2014 Reliability Society Outreach in Changchun, Changsha and Beijing, China

Christian Hansen President IEEE Reliability Society

W. Eric Wong Vice President for Publications IEEE Reliability Society

Professor Christian Hansen (President of RS) and Professor Eric Wong (Secretary in 2014 and VP for Publications in 2015) took a trip to China in December 2014 to visit RS chapters in Nanjing and Beijing. They also visited Changsha, which is expected to have its RS chapter established in 2015. In addition, they attended the 2014 International Conference on Cloud Computing and Internet of Things in Changchun (CCIOT) and met with local RS members to discuss the establishment of an RS chapter under the Harbin section.

On December 9th and 10th, Professor Wong visited Nanjing University and hosted a roundtable discussion with members of the RS Nanjing chapter. Participants exchanged their experiences of how to organize chapter events to attract and recruit more members. They all agreed that effective communication among members is one of the key factors to make a chapter successful. The participants also found that it is critical to create a website as a good reference point for members to receive updated information, especially announcements of forthcoming events.

On December 13th, Professor Christian Hansen gave a keynote address, The Role of Trust in the Future World of Internet of Things, at the 2014 CCIOT conference. He was also the speaker of a colloquium cosponsored by the School of Computer Science and Technology and the School of Software at Changchun Normal University on December 12th.  His talk at this colloquium was on Big Data. Refer to the pictures in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Keynote Address by Professor Christian Hansen at 2014 CCIOT on December 13th

From December 14th to the 16th, Professor Hansen and Professor Wong visited the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha. In addition to giving technical seminars on topics related to their research (see Figure 2), they also met with officers of the to-be-established RS Changsha chapter to review its application and discuss how the chapter could grow stronger with more members (See Figure 3). Possible events for the summer of 2015, jointly sponsored by the Society and the local Changsha chapter, were also explored.

Figure 2: Lecture by Professor Eric Wong at the
National University of Defense Technology,
Changsha, China, December 16th, 2014

Figure 3: Meeting with Officers of the RS Changsha Chapter
to be established in 2015, December 15th, 2014

Beijing was the last stop on this trip. The main event was an RS-sponsored tutorial at Beihang University on December 19th. There were two distinguished speakers: Professor Min Xie from City University of Hong Kong and Professor Michael Grottke from Friedrich-Alexander University, Germany. There were more than 200 attendees. Even though over 300 people wanted to attend, we could not accommodate everyone due to space limitations. This tutorial was part of the RS Tutorial Certificate Program on Software Reliability funded by the IEEE Future Direction Committee. Please visit http://paris.utdallas.edu/rs-certificate for more details, including the PowerPoint slides and recorded videos of previous tutorials. Contact Professor Eric Wong at ewong@utdallas.edu for any questions related to this program. Refer to Figure 4 for pictures taken at the tutorial.

(a) Opening Remarks by Professor Zili Wang, Dean of the School of Reliability and Systems Engineering, Beihang University	(b) Professor Christian Hansen, President of the IEEE Reliability Society, Greeting with Professor Zili Wang
(c) Lecture by Professor Min Xie, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong	(d) Lecture by Professor Michael Grottke, Friedrich-Alexander University, Nürnberg, Germany
(e) Question and Answer Session I	(f) Question and Answer Session II

Figure 4. RS Tutorial at Beihang University on December 19, 2014

We would like to give our special thanks to the following hosts for their hospitality, financial support, and all the logistic arrangements that made this trip very successful:

• Dr. Zhenyu Chen (Professor of Nanjing University and Vice Chair of the RS Nanjing Chapter)
• Dr. Fanhua Yu (Professor and Dean of Changchun Normal University)
• Dr. Guohui Yang (Professor of Harbin Institute of Technology and Secretary of the IEEE Harbin Section)
• Dr. Wei Dong (Professor of National University of Defense Technology and Chair of the to-be-established Changsha Chapter)
• Dr. Zili Wang (Professor and Dean of Beihang University and Chair of the RS Beijing Chapter)
• Dr. Shunong Zhang (Professor of Beihang University and Secretary of the RS Beijing Chapter)
• Dr. Jun Ai (Professor of Beihang University) and
• Dr. Minoan Lu (Professors of Beijing University).