Dr. Mustak E. Yalcin
Nominee of The Board of Governors of IEEE Circuits and Systems Society

Biography


MUSTAK E. YALCIN (S97, M05) received in 1993 his B.Sc. degree and in 1996 his Master degree both in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from Istanbul Technical University (I.T.U.), Turkey. In 2004, he received the Ph.D. degree in Applied Sciences from the KU Leuven, Belgium. He is presently a full time Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Faculty of Istanbul Technical University. His research activities are mainly in the areas of nonlinear circuits and systems, locally coupled nonlinear/nanoscale networks and array computing. Prof. Yalcin authored a book entitled Cellular Neural Networks, Multi-scroll Chaos and Synchronization (World Scientific) and 60+ papers in refereed journals and conferences. Between June 2004 and December 2004, he was a postdoctoral fellow at K.U. Leuven, Department of Electrical Engineering. He was also a Visiting Research Fellow at The Institute for Nonlinear Science, University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2009. Dr. Yalcin won a The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey Career Award in 2006. He is the principal investigator of several national and international research projects. Dr. Yalcin is a member of the IEEE CAS Technical Committees on Cellular Nanoscale Networks and Array Computing (CNNAC) and Nonlinear Circuit and Systems. He is presently Chair-elect of IEEE CASS CNNAC Technical Committee. Since 2008, he is vice president of ITU Advanced Electronic Technologies Foundation (ITU-ETA Foundation) which has been established by ITU and the leading electronics and telecommunication companies in Turkey. He is currently serving as reviewer for several major IEEE journals and conferences.

Statement:

I think that the most important challenge for IEEE CASS is to attract young engineers and to convince them to join CASS. Foundation of electrical engineering education is generally thaught by CAS educators. They play an important role in guiding and shaping the directions of young generation of engineers and researchers who are potential new members of our society. Key questions are, how many of CAS educators are our members and how does CASS attract the educators. First we should take attention of CAS educators establishing a social and teaching cooperation networks. For this purpose, CAS web page should include material for educators and students. This will help to touch the young first and then they might find their research interest in various fifteen Technical Committees of CASS. Furthermore this will mutually motivate CAS educators and their students to be a part of the global world leading professional society.
The Board of Governors plays a crucial role to give directions to fifteen Technical Committees and their publications and conferences. TCs of CASS and the boards of the society’s publications should work side by side to improve quality of the publications. CASS should take a leadership role in helping CASS members to progress in their careers. I believe that our flagship conferences are crucial for members' careers. By reducing the fees, CASS might assist them to expand their careers in Circuits and Systems research area which is associated with a broad variety of research topics in electrical engineering. We should not forget that many other IEEE societies have emerged from our society and our efforts generally serve the world's largest technical professional association of which I am proud to be a part of.
IEEE is the world's largest technical professional association and has an important role in the innovation and economical growth. The National Academy of Sciences, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Council on Competitiveness, the Association of American University and many others have reported that the United State faces a shortage of Science Technology Engineering and Mathematic (STEM) workers. EU countries also face the same problem and it is becoming a global problem with extensive economic consequences. There is a risk that in the near future there will be a decrease in the quality of young researcher and the number of talented students. CASS should tackle the problem before it has devastating impact. Inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research culture together with educational experiences of our members will create solutions to handle the problem. CASS should provide an open platform (can be web based or parallel sessions in CAS conferences/workshops) for the members first to discuss and collect proposals of them.

Questions:

  1. What are in your opinion the three most important services that CASS should provide to its membership?
    1. High-quality conferences/workshops/Symposiums where latest research and technological development can be found.
    2. A good variety of Technical Committees, so that members can find at least one TC related with their research subject. Such a TC should become a friendly network for the future career of the member.
    3. Providing continuing education opportunities with The Distinguished Lecturer Program and plenary talks in conferences, CAS Magazine, CAS webpage etc.
  2. Mention one large long-term initiative that CASS should undertake in the next two years and that you would help to establish if elected. CASS promotes membership for students and young generation engineers and researchers. We should start our activities, where the all potential members are. CAS educators would be able to give a web link to their student on the web page of CASS during their lectures about who made important contributions to the theory of circuits, systems, signals, modeling, analysis, and design.
  3. Mention three ways for CASS to reach to young CASS members (students and recent graduates) so that they retain their membership after graduation. To reach the CAS educators and help them while they are teaching (provide some material for teaching on CAS web page) To introduce CAS while they are learning the Foundation of electrical engineering. CAS web page should include research positions announcements CAS can learn from good ideas of other IEEE Societies, that have proven to be effective.
  4. Mention three ways for CASS to reach/serve members from industry. Propose and organize tutorials in our flagship conferences on the state of art subjects in order to keep them up to date with recent technological developments. The members from industry of each local chapters have different needs. Therefore local chapters should be more active to create collaboration between industry and promote the society. Local chapter should motivate influential persons from their local industry to participate in CASS activities and consequently the engineer from industry who are member or not will feel encouraged to participate.
  5. What is in your opinion the single biggest challenge for our human society today and how can the field of Circuits and Systems help to address it? The single biggest challenge for our human society will be Reverse-engineer the brain. Discovering how living brains work by reverse-engineering will promise enormous opportunities for our human society and a variety of new devices for the diverse human needs. Theoretical and technical expertise of our society will have a strong effect on accurate and deep approach of this challenge which is in fact in the scope of all of our TCs.

© 2014 Mustak E. Yalcin
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