Conferences are important and indispensable venues for sharing the latest scientific discoveries and engineering breakthroughs by participating in technical sessions, workshops, industry panels, and tutorials. They offer excellent opportunities for Researchers and Engineers to meet, exchange ideas, and network. In this issue of IEEE Communications Magazine, I am pleased to introduce Chengshan Xiao, Vice President for Conferences, who will share with us his plans for delivering timely and high-quality technical information to our community and the world.

Chengshan Xiao is a Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, USA. He has been very active within the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) for more than two decades. He was the Technical Program Chair of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Technical Program Co-Chair of the 2017 IEEE Global Communications Conference, and the Director of Conference Publications (2014–2015). He also served as the Vice President for Publications (2022–2023), the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2010–2013), and in many other volunteer leadership roles within ComSoc. He has been an IEEE Fellow since 2010. He received the 2014 IEEE ComSoc Joseph LoCicero Award for Exemplary Service to Publications and the 2017 IEEE ComSoc Harold Sobol Award for Exemplary Service to Meetings and Conferences.

IEEE ComSoc sponsors more than 60 conferences with a total of over 18,000 submissions and 7,000 published papers. These conferences involve over 5,000 volunteers and attract more than 12,000 attendees. These statistics reveal how important our conferences are as one of the premier platforms for our society to maintain its leading role in communication and information technologies and for our members to strengthen their professional careers and technical contributions. To best serve those missions, our conferences will address the major challenges to increase attractiveness to industry and academia, maintain technical excellence, strengthen diversity, and improve operational efficiency. In order to provide excellent services to our authors, conference attendees, and members, we plan to focus on the following objectives:

• Enhance diversity (including gender, geographical region, seniority, ethnicity, etc.) among the conference leadership team and volunteers.

• Shorten the submission-to-conference period and maintain review quality by enhanced training of conference organizers and Technical Program Committee (TPC) members.

• Expand our conference portfolios by broadening conference participation from academia, industry, and government and by making the conferences affordable.

• Enhance openness and fairness of conferences by improving transparency of steering committee appointments and TPC chair selections.

• Promoting early-career professionals and recruiting industry colleagues to get involved in organizing conferences.

• Increase student travel grants to facilitate conference participation of students.

The ComSoc Conference Council has a wonderful and experienced team of IEEE ComSoc volunteers and staff. Our Conference leadership team includes Stefano Bregni as the Vice Chair of the Council and the Director of Conference Operations Board, and ten voting members: Linda Xie as the Director of Conference Development Board, Dong In Kim as the Chair of GLOBECOM/ICC Management and Strategy (GIMS) standing committee, Kwang-Cheng Chen as the Chair of GLOBECOM/ICC Technical Content (GITC) standing committee, Andrzej Jajszczyk (Poland), Meixia Tao (China), Rolland Vida (Hungary), Shiwen Mao (USA), Stan Moyer (USA), Larry Guoliang Xue (USA), and Halim Yanikomeroglu (Canada). In addition, we have two non-voting staff members, Kristine Chin, ComSoc Conference Director, and Bruce Worthman, ComSoc Director of Finance and Business Operations.

The Conferences Operations Board is responsible for the oversight and management of the operational, publications, and financial aspects of all ComSoc conferences. Furthermore, the Conferences Development Board is responsible for the strategic planning, technical scope, and growth of all ComSoc financially-sponsored conferences (referred to as portfolio conferences). The GIMS Standing Committee is responsible for the continuity, successful conduct, strategic evolution, and policy recommendations of the IEEE GLOBECOM and IEEE ICC conference series. On the other hand, the GITC Standing Committee is responsible for the strategic vision and management of the technical content of the IEEE GLOBECOM and IEEE ICC conference series. The voting members of these two boards and two committees are listed on the website of ComSoc Conferences Council.

Our Conferences leadership team will do their best to serve our authors, conference attendees, and ComSoc members. Please feel free to contact us if you have comments and suggestions. Thank you!