Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Spain Chapter of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society

The Spain Chapter of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (IEEE-CASS) was founded on April 17^th 1996, to foster and promote the initiatives and activities of IEEE-CASS in Spain. His founder was Prof. José Luis Huertas, IEEE Life Fellow and former director of the Institute of Microelectronics of Seville, IMSE-CNM (CSIC/University of Seville), who served as chapter chair until 2001. Following Prof. Huertas, the chapter was conducted by Prof. Jaume Segura (term 2001-2011), Prof. Bernabé Linares-Barranco (term 2012-2013), Dr. Teresa Serrano-Gotarredona (term 2014-2015) and Prof. Jose M. de la Rosa, who is the present chair (term 2016-2017).

The Spain IEEE-CASS chapter is formed by more than one hundred IEEE-CASS very active members, including 5 IEEE Fellows and 25 IEEE Senior Members, who serve or have served as IEEE Distinguished Lecturers, members of IEEE-CASS BoG, as well as EiC and DEiC of IEEE-CASS Transactions and Journals, including IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – II: Express Briefs. They have also organized flagship conferences from IEEE-CASS and IEEE-SSCS such as ESSCIRC (in 1993 and 2010), ECCTD (2007), ICECS (2012) and are going to organize ISCAS 2020 in Seville, whose general chairs will be Prof. Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez, IEEE Fellow from IMSE-CNM (CSIC/University of Seville), and Prof. Eduard Alarcón, IEEE Senior Member from UPC Barcelona Tech.

The Spain IEEE-CASS chapter organizes a number of events every year, which include among others: seasonal academic and industrial workshops; tutorials and short courses in Spanish universities and research institutes, IEEE-CASS DLP lectures, etc. The chapter contributes also to the technical co-sponsorship of some regional conferences such as the Design of Circuits and Integrated Systems Conference (DCIS), where the chapter annual meeting usually takes place. All these activities are periodically published in different IEEE R8 and IEEE-CASS Newsletters, and posted in the chapter website at cass.ieeespain.org. Based on the quality, excellence and interest of all the activities carried out by the IEEE-CASS Spain Chapter, it has been awarded with the Best Chapter Award in both 2014 and 2016, by the IEEE Spain Section, which is made up of some 3500 IEEE members and have 23 chapters from very diverse IEEE technical societies.

This year 2016 has been a very special year for the Spain Chapter of IEEE-CASS because last April 17^th was its 20th anniversary. In order to celebrate this birthday, a commemorative event took place last November 24^th, as part of the technical program of the XXXI edition of DCIS conference, which was technically co-sponsored by IEEE-CASS, and this year has been held in Granada, Spain. The 20^th-anniversary day started with a keynote lecture given by Prof. Franco Maloberti, who talked about ultra-low voltage and micro-power analog design for Internet of Things. After this plenary session, the anniversary event took place, organized as a plenary panel session, where the invited panellists discussed with the audience about the past and present of the Spain Chapter of IEEE-CASS, as well as their visions for the future of the Circuits and Systems community worldwide, and very specially in Spain. Four distinguished IEEE-CASS members were invited to participate in the special panel session:

- Prof. Franco Maloberti, President of IEEE-CASS,

  Università degli Studi di Pavia

- Prof. José Luis Huertas-Díaz, first Chair and founder of the Spain Chapter of IEEE-CASS

  Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, IMSE-CNM (CSIC/Universidad de Sevilla)

- Prof. Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez, co-founder of the Spain Chapter of IEEE-CASS

  Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla, IMSE-CNM (CSIC/Universidad de Sevilla)

- Prof. Teresa Riesgo, co-organizer of the first edition of DCIS, which was co-sponsored by IEEE-CASS, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

The panel session was chaired by Prof. Jose M. de la Rosa, who is the present chair of the Spain Chapter of IEEE-CASS. The pictures below show some moments of the panel session, where the panellists and other distinguished members of IEEE-CASS in Spain, received a recognition plaque for their active and fruitful career, as well as their strong support and contribution to the development of IEEE-CASS in Spain.