Welcome to the IEEE Communication Society Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region website!

EMEA Region covers a vast geographical area stretching from Cape Town, South Africa in the South, Lisbon, Portugal, in the West, through Hammerfest, Norway, in the North, to Vladivostok, Russia in the East. The Region is served by 51 local chapters having together about one quarter of the ComSoc members worldwide. Chapters provide a local connection for our society members. Their activities include: talks organized within the Distinguished Lecturer Tour (DLT) or Distinguished Speaker Program (DSP) frameworks, social events, workshops, seminars, special events, etc.

The current EMEA Board, formed in early 2018 (http://www.comsoc.org/boards/member-global-activities/europe-middle-east-africa-region), works to implement our operating plan.  The DLTs and DSPs are coordinated by  Nidal Nasser from Saudi Arabia. What is important, most of these tours were or are to be organized in the areas with a rather low ComSoc membership, such as Middle East or Africa. We do hope to encourage more professionals from these areas to join our Society. An important facet of the EMEA activities, coordinated by Hassine Moungla from France,  is our award program that includes the EMEA Young Researcher Award and the EMEA Region Distinguished Service Award. Every year, we also select a particularly active chapter to receive the Chapter Achievement Award.

We have two major challenges – one is the membership growth in our Region, and the other increasing industry – academia cooperation. The coordination of the membership activities is the responsibility of Periklis Chatzimisios from Greece, and Abdellatif Kobbane from Morocco; while the industry and academia cooperation is led by Konstantinos Samdanis from Germany. The task is not easy in the current business environment, taking into account industry restructuring, growing competition, and changes in the overall markets but I do hope that we will be able propose working  initiatives strengthening cooperation between the industry and the academia within the EMEA Region.

One of the issues that I would like to address as well is the ComSoc’s role in helping students in our region to take profit from advantages to be members.

You are welcome to join us for your professional benefit and for the benefit of our society!

Adlen KSENTINI

IEEE Communications Society EMEA Region Director