election for new officers was held on Nov.29, 2001. The following officers were elected unanimously:  Prof. Vijaya Kumar (Chair), Prof. Alek Kavcic (Vice Chair), Dr. Geregory Silvus (Vice Chair),  Dr. Yuan Xing Lee (Secretary) and Dr. Bruce Wilson (Treasurer).At the meeting, the former chairman Dr. Hement Thapar reviewed what   had been achieved during the past term. He pointed out that organizing SPS workshops,  publishing JSAC, and selecting IEEE distinguished lecturer were the three major   accomplishments for SPS committee. Several other ideas such as organizing workshops on signal processing and coding for data storage were also warmly discussed.     –minutes prepared by Yuan Xing Lee

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, June 9, 1998, Atlanta, GA, USA Attendees:  Viswanath Annampedu, Lucent Tech. Selaka bulumulla, Univ. of Pennsylvania Hemant Thapar, Datapath Systems C. Mike Melas, IBM Saeed Asgari, Western Digital Gregory Silvus, Western Digital Patrick Lee, Western Digital Marvin Vis, Cirrus Logic Richard Behrens, Cirrus Logic Alek Kavcic, Harvard Univ. Nersi Nazari, Marvell Semiconductor Anthony Bessios, Texas Instruments (Storage Products Group) Zak Keirn, Texas Instruments (Storage Products Group) Hakan Ozdemir, ST Microelectronics Jay Moon, Univ. of Minnesota Saptho Nair (consulting engineer) Meeting called to order by Prof. Jay Moon. Past officers of the technical committee gave a brief  summary of how, when and by whom the technical committee  was formed and for what purpose. Election of officers: Prof. Jay Moon introduced the candidates. New officers were elected as the current officers completed  their terms. The following officers were elected unanimously:  Dr. Hemant Thapar (Chair), Dr. Nersi Nazari (Vice Chair),  Prof. Vijaya Kumar (Vice Chair),  Dr. Saptho Nair (Secretary) and Dr. Yuan Xing Li (Treasurer) Discussion on how to further enhance the relations with the Comsoc  and better reach out to the SPFS members:   Among other things, the participation  in the Technical Affairs Committee (TAC) and the plans by Comsoc  to sub-divide the future conferences into several  mini-conferences were discussed. Proposal to start a  newsletter was also put forth. Workshop proposal for ICC 1999: There was a general consensus  that the topic to propose for the workshop should be on channel  nonlinearity and nonlinear data recovery techniques, because this is an area that is gaining significance recently. One question that was raised was who the ‘target audiences’  for the workshop are. Past conference organizers pointed out that  the workshop should cater to the interests of a wide audience. We also agreed that the nonlinear techniques can range from very simple to very complex, with a wide range of performance indicators. Therefore, it is important for the workshop to focus on techniques  that are simple enough for practical implementation. –minutes prepared by Saptho Nair

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Minutes of the SPS-TC meeting, June 11, 1997, Montreal, Canada : Attending: Zi-Ning Wu, Stanford Univ.; Mark Spurbeck, Cirrus Logic Co.; Rick Behrens, Cirrus Logic Co.; Li Du, Cirrus Logic Co.; Philip Bednarz, 8×8 Inc.; Bill Ryan, NM St. Univ.;  Bahjat Zafer, NM St. Univ.; Eric MacDonald, Datapath Systems; Jay Moon, U of MN; Bob Hutchins, IBM;  Nersi Nazari, GEC Plessy; Kevin Fisher, Quantum Meeting called to order by Jay Moon. 1. website up and running.  See www.comsoc.org.  250-300 names are on the website, in addition to some company links. 2. tutorials and/or workshops and upcoming ICC/Globecom conferences. The TPC rejected our application for Globecom 97.  Jay will now propose either a workshop or tutorial for ICC98.  Kees Immink of Philips has agreed to take a leading role. 3. discussion of how to improve/consolidate Signal Processing for Storage conference activity.  A number of IEEE conferences that have some focus on SigProc for Storage were identified: SPIE, Intermag, TMRC, Globecom, ICC, ISIT, ISSCC, Int’l conf on consumer electronics.  All agreed that some consolidation would be desireable, but we also acknowledged the amount of work involved. 4. future conferences and SigProc for Storage representatives. Globecom 97, Pheonix –  Kelly Fitzpatrick ICC98, Atlanta –  Saptho Nair Globecom 98, Sydney  – Nersi Nazari ICC 99, Vancouver – Zak Keirn Globecom 99  –  Eric McDonald minutes prepared by K. Fisher