The Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence Association (PREMIA) is the IAPR member society from Singapore.  The formation of PREMIA can be traced back to the year 2002.  In August of that year, during ICPR 2002 in Quebec City, Canada, Prof. Rangachar Kasturi, then IAPR President approached Prof. Chew Lim Tan from the National University of Singapore, inviting him to form an IAPR society in Singapore. Prof. Kasturi felt that there should be a sufficient number of researchers in the area of pattern recognition in Singapore to form such a society.  Prof. Tan agreed to explore the possibility.  During the conference, Prof. Tan also asked several conference delegates from other countries about their experience in forming their national IAPR societies.  In December 2002, Prof. Sergey Ablameyko, then Chairman of the IAPR Membership Committee, contacted via email a few people in Singapore, including Prof. Tan, suggesting the formation of a national society in Singapore.  Prof. Kasturi also later clarified some doubts that Prof. Tan raised in his email reply to Prof. Ablameyko.

In the ensuing months, Prof. Tan held discussions with several colleagues and contacts in the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University.  They were quite positive towards the formation of an IAPR society. Further meetings were held, and a draft constitution was worked out.  Meanwhile, more researchers from the two universities as well as several research institutes and the industry were also contacted.  The feedback was quite encouraging.  After some deliberation, we decided to name the society the Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence Association with the acronym PREMIA.  

PREMIA aims to provide a forum for scientists and engineers in Singapore who are interested in pattern recognition and machine intelligence research.  Specifically, the topics of research interest include computer vision, image processing, speech analysis, robotics, multimedia, document analysis, character recognition, knowledge engineering, fractal analysis and intelligent control, statistical techniques, neural networks, evolutionary programming, fuzzy logic, machine learning, and hardware implementation.  Furthermore, PREMIA is to be affiliated with IAPR so as to provide a link for our local researchers to the international community.

The following were the founding members of PREMIA as members of the Pro Tem Committee set up in November 2003:  President Chew Lim Tan (National University of Singapore), Vice-President Charles Graham Leedham (Nanyang Technological University), Treasurer Terence Sim (National University of Singapore), Secretary Teck Khim Ng (National University of Singapore), and Committee Members   Kai Kuang Ma (Nanyang Technological University), Daming Shi (Nanyang Technological University), and Ji He (National University of Singapore).

In February 2004, PREMIA was officially registered with the Registrar of Societies, Singapore. In April 2004, PREMIA was admitted as a member of IAPR.  Since then, PREMIA has actively organized events such as seminars, short courses, annual members’ nights, best student paper awards, student travel grants for attending ICPR, sponsorship of international conferences held in Singapore, etc.  Our current and past activities can be found on our website at www.premia-sg.org.

INSIDE the IAPR:

Membership Committee

A History of PREMIA,

The IAPR Member Society from Singapore

 

 

Chew Lim Tan (Singapore)

IAPR Governing Board Representative from PREMIA and Chair of the IAPR Membership Committee

Professor Tan uses his own experience to discuss the process of becoming an IAPR Member Society.

~Alexandra Branzan Albu, ed.

See the

IAPR Bylaws

for a full discussion of Membership

How a

National

Pattern Recognition Society

becomes an

IAPR Member Society

 

The membership process begins with conversations.  In some cases, researchers in national pattern recognition societies get together and approach IAPR.  In other cases, as with PREMIA, IAPR Executives or committee members approach researchers to suggest that they form an IAPR member society in their country.

 

The national pattern recognition society submits its constitution and membership application to the IAPR Membership Committee for review.

 

The Membership Committee makes a recommendation to the IAPR Governing Board.