A couple of posts ago, I wrote about how DSP is a technology behind most of today’s technologies and advances. I also mentioned briefly the importance of volunteers for the IEEE. This post is closely linked with these two concepts.

As I mention then, the article “Signal Processing Inside”, inspired me to create this blog as a way of promoting the idea of “Signal Processing Inside”. It turned out that, after a couple twists of destiny, the blog led me into becoming an Associate Editor for the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. Here, my role is to manage a permanent column called “In the Spotlight”. The column’s idea is to take news appearing in the mainstream media and present a technical discussion of the signal processing related to the news. For example, we have covered the recent (or maybe still current) worldwide financial crisis (by discussing signal processing methods to predict the evolution of stocks), or the H1N1 influenza outbreak (the topic was the study of the virus genome). We have also covered more technical topics such as the signal processing done at the Large Hadron Collider, part of the hardware installed in the last servicing mission to the Hubble space telescope and brain-computer interfaces. My role is that of deciding on the topics to be covered (in most of the cases), invite the authors and manage the writing of the article. For me, this has been a great source of personal satisfaction because I never imagined back when I was an undergraduate student, enjoying reading this magazine, that one day I would be managing an article in every issue. More importantly, I have learned a lot of things I didn’t know. So, although the time I dedicated to the column was one of the reasons I couldn’t post more often in this blog, this time will now pay off because I will discuss more signal processing inside topics in future posts here.

Finally, if you are interested in learning more about these articles and other columns in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, follow this link.

At the time I was a postdoc at The University of Maryland, my mentor, Prof. K. J. Ray Liu, was Editor in Chief of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. As such, he wrote a number of very good columns. One of the best ones is “Signal Processing Inside”

The main point of the article is to highlight how Signal Processing as a technology does not get the recognition it deserves from society, simply because it is a “phantom technology”, working from behind the scenes to make most of modern day advances work. The article highlights how other industries and companies (e.g. Intel) face the same problems. But, unlike these industries and companies, the Signal Processing community per-se has not the resources to mount very expensive advertising campaigns. So, as the article says, it’s up to us, the Signal Processing community, to help ourselves and work for this technology to be broadly known.

In my case, this column has made a big influence in many of the ventures I do. One example is this blog, because when I thought about it, I wanted to be a tool to promote the impact that DSP has on our world. Ironically, it has influenced other activities I have been doing that had prevented me for posting more often.

In any case, I believe that “Signal Processing Inside” is a must read for anybody in the DSP community. If you like it, you should also read “Volunteers“.