Greetings and a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year to all!

The end of a presidency period is also a time for summing things up. During my term, many initiatives and projects started by my predecessors became realities. For all this, I am particularly grateful to the past-Presidents Tapan Sarkar and Trevor Bird without whose never-failing support, encouragement, and hard work this would have never been possible. Let me just try to enumerate few of these achievements.

1.  The IEEE AP Magazine in its new format is now a reality, thanks to the outstanding editorship of Mahta Moghaddam, and to the tremendous help given her by the founding Editor Ross Stone. I am continuously receiving emails of appreciation by our readership on our new very successful format of the Magazine and its contents. (Thanks a lot Mahta and Ross for your continuous support.
2.  The new, rapid-posting, IEEE Journal on Multiscale and Multiphysics Computational Techniques (J-MMCT) is on track to debut in early 2016, and the IEEE Societies that own this journal (AP-S 40%, MTT-S 40%, and EMC-S 20%) have selected Prof. Qing Liu to be the founding Editor in Chief (EiC) of this Journal. J-MMCT will be offered free to members of the AP-S, MTT-S, and EMC-S the first year (2016). No print issues will be distributed. Articles will be posted online as they are accepted. At the end of the calendar year, a new volume number will be issued and the page count will start at 1.
3.  As of last November, the IEEE TAB has also approved our second new Journal, the IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF, and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology (J-ERM). The (broad) scope of J-ERM is simply “to publish papers related to electromagnetic, RF and microwave technologies as applied to medical and biomedical applications.” The financial sponsors of J-ERM are AP-S (35%), MTT-S (35%), EMB-S (20%), and the IEEE Sensors Council (10%). The Presidents of the sponsoring societies/council are in the process of selecting the founding Editor as I am writing this column. The first issue of this Journal is expected to be out before the end of 2016.
4.  In 2015, during my term, AP-S has also started its active participation in the following initiatives:
   1. SIGHT
   2. IEEE 5G
   3. IEEE smart village
   4. Internet of space (IoS) and Internet of things (IoT).
   5. Green information and communication technology (GICT)
   6. IEEE Big Data initiative ( BDi)
   7. Smart Grid

   Information on these initiatives is available at the IEEE website. These initiatives involve, in a coordinated manner, other IEEE Societies such as Communications and Microwave Theory and Techniques. In AP-S, these initiatives are championed by Ajay Poddar (Chair of the ad hoc SIGHT Committee and of the Chapter Activities Committee), Eric Mokole (Chair of the New Technology Directions Committee), Tapan Sarkar (Chair of Member and Geographic Activities Committee), and myself. Please contact us if you would like to be involved in these new initiatives. Also, the IEEE Foundation Committee has authorized AP-S to coordinate IEEE Sister Societies for new initiatives intended for humanitarian project activities. I am also very happy to take this opportunity to credit Dr. Timothy Lee (2015 IEEE MTT-S President, and AP-S member) for his help and continuous support of many of these initiatives. Our relationships with MTT-S (and EMC-S) could not be any better.

5.  During our last Fall AdCom meeting in Hong Kong (November 29, 2015), the AdCom unanimously approved to hold the 2021 AP-S Symposium in Singapore. This will be the first time in history that our Society will hold its flagship Symposium outside north America. For future years, it is expected that our flagship symposium will be held in Regions 8-10 as frequently as every thirdProposals from all IEEE regions will be evaluated using uniform criteria, and the final decision will be based on the perceived benefits to the AP Society as a whole and on the overall quality of the proposal. Anyone in Regions 8-10 willing to prepare a proposal for 2024 is invited to contact Prof. George Uslenghi, the Chair of the AP-S Meetings Committee, for further information.
6.  Not of minor importance, this year we have amended our Society Bylaws. Other amendments to the Constitution, Bylaws, and Operating Manual have been discussed and were approved during our last AdCom meeting in Hong Kong (November 29, 2015). The latest version of these documents will be published on our Society webpage shortly. In this connection, let me point out that it is of major importance to update and maintain our governing documents in good order; I sincerely wish to thank, on behalf of our membership, the three members of our Constitution and Bylaws Committee for their hard work: Prof. Magdalena Salazar Palma (chair), prof. Jamesina Simpson, and prof. Zhongxiang Shen (AP-S Secretary).
7.  During this year we also consolidated the AP-S financially sponsored conferences that started before my term. These conferences are:
   1. The IEEE-APS Topical Conference on Antennas and Propagation in Wireless Communications (APWC),
   2. The IEEE Radio and Antenna Days of the Indian Ocean (RADIO),
   3. The IEEE International Conference on Antenna Measurements and Applications (CAMA),
   4. The IEEE-APS Topical Meeting on Computational Electromagnetics (ICCEM).

To summarize, I believe that the AP-S is in excellent shape at the present time, with high quality publications (including two new ones) and conferences, and highly sound finances. Furthermore, our Society is now experiencing an increasing trend in our membership (from 4% to 5% annually). This is an excellent result especially given that other IEEE societies have seen a decreasing membership this year. I like to think that this is a consequence of the new initiatives we undertook in the recent past, and I am grateful to our AdCom members, Editors and Committee Chairs for their continuous support of these initiatives. In this connection, I like to thank very much the retiring AdCom members Magdalena Salazar Palma (Past-President), Ahmed Kishk, Dirk Manteuffel, event Sevgi, and Leena Ukkonen. All have made significant contributions to our Society. I also welcome, on behalf of the Society, Prof. Mike Jensen as the 2016 AP-S President and Prof. Ahmed Kishk as the 2016 AP-S President-Elect. I am confident that both will do a great job in their roles and I wish them all the best.

Dear Friends and Colleagues, it was an honor for me to serve our Society in this role this year. This was a fantastic learning experience for me and I hope I was able to give to our membership new opportunities with the various initiatives I tried to illustrate above.

December 10, 2015

Roberto.