Shining Bright: The Golden Era of Signal Processing

Signal Processing Society (SPS) and to the SP community. When working as an editorial board member and area editor under the leadership of my predecessor, Prof. Shih-Fu Chang, I witnessed the immeasurable vibrancy, invigorating energy, and unbounded intellectual landscape of our SP community. During 2007–2008, with Prof. Chang’s guidance, I initiated the effort in expanding the scope and technical fields of SP [2]. This led to substantial broadening of the article coverage in SPM along the two axes of “signal” and “processing” [3]. In the meantime, while helping Prof. Chang to solicit potential articles for SPM, I interacted with several pioneers in various technical areas pertinent to SP. These interactions provided me with the opportunity to learn, analyze, and appreciate a wide range of SP-enabled future wants and needs (e.g., [4]). In my own work environment within a major computer software company, SP methods and applications as defined in the expanded scope had also permeated every corner. Our community had clearly come to realize that while SP played an integral part in the technological development of television, telephone, communication, multimedia, space travel, and computers, more exciting challenges and opportunities would lie ahead for SP in broad areas such as intelligent communication; natural human-machine interface; universal language translation; biomolecular information processing; automated navigation; efficient generation/ distribution/consumption of “green” energy; intelligent sensor and human