Vincenzo Loia^a, Piero P. Bonissone^b, Chang-Shing Lee^c

^aDepartment of Mathematics & Computer Science, University of Salerno, Italy

^bGeneral Electric Global Research, USA

^cDepartment of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National University of Tainan, Taiwan

^aloia@unisa.it

^bbonissone@crd.ge.com

^cleecs@mail.nutn.edu.tw

　　The IEEE CIS ETTC is an organization of the Emergent Technologies Technical Committee of the Computational Intelligence Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc. The purpose of the ETTC is to track, identify, promote, and nurture new and emergent approaches, concepts, and areas that relate or are within the scope of the CIS. In addition, the ETTC is open to all members of the CIS, as well as to other technical professionals as affiliates. There are three grades of the members, including active members, non-active members, and affiliates. The active members regularly participate in ETTC activities and meetings and shall be eligible to vote on matters before the committee. For those who have an interest in the Committee activities but are unable to actively participate, they are non-active members. The affiliates are the members who have an interest in ETTC activities and meeting, but will not be eligible to vote on matters before the committee.

　　This year, the chair of the ETTC is Professor Vincenzo Loia, University of Salerno, Italy. The vice chair for Americas is Professor Piero P. Bonissione, General Electric, USA. Another vice chair for Asia, Pacific, and EST areas is Chang-Shing Lee, National University of Tainan, Taiwan.  The members of ETTC come from various countries across the globe. In addition, currently, the ETTC has eight task forces, including the “Automatic and Trusted Computing,” “Intelligent Agent,” “Machine Learning,” “Memetic Computing,” “Molecular Computing,” “Organic Computing,” “Quantum Computing,” and “Social Computing,” to promote the related research topics on computational intelligence. The activities of the ETTC include but not limited to the following: propose special sessions to the CIS-sponsored conference organizers, participate in paper reviews and selection for CIS-sponsored conferences and publications, promote IEEE Senior Members and Fellows program, collaborate on production of tutorials and book series with the Multimedia Committee, facilitate local Chapters activities, and organize specialized workshops or meetings.

　　On June 3, 2008, the IEEE CIS ETTC Lunch Meeting was held at the Super Star Seafood Restaurant, Hong Kong, to have the nice opportunity to meet together and enjoy the lunch. There are 15 members to attend this lunch meeting, including Professors Willian Hung, Christian Igel, Tzung-Pei Hong, Witold Pedrycz, Ling Wang, Irina Perfilieva, Vincenzo Loia, Piero P. Bonissone, Jie Lu, Laurence Tianruo Yang, Hani Hagras, Chang-Shing Lee, Kay C. Wiese, Yew Soon Ong, and Yaochu Jin. During this meeting, the chair, Professor Vincenzo Loia, thanked to ETTC members for the good job done in the past year. In addition, he also discussed with the members over how ETTC has achieved goals in the last year and the new objectivities in the agenda of 2008.

　　Moreover, we will also strive to continually develop and prompt the ETTC in the future. Our planning activities include but not limited to the following:

The 2010 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2010) will be held in Barcelona, Spain, July 18-23, 2010. The vice chair for Americas, Professor Piero P. Bonissone, has planned that there will be an ETTC Special Track lasting 3~5 days during the IEEE WCCI 2010, and that the ETTC members will be in charge of some emergent research topics.
Professors Vincenzo Loia, Chang-Shing Lee, and Tzung-Pei Hong will plan to serve as the session organizers together to propose a special session on “Fuzzy Approaches on Ontology and Adaptive Web Services” at the twenty second International Conference on Industrial, Engineering & Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems (IEA/AIE 2009), which will be held in Taiwan, June 24-27, 2009. In addition, the high-quality papers will be selected and invited to submit to the special issue on “Fuzzy Approaches on Ontology and Adaptive Web Services” of the International Journal of Fuzzy Systems (IJFS).
　　Finally, we thank the IEEE CIS for their supports. We also thank all the current and past committee members of the ETTC, and in particular the task force chairs, for their enormous efforts and contributions. Furthermore, we look forward to seeing each of you at the FUZZ-IEEE 2009 and IEEE WCCI 2010.