Dear members of the Information Theory family,

I wanted to reach out and inform you of our ongoing efforts regarding the impact of COVID-19 on our society’s activities. This note contains some important changes and updates to the 2020 activities of the IEEE Information Theory Society due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

First and foremost, our thoughts are with our members all over the world who have been impacted by this disease.  At this time, many of us around the world are under stay-at-home mandates as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact all aspects of our lives significantly. We are all one community, and as we adjust to working and living in cyberspace, our research mission continues, with the well being of our members being the utmost priority.

The volunteers and the governance of the IEEE Information Theory Society have been working diligently to come up with solutions to address the impact of COVID-19 on our society’s various meeting activities.  We are continuously monitoring the developments and the travel advisories issued by authorities.

At this point the following decisions have been made: 

• The IEEE Information Theory Distinguished Lecturers Program has been suspended effective immediately until further notice.
• IEEE Information Theory Workshop 2020, Riva del Garda, Italy, which was to take place in September 2020, has been postponed to Spring 2021. Further updates regarding the new dates will be posted at  http://itw2020.it/welcome.html  as well as at  https://www.itsoc.org/covid
• The IEEE European School of Information Theory (ESIT), Stuttgart, Germany, which was to take place in May 2020, has been postponed to Fall 2020. Further updates regarding the new dates will be posted at  https://www.inue.uni-stuttgart.de/esit2020/  as well as at  https://www.itsoc.org/covid

At the moment, we are working on the remaining meetings of 2020 including ISIT. I will be in touch as soon as we have more information. It is a good bet that there will be changes to how we conduct all our meeting activities, at least in the short term, as we respond to this unique global crisis. I wish to emphasize that research dissemination continues through our peer-reviewed publications, even if our in-person meetings are disrupted. Our community remains resilient and active. And this unique challenge may end up encouraging new methods of delivery and research dissemination.

I wish all of you and your loved ones good health.

Sincerely,

Aylin Yener
President, IEEE Information Theory Society
March 22, 2020