As we welcome in a new year I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all those people from the EMBS community that make our Society such a valued contributor to the biomedical engineering profession, providing myriad avenues of support for our members.
The list is large, including the EMBS Executive Office, our Administrative and Executive Committee volunteers, the Editors of our various publications, the teams that work on all our Conferences, and the chairs of our dozen or so committees including our Technical Committees. Much work is done, by staff and volunteers alike to ensure EMBS is the peak international professional organization for biomedical engineering. Our profession is certainly gaining worldwide attention and EMBS has a vital role in guiding the profession and providing a voice for our members. Indeed, EMBS provides its members with access to the people, practices, information, ideas and opinions shaping one of the fastest growing fields in science and technology.
Thanks to the dedication and hard work of many, the Society is now in a solid financial position going into 2019. Journal-wise our flagship IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering continues to be the premier publication in the field. We launched a new IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics co-sponsored with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. Our EMBC’18 annual international conference was a huge scientific and social success. The list goes on and I invite you to visit www.embs.org and our social media sites to keep in touch with these exciting initiatives. More so I invite you to let our office know of any of your exciting research or technology developments so we can take your work to the world stage.
At the same time our values including a positive agenda to embrace and promote diversity and inclusivity (D&I) is something we should both be proud of and continue to strongly support and develop. We now report across all our activities (selecting distinguished lecturers, keynote speakers and IEEE Fellows, to editorial positions and conference organizing teams) on how we are performing in actively addressing D&I.
I proudly pass on the mantle of EMBS President to Shankar Subramaniam, who I have no doubt will take EMBS to even greater heights. For 2019, I will serve as EMBS Past-President with a focus on strategic initiatives. If you have any suggestions on such matters please feel free to email me president@embs.org. For 2019 we will also continue to expand our reach beyond academia into industry and clinical spheres.
Wishing all a 2019 filled with health and prosperity. I hope to see many of you at upcoming EMBS events, including our EMBC19 annual international conference in Berlin in July.
Nigel Lovell
UNSW Sydney, Australia