Prospective Organizers are invited to submit proposals for Special Sessions at ICASSP 2009. The proposals are due through this web page by August 4, 2008.
Special Sessions, like regular sessions, are two-hour oral sessions, with exactly six speakers each. The Special Sessions will be intermixed with regular sessions during the conference. Special Sessions shall address areas that do not yet have enough critical mass to attract regular papers. These will usually be new or emerging areas in signal processing, but they may also be established areas that require more attention. Proposals will be judged by the degree to which they will bring together key researchers in the area, introduce the area to the larger signal processing community, further develop the area, and help to establish a larger research community around the area. The Organizer's role is to invite the six speakers, process the reviews for their papers (with the same deadline and review system as the regular papers), and chair the session itself.
Important: Each speaker invited to a Special Session will be required to submit a paper, under the regular submission requirements, by the regular submission deadline: September 29, 2008. These papers will enter the same system as regular papers, and be subject to reviews, and possible rejection. The Organizer will select the reviewers and manage the review process, and in consultation with the program committee, will make accept/reject decisions. It is possible that some invited papers may be rejected. However, this is expected to be a rare event given that the Organizer should have recruited only the strongest papers to his Special Session. Both invited speakers and panelists as well as organizers will be required to register for the conference. Registration fees will not be waived and there will be no honoraria available through ICASSP.
The deadline for submitting special session proposals has passed.
Questions regarding Special Sessions may be directed to Shih-Fu Chang and Lee Swindlehurst at specialsessions@icassp09.com.