Back from IEEE Africon Conference

I am back from Windhoek, Namibia where I presented a paper and co-chaired one of the technical sessions. I arrived in Windhoek at about 10:00hrs on 27 September, 2007 after a few hassles with traveling arrangements and connections.I managed to co-chair a session in the afternoon of the same day. The Chair was Mr Vinaye Armoogum from University of Technology Mauritius. He has become a great buddy already. I was, however, late for my presentation which I was supposed to have done a day earlier. I had to see the Program chair who asked me to present my paper in one of the remaining sessions on the closing day of the conference. Coincidentally, the session chair for the session was Professor Fambirai Takawira, my former head of School at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Vinaye, the guy with whom I chaired a session was also presenting in the same session. Being the last day of the conference, the attendance for this session was not good. My presentation was alright but not much better than the SATNAC 2006 one. Maybe, I am saying this because in my SATNAC 2006 presentation, I had a bigger audience and better feedback. In Windhoek, most people were just listening! After the conference, I spent a few days in South Africa and then came back to Malawi two days ago.

One great thing about the Africon conference is that, unlike SATNAC, it attracted a good number of participants from other continents.In my few days at the conference, I had seen a Mexico based professor, who presented his paper in the same session with me. I had also interacted and forged potential friendships with some guys from Slovenia, Europe. It was also great for me to chat with Dr John Ryan from Mzuzu University. We had lunch together.This gave me an opportunity to learn more about the MSc program in Information Theory, that he is coordinating at Mzuzu University. I will review this program on this blog in the coming weeks.

In conclusion, let me congratulate the IEEE Africon organizing committee for staging such an eventful conference. I hope the guys organizing the IEEE Africon 2009 conference, which will take place in Kenya, will make it even better. Let me also call upon all those African electrical, electronics and computer engineers, who have not yet joined IEEE , to join this institute and actively take part in its events. Africa misses out a great deal by your lack of participation in IEEE activities.

I am off to Africon

I will leave for Windhoek, Namibia where I will present my paper entitled Fuzzy Logic Congestion Control in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks: A Performance Evaluation at the IEEE Africon 2007. This will be a great experience for me having missed out on the IEEE Eurocon 2007 Conference. I will also co-chair a session on Signal Processing and Communications Systems. While away, my blogging activities will be limited, so bear with me as I will be back in full force next week.

I was supposed to join thousands of bloggers in a challenge to blog against abuse on the 27th of September 2007.My topic of choice on this day was Save Darfur but I will not publish it as yet because it is not a finished product. I do not want you my valued readers to read crap here. I will publish this one early next week.I hope BlogCatalog will bear with me.

Poland trip hits a snag, Namibia trip is on

Some months ago, I announced that two of my papers were accepted for presentation and publication at IEEE Eurocon and IEEE African conferences. IEEE Eurocon will take place in Warsaw, Poland from Sunday, September 9 to Wednesday September 12 while the IEEE Africon will take place in Windhoek, Namibia from September 26-28.

I am not happy to report that I have failed to travel to Warsaw to take part in IEEE EUROCON. I was scheduled to present my paper in the Telecommunications and Multimedia Systems poster session on the final day of the conference. My failure to attend this conference stems from the Polish bank's failure to process my conference registration fees in good time.There were fears that my paper could be withdrawn because of non-payment. However, after exchanging emails with the EUROCON registration chair for a period of more than one month, the Polish bank processed the fees and as a result, my paper was included in the list of papers to be published. Although this was good news, it did not go down well with the organization which would have sponsored my trip because registration wrangle did not leave them with enough time to process my travel grant application. If my travel grant application went in earlier, I would have been crossing the Mediterranean Sea by now on my way to Warsaw. I will surely miss this exciting conference. I will also miss senZations 2007, a summer school on applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which runs from September 10 -14. You see, I would have killed two birds with one stone in Warsaw. But the most important thing is that all things whether bad or good work together for our own good.

