{img src=images/fuhrmann.jpg height=100 class=photo-left desc=Fuhrmann} {img src=images/neuhoff.jpg height=100 class=photo-right desc=Neuhoff}

As Technical Co-Chairs of the 2012 IEEE Workshop on Statistical Signal Processing, it is our pleasure to welcome all workshop attendees to Ann Arbor for what promises to be a stimulating three days of presentation and discussion.

The technical program for this year’s workshop includes a combination of plenary lectures, special poster sessions, and regular poster sessions. We have six distinguished plenary speakers, two for each day, covering a broad and interesting range of topics. There are 11 special sessions, each devoted to one particular topic of interest and organized by leaders in the field, comprising a total of 66 invited papers. The 28 regular poster sessions cover a wide variety of topics, some traditional and some quite new. In these regular sessions, there are 168 contributed papers selected from 253 submissions (acceptance ratio 66%). In keeping with the international tradition of the SSP Workshop, the technical program includes authors and presenters coming from 34 different countries.

All of the papers in the special and regular sessions went through a rigorous peer review process. Selecting these papers required the considerable efforts of 119 members of the Technical Committee who served as reviewers, writing some 720 reviews. We would especially like to thank them for their valuable work. We would also like to thank the Special Session Chair, Selin Aviyente, and the organizers of the special sessions for all of their efforts.

We see in this program evidence that statistical signal processing continues to play an important role in the technological revolution underway in modern society, in the way that we gather, communicate, and process information. Some of the “traditional” areas for SSP are here, such as array signal processing, , estimation and detection theory, time-frequency analysis, and adaptive systems. A major trend that shows no signs of letting up is compressive sensing and the closely related topic of sparse models: our first plenary lecture and no less than six poster sessions are devoted to this area. Two other exciting new areas are signal processing on graphs and networks, and distributed signal processing. Both of these areas become highly relevant with the proliferation of smart mobile devices and the issues of network connectivity and geographical separation that come with them. Of course, the theoretical advances in the field will only have an impact when brought to bear on applications, and here we see some very interesting work in geophysics and petrophysics, biology and biomedicine, communication systems, radar, engineering of materials, speech, and underwater acoustic signal processing.

We very much wish you an enjoyable and productive workshop. Again, welcome!

Best regards, Daniel Fuhrmann, David Neuhoff, Technical Co-Chairs