Rolland Vida, PhD
Candidate for Board of Governors 2023 Elections
Members-at-Large - Europe, Middle East, & Africa Region
IEEE Communications Society
This year I have the honor to be selected among the candidates to run for a Members-at-Large position in the upcoming IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Election 2023. The election will start on May 25 and you will be able to cast your vote via the following link: https://eballot4.votenet.com/IEEE. Please note that all ComSoc members, including student members, are eligible to vote.
On this page you can find my short bio and position statement. I would be really grateful to have your support and vote. If elected, I will do my best to serve the interests of the society and its members, to the benefit of our community. I would also very much appreciate if you could share this website with your ComSoc friends, colleagues, and ComSoc student members. Please note that IEEE policy does not allow distribution of election campaign messages to IEEE emailing lists and IEEE social networks. You can however reach your colleagues/friends/students individually or via other mailing lists and social networks where such postings are allowed.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Vote here (after May 25)Short Bio
Academic career
I obtained my MSc in Computer Science, as valedictorian, from the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania, and my PhD in Computer Networks from Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France, in 1997 and 2003, respectively. In parallel with my Computer Science studies I also obtained in 1999 a BSc diploma in European Studies, after gaining some knowledge on areas such as European law, philosophy, administration or economics.
I joined the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) in 2003, where I am currently Associate Professor at the Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics. Since 2018 I am the Head of HSNLab, a strategic academic research partner of Ericsson for more than 30 years. With nearly 50 researchers and PhD students in the lab, we are the largest academic partner of Ericsson outside Sweden.
Between 2003 - 2006 I was a Georg von Békésy Postdoctoral Fellow of the Hungarian Ministry of Education, then between 2010-2013 a Janos Bolyai Research Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2014 I received the Tivadar Puskas award of the Scientific Association for Infocommunications (HTE), the Sister Society of IEEE ComSoc in Hungary. Since 2015 I am the Coordinator of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) activities of the EIT Digital (European Institute of Innovation & Technology) Doctoral Training Center at BME. My research areas are related to wireless sensor networks and their applications, vehicular communications, smart cities, peer-to-peer networks and multicast technologies.
IEEE volunteering
After a few smaller events, I started to get involved more seriously in organizing IEEE conferences in 2009. After being the Operations Chair of the IEEE VTC-Spring 2011 conference, I served also as Operations Chair of IEEE ICC 2013 in Budapest, handling the challenging task of relocating most of the social functions at the very last moment, due to the historical flooding of the Danube river.
In 2014 I was then invited to join ComSoc's Globecom & ICC Management and Strategy Committee (GIMS), overseeing the organization of all the society's flagship conferences in a 4-year time window. I served in GIMS for 8 years, first as Operations Chair, then Vice-Chair, and finally as GIMS Chair between 2020-2021. I was also member of the Globecom & ICC Technical Committee (GITC) in that period.
I served as GIMS advisor for IEEE Globecom 2015, IEEE Globecom 2018 and IEEE ICC 2021. I am now Tutorials Co-Chair for IEEE Globecom 2023. I also served as Finance Chair for IEEE MeditCom 2022, Tutorial Co-Chair for IEEE NOMS 2022, IEEE NOMS 2020 and IEEE HPSR 2015. Currently I am member of ComSoc's Conferences Council and its Educational Services Board.
Besides ComSoc, I was also involved in other IEEE societies and councils, I was member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Sensors Council, first as representative of the Vehicular Technology Society, between 2015-2017, and then as ComSoc representative between 2017-2020. I served as TPC Co-Chair of the flagship IEEE Sensors conference on three occasions, in 2019, 2020 and 2022. Currently I am member of the IEEE Sensors Council Meetings Committee. I was also ComSoc's representative in the Steering Committee of IEEE Smart Cities, serving as Chair of the Conferences Advisory Committee between 2019-2022, and General Co-Chair of the flagship IEEE International Smart Cities Conference in 2020.
I am Associate Editor of IEEE Sensors Letters since 2018, Steering Committee Member of IEEE IoT Journal since 2017, I served as Guest Editor of several special issues of the IEEE Sensors Journal, and I was Editor-in-Chief of the Infocommunications Journal between 2018-2018.
Miscellaneous
I live with my wife and two daughters in Telki, a small village of 5000 people in the outskirts of Budapest. Molly, adopted from a dog shelter, is member of our family since 2018. I was elected as member of the Local Council of Telki in 2014, and then once again in 2019. Within the council I am the Head of the Public Education Committee, and member of the Social and Financial Committees.
In my spare time I like gardening, hiking in the neighboring hills and forests with Molly, listening to jazz and classical music. During winter time I do skiing for more than 40 years now.
Position Statement
In the last 15 years I was involved in organizing over 40 conferences of IEEE ComSoc, but also the IEEE Sensors Council and IEEE Smart Cities, in both of which I was the appointed Steering Committee ComSoc representative. Furthermore, in all these IEEE OUs I was or will be chairing the committees overseeing their flagship conferences. If elected ComSoc BoG Member-at-Large, I would like to continue focusing on ComSoc's conference portfolio, the area that I have significant experience with.
I was chairing GIMS, the committee overseeing our flagship Globecom and ICC conferences, exactly during the period of the pandemic, when I had to orchestrate the transition to virtual and hybrid events. Then, I led a working group of the Conferences Council evaluating remote participation possibilities after the pandemic.
I strongly believe that conferences should be in-person events, at least for authors, with possibilities of real interactions. Getting immediate feedback on your work, chatting with fellow researchers in the coffee breaks, and meeting in person with world class keynote and panel speakers, this is what conferences are really about, in addition to traveling and meeting new people and new cultures of course. Hybrid events just cannot provide this same experience, besides being very difficult and expensive to organize.
Unfortunately however, even if the pandemic is over by now in most parts of the world, there are still many researchers who cannot attend conferences in person, due to local travel restrictions, visa problems or financial difficulties. Based on the working group's recommendation, the Conferences Council is considering now the creation of a new, fully online virtual conference, giving the possibility to all our authors to publish their research results. As opposed to many other virtual events however, this conference intends to be a live, fully interactive event, trying to match the attractivity of in-person conferences as much as possible.
Besides being involved in the launching of this new virtual conference, I also intend to help all our portfolio events in different ways:
- bringing our conferences to new regions, new countries of the world, according to IEEE's general goal of being a global organization. Note that it was during my first year in GIMS when we introduced in 2014 the periodic rotation of Globecom among the different geographic regions (Americas, EMEA, Asia Pacific);
- increasing diversity, both in terms of gender, age and geographic region, both among our invited keynote and panel speakers, in conference organizing committees, technical program committees, and in all other areas of ComSoc activities;
- increasing industry participation by providing incentives to companies to attend our events, and meet talented young researchers who are entering the job market after finishing their PhDs. Note that I am leading for more than 5 years a research lab that is tightly connected to Ericsson, being an example to follow in terms of successful cooperation between industry and academia, with more than 100 PhDs awarded, mostly on industry-driven research topics.
HSN Lab researchers, the group that I have the honor to lead since 2018, joined by some of our industrial partners, during a workshop in 2022