Now forget about my EUROCON problems because I will wind up this post on high note. The Meraka Institute in Pretoria has paid my conference registration fees , travel costs and accommodation for my participation in the IEEE Africon conference in Windhoek. I would like to thank them for helping me in this way. The AFRICON organizing team has also asked me to co-chair one of the sessions at the conference. This is the first time for me to take up such a responsibility at a conference :)

The need for more Africa based researchers and academicians to take an active role in IEEE - Part 1

According to the Gurdian Education Weekly of June 8, 2005, Africa is the world's poorest continent, containing 18 of the 20 poorest countries in the world. In a related article, the Gurdian Unlimited further reports that relative to the rest of the world, Africa is getting poorer all the time. In view of this, it is very encouraging to see the likes of former US president Bill Clinton, Bill and Melinda Gates and others helping in order to lift Africa out of the poverty trap.

"Currently, more than eight million people around the world die each year because they are too poor to stay alive."—Jeffrey Sachs. The End of Poverty.New York:Penguin Press, 2005,p.1

As one way of fighting poverty on the African continent, I would like to ask Africa-based Electrical and Electronic engineers, researchers and academicians to take an active role in the activities of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers(IEEE). This might not make sense to someone but hold your breath.Let me do a little bit of explaining. I am sure we will converge to the same line of thinking. Do you know anything about the digital divide?In a nutshell, the term digital divide refers to the gap between countries such as USA which have regular and effective access to digital and information technology and countries such as those in Africa which do not have this access. The IEEE is the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology. Most of the technological advances that we witness today were hatched through relentless research efforts of members of IEEE. By taking an active role in IEEE, African researchers would be on the leading edge of technology.With such experiences, it will be easy for them to customize what they learn from other colleagues in IEEE to the African setup. As a result, the process of bridging the digital divide will be easier and faster. Once this first step is done, continued involvement in IEEE will still be required to avoid losing the gains attained.

"The rate at which technological progress is accelerating is not a constant. The power of information technologies is doubling every year... "—Ray Kurzweil, author,inventor,futurist and winner of 1999 National Medal of Technology."A Singular Mind," United Hemispheres Magazine, Dec, 2006, p. 106.

African economies, which traditionally are based on agriculture and natural resources (gold, diamond, oil, diamonds) will be able to blossom in this information driven world. Mind you, most of the countries that are ranking high in the information revolution, do not have the diaomands, oil, uranium, gold etc. that Africa has.Things will turn upside down when Africa fully embraces the information age. The African re-birth will surely be accomplished.Let me sign out this posting with the following words of wisdom:

"But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first." Matthew 19v30, King James Version of the Bible.

Papers accepted for IEEE Conferences

Today, I thank God because the two papers that I submitted to IEEE Eurocon and IEEE Africon conferences have both been accepted. IEEE Eurocon will take place in Warsaw, Poland from September 9-12 while IEEE Africon will take place in Windhoek, Namibia from September 26-28. So far, I have managed to pay the registration fees (280 EUROs) for the Poland conference. I am yet to pay for the Namibia one. I also have to look for funds so that I can travel to these two countries to present these papers. If you want to contribute to this cause, you are more than welcome. You can contact me privately. I will acknowledge your assistance right here. If all the financial details are sorted out in good time, the month of September will be a month of travelling and interaction with other professionals in my field.

My Blog's First Birthday

A year ago, at 6:49 AM, I posted my first entry on this blog after being inspired by Soyapi Mumba and late Mangaliso Jere (May His Soul Rest In Peace). I had always desired to blog after being entertained by these guys' blogs but my MSc research would not give me a chance for that.As my research was drawing to a close, I started blogging and there is no way back now. Blogging has now become one of my major pastimes. Not only have I made new friends through it but I have also managed to link up with former school mates like Victor Kaonga who used to be one year ahead of me at Rumphi Secondary School (aka RUSESCHO). During the past blog year, I posted 23 entries.My blog site enjoyed 1176 page loads and 573 profile views from all over the world. I am very grateful to all the people that have been patronizing this blog.

One of the events from the past blog year that will always evoke fond memories is my trip to Canada where I presented a paper at the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2006) in Vancouver. It was my first time to fly out of Africa and more than that to step my feet on three continents (Africa, Europe and North America) within two days. At WCCI 2006, I also won an FUZZ-IEEE travel grant worth USD750 in recognition of the paper that I presented there. I also enjoyed attending a plenary session by Lotfi Zadeh, the father of fuzzy logic, a field which is fast becoming the mainstay of my research endeavours. This trip also gave me a chance to visit the Munthalis in Brampton, Ontario (Sekulu, abuya,Suzgo and Tapiwa, it was nice visiting you.God bless you abundantly for the hospitality). I will always remember the trip to Niagara Falls.

