Update on the Reliability Society Chapter in Beijing, China

W. Eric Wong	Suzanne Zhang
Department of Computer Science	School of Reliability and Systems Engineering
University of Texas at Dallas	Beihang University
Richardson, Texas, USA	Beijing, China
ewong@utdallas.edu	zsn@buaa.edu.cn

Members of the Reliability Society in Beijing, China have started their preparation since 2011 to establish the first RS Chapter in China. Currently, they have more than 20 members from academia, industry, national laboratories, as well as government agencies. One of the major sponsoring institutions is the School of Reliability and Systems Engineering (SRSE) at Beihang University.

On October 14th, the pending chapter had a meeting at the Park Plaza Hotel to lay out the strategy for future development with the following members attending: Dr. Ancheng Xu (North China Electric Power University), Dr. Qingpei Hu (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Professor Zhizhong Li (Tsinghua University), Mr. Xin Lei (Ericsson (China) Company Ltd.), and also several members from the SRSE, including Dr. Ying Chen, Dr. Weiwei Hu, Dr. Jun Ai, Professor Mingyan Lu, Dr. Suzanne Zhang, and Professor Zili Wang (Dean of the SRSE). They also took this opportunity to meet with Professor Eric Wong, Vice President of Technical Activities, who helped the chapter members better understand the operation of the society, especially the Executive Committee and the Administrative Committee (see Figure 1).

In addition, Professor Wong was invited to participate in an outreach event at Beihang on the 16th to give a seminar on Program Debugging with Effective Software Fault Localization. He also explained the ongoing conferences in software security and reliability sponsored by the Reliability Society (such as SERE and ISSRE) and invited faculty and students to attend these meetings.

The Beijing Chapter, although yet to be officially established pending formal approval of their petition by the IEEE headquarters, is young but very dynamic and energetic. Its members have actively organized and participated in many events that not only improve their own technical strength but also promote the society, such as the China PHM conference and various scientific seminars at members' home institutions.