The IT Society congratulates 19 Society Members, including 3 members of the Board of Governors, who were elected to the rank of IEEE Fellow for 2009.

The IEEE Information Theory Society mourns the loss of Professor Sergio D. Servetto, who passed away on July 24th 2007. He was the sole victim of an accident in a private plane, which he was flying from Michigan to Ithaca, NY.

Five-Page Limit on Correspondences As recommended by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Growth of the Transactions, and unanimously approved by the Board of Governors at ISIT 2006 in Seattle, WA, accepted Correspondence items submitted for review in 2007 and beyond will be limited in length to five printed pages in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. The updated Information for Authors now reflects this change.

On an experimental basis, open reviewing of submissions to the Transactions will be allowed to complement the standard procedure.

ArXiv is a public preprint server (partly funded by the NSF) which in the past decade has become the dominant method for distributing new papers in the physics community, and more recently in substantial parts of math and CS. It has been called the "physics model" for "open access" publication. Recently ArXiv has established an information theory category.

Prof. Sergio Verdú, of Princeton University, has been named the recipient of the 2008 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, "for fundamental contributions to information theory and the development of multiuser detection".

The Awards Committee, currently chaired by Andrea Goldsmith, strongly encourages all society members to consider nominating papers for the ITSoc or joint ITSoc/COMSOC prize paper awards. To stimulate more award nominations, the deadline has been extended to March 1.

The IEEE Information Theory Society mourns the loss of David Slepian, who passed away on November 29, 2007. A researcher of immense depth and breadth, Slepian was known for choosing problems of a fundamental nature and providing solutions that paved the way for many to follow.

From time to time, the Board of Governors (BoG) amends the Constitution and a set of Bylaws governing various aspects of the Society's operation. The amendments to the Bylaws have already taken effect, and the amendments to the Constitution will take effect 60 days after this notice of amendments, unless at least 1% of the voting members of the Society object, in writing, within 60 days, to the IEEE Office of Society General Activities.

The Shannon Award Committee is soliciting open nominations for the first time.

The IEEE Transactions on Information Theory will publish a Special Issue to provide readers with an overview of the most important problems in molecular biology and neuroscience, to highlight state-of-the-art applications of information theory in these fields, and to compile a collection of new research results on these subjects.