Now for the blog year that has just started today, I sense in the spirit that great things will take place. Watch this space!

Upcoming Conferences in IEEE Region 8

Septmeber 2007 will be an eventful month for IEEE members in Region 8.During this month, two major IEEE conferences will take place in the region.The first one will be the IEEE Region 8 EUROCON 2007 which will take place in Warsaw, Poland from September 9 to September 12. The submission deadline for this conference has been changed several times.The original deadline was 31 Januray 2007. Then it was shifted to 15 February, then 28 February and yesterday as I was preparing to upload my manuscript, I discovered that the deadline has been shifted to 10 March.Personally, I like submitting my manuscripts right on the deadline (don't ask me why). With this development, I will not upload my paper until the final day (10 March).Who knows, maybe the submission deadline will be extended again.Deadline extensions aside, I am quite excited about EUROCON 2007 because of two reasons. The first one is because all accepted papers will be included in the IEEE Xplore and the EI Compendex, the most comprehensive interdisciplinary engineering databases in the world. The second one is because the best papers will be recommended for publication in the IEEE Transactions, Electrotechnical Review, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, Electronics and Telecommunications Quarterly and in the Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

While Poland will be hosting EUROCON, Namibia's capital Windhoek will host the IEEE AFRICON 2007 from 26 to 28 September. All conference proceedings will appear in IEEE Explore.Although the official submission deadline is 3rd March, the organisers have assured us that they will accept papers until Monday, 5 March.Therefore, they should expect my manuscript on that final day.

FUZZ-IEEE Travel Grant

I do not really understand why I forgot to post this. Maybe it is due to the hectic schedule that I have had since I came back from Canada. Anyway, all I want to say is that I won an FUZZ-IEEE travel grant worth USD750 in recognition of the paper that I presented in Vancouver.I am told that competition was stiff.I really thank God for this grant.

Meanwhile, I am just looking forward to SATNAC down in the mother city.

MY TRIP TO CANADA

On March 17, 2006, I was all smiles when I heard that my paper entitled "Multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization for Fuzzy Logic Based Active Queue Management" had been accepted for presentation and publication at the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems Conference (FUZZ-IEEE 2006) which this year was part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2006) along with the IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2006) and IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2006). WCCI 2006 was scheduled to be held from July 16 to July 21, 2006 at Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.My heart was filled with immense joy not only because I was going to travel to Canada but more importantly because I was going to take part in the largest technical event on computational intelligence in the world with the biggest impact. At such an event, thousands of scientists, engineers, educators and students from all over the world disseminate their new research findings and exchange information on emerging areas of research in the field. Such an event also creates a pleasant environment for making new friends who share similar research interests.

After the paper was accepted, I had to make sure that I registered for the Conference otherwise my paper would not have appeared in the Conference proceedings. My School paid for the registration of the paper and processed my travel documents (air tickets and visa).I am really thankful to them.

I left for Canada on 14 July 2006. I flew with Nationwide Airlines from Durban to Jo'burg where I flew with KLM to Amsterdam Schiphol International Airport. I connected to Vancouver on another KLM flight. I arrived at Vancouver International Airport at about 4pm (PacificTime) on 15 July 2006. The authorities at the airport guided me to the YVR Airporter terminal where I boarded a bus which dropped me right in front of Century-Plaza Hotel and Spa, my hotel for the Conference . This hotel is right across the street from the Sheraton.

While still suffering from jet lag, I had to force myself to the conference registration table to do the registration formalities. My presentation was not a major concern at that stage because it was scheduled for Friday, 21 July at 13:40pm. I was of the view that by that time I would have fully recovered from the jet lag. From 16 July, I was attending the sessions with naps here and there when the jet lag seemed to take its toll on me. I really enjoyed the sessions on Swarm Intelligence, Fuzzy Sets Applications and Evolutionary Multiobjective optimization.On the invited and planary talks, I enjoyed listening to most of them but I single out two talks: A New Frontier in Computation-Computation with Information Described in Natural Language by Lotfi Zadeh, the creator of Fuzzy Logic and 20 Years of Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization: What Has Been Done and What Remains to be Done by Carlos A. Coello Coello.I really enjoyed Coello's presentation because it gave me a complete understanding of the developments in Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimization (EMOO). I have used some EMOO concepts in my MSc thesis. This experience has just heightened my intesest in the field. I hope to do some more work in this field because now I know the exact EMOO research areas.

