2013 Reliability Society Outreach in China
The Reliability Society (RS) has made a strategic decision to increase its presence in China — one of the fastest growing markets for IEEE — not only by recruiting more members to join the society but also by establishing additional local chapters to foster a professional network between practitioners, researchers, and students in China. Specially targeted for recruitment are those who are directly engaged in producing highly reliable, dependable, and trustworthy systems and software, or others with an interest in exploring and developing technologies and tools to support the design, implementation, verification, and validation of such systems and software at reduced cost. The objective is two-fold: facilitating our members with the best of breed, state-of-practice real-life experiences and techniques, as well as the most advanced state-of-art cutting-edge knowledge to assist them in performing more effectively and efficiently. To jump start this decision, Dr. Jeff Voas, the Society's Past President (2003-2005, 2009-2010) and the Director of Division VI (2011-2012), and Professor W. Eric Wong, Vice President for Technical Activities were dispatched to China during the third week of May, visiting Beijing which has the first RS chapter and Changsha where the second RS chapter is likely to be established. Dr. Voas gave two seminars on Information Assurance Considerations for Software Supply Chains and 3rd Parties, explaining an innovative solution based on his work with smartphones and the 13 grand challenges in software engineering research and practice, whereas Professor Wong presented his ongoing research on Program Debugging, Software Safety Assurance, and Concerns in Software Testing. See Figures 1 and 2. .jpg) .png) Roundtable discussions were held with members of the Beijing chapter at Beihang University (Part (a) of Figure 3) in Beijing. The focus was on how to make the chapter activities more attractive not only to its members but also to those who are in related technical domains, how a chapter can benefit from the resources provided by the society, and how to stimulate recruitment while maintaining active participation from current members. Dr. Voas and Professor Wong emphasized that RS will assist them in making connections with internationally renowned scholars so that whenever these experts visit Beijing, they will have an opportunity to meet with the local chapter members depending on their availability. Professor Wong also shared his experience in chairing the Dallas chapter and stressed the importance of cooperation between the local chapter and other organizations. Professor Susanne Zhang gave a debriefing of the current operation of the Beijing chapter, which has 26 members. The same meeting was also called with faculty at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha (Part (b) of Figure 3), who has expressed strong interest in joining the society and establishing a local RS chapter. Professor Wei Dong and his colleagues are currently working with Professor Eric Wong in preparation to establish the second RS chapter in China. The society would like to give special acknowledgement to Professors Zili Wang (Dean of the School of Reliability and Systems Engineering), Shunong (Suzanne) Zhang, Jun Ai, and Mingyan Lu at Beihang University, and Professors Ji Wang (Director of National Key Laboratory in Parallel and Distributed Processing as well as Chair of School of Computer) and Wei Dong at the National University of Defense Technology for their significant contributions in establishing RS chapters in China. .png) |
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