On Friday, 21 July 2006 at 13:40pm, I had to present my paper in a session entitled Fuzzy Sets Applications to Communications & Signal Processing. My presentation was quite good. I think this time round I improved my timing compared to my novel conference presentation at SATNAC 2005. I enjoyed the experience because the world was listening to me!

On some days, I could take some time off and go around the City with Zhiyong Zhang, a friend I had made at the same conference. We really enjoyed our walks on Robson Street and even down there at Gastown where we saw the famous 29 year old steam clock. On onother day, a friend who studies at the University of British Columbia took me to his University where I had a nice time.

On 22 July at 10 am, I took a flight to Toronto to visit my relatives for three days. While there, they treated me so well.On one of the days, they took me to the Niagara Falls, a major tourist attraction on the Canada-US boarder. I had a good time looking at the Horseshoe and the American Falls.I also had the opportunity to see the Welland Canal along the way. I remembered that some years back in my primary school Geography, I learnt that this Canal links Lake Ontario with Lake Erie.As part of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System, it allows ships to avoid Niagara Falls by traversing the Niagara Escarpment.

On 25 July at 7:10pm, I flew with Air France to Paris. I had to spend the whole day in Charles de Gaulle Airport while waiting for a late night flight to Johannesburg. It was scheduled to take off at 23:30hrs but unfortunately there was a heavy downpour in Paris such that it had to be delayed by 3 hours. As a result, I missed my flight to Durban such that I had to go on a different one (No big deal as long as I arrive alive).

I hope this gives you a picture of my recent experiences. I would like to thank the Radio Access Technologies Centre in the School of Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal for sponsoring my trip. More than everything, I thank God for His Grace upon me. I will post some photos on my website once I receive them from Zhiyong.

I am in Vancouver

I arrived in Vancouver on 15 July. I will be in this City for one week. I am staying at the Century-Plaza Hotel and Spa. I am attending the IEEE World Congress on Computational intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2006). I will be presenting my paper on Friday in the afternoon.

Paper accepted for IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems

My paper entitled "Multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization for Fuzzy Logic Based Active Queue Management" has been accepted for presentation and publication at the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE 2006).FUZZ-IEEE 2006 will be held jointly with the IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2006) and IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2006) under the coverage of the 2006 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2006). WCCI 2006 will be held from July 16 to July 21, 2006 at Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. WCCI is a premier technical event under the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society which has been taking place every four years since 1994. Check WCCI history!

More details on this upcoming experience will follow later.At the mean time just celebrate with me!!!

Introduction

Hello everybody. I just felt like joining the blog world now that I am drawing towards the end of my MSc research. During the past 18 months, I have been very busy with my MSc work such that I could not find time to express myself thru blogging.

Well, since my MSc is by research, it is generally more hectic and unpredictable compared to the taught one. One former lecturer of mine told me that studying by research is analogous to sea waves. At one point things seem to be moving in the right direction.Your papers are accepted in big IEEE conferences/journals. You receive a substantial amount of bonus because you have done some breakthrough work. When things happen like that you are certainly on the crest (high point) of the wave.At some point, studying by research is like hell has broken loose. Your code produces segmentation errors and u have spent many days trying to debug it.You are failing to analyse a complex mathematical problem for several weeks.Your papers for journal/conference have been rejected with awful reviewer comments. At this point in time its like you are in the trough (low point) of the wave. Nothing is good at this stage. You do not enjoy even your favorite meal at this point.In fact you do not even have the appetite at all.

In my research studies, I have gone to both extremes but I thank God because I have predominantly spent more time on the crest than in the trough. Whenever a trough seemed like overtaking me, God (Unkulukulu in Zulu) has always been making a way out for me.

I will talk more about my research work and future plans later.I think this is enough for today. Nisale kahle (Nice stay).