The ISCAS 2012 technical program will include Special Sessions. Their objective is to complement the regular program with new or emerging topics of particular interest to the circuits and systems community that may also cut across and beyond disciplines traditionally represented at ISCAS. Special Sessions aligned with the conference theme “Convergence of BINET (Bio Info Enviro Technology)” are especially welcome, including biomedical and biology-inspired circuits and systems, imaging and display, memory applications, processor applications, 3D IC circuits and systems, nanotechnology circuits and systems, environment-aware circuits and systems, system-of-systems design, design methodologies and modeling of circuits on silicon-on-anything, power management and optimization. The first paper in a Special Session should serve as an introduction to the field, aimed at outsiders.

Prospective organizers of Special Sessions should submit proposals indicating:

• Title of the session
• Rationale of the need for the Special Session at ISCAS. The rationale should stress the novelty of the topic and its multidisciplinary flavor (if any)
• Short biography of the organizers
• List of five (5) contributed papers (including titles, authors, contact information of the corresponding author, and a short abstract of each contribution). Organizers should not contribute more than one paper.
• Preliminary full version of the overview paper is desirable. If submitted, it enhances the chances of proposal acceptance.

Endorsement of the proposal by at least one CAS technical committee is encouraged, but not required for consideration. Proposals are due on or before September 9, 2011 and should be sent via e-mail (in either pdf or plain ascii text form) to the Special Session chairs, Andy Chung (), Yong Lian () and Gerald E. Sobelman (). Proposals will be evaluated based on the timeliness of the topic, the qualifications of the organizers and the authors of the contributed papers, the balance of the topics across the technical areas represented in CAS, and the presence and quality of the overview paper. Note that Special Session proposals on topics that clearly belong to well established (sub) tracks of ISCAS will not be accepted.

Notification of acceptance will be sent to the organizers by October 2, 2011. Authors of papers included in successful proposals should submit a manuscript on or before October 28, 2011. Manuscripts should conform to the formatting and electronic submission guidelines of regular ISCAS papers. They will undergo peer review. It is the responsibility of the organizers to ensure that their Special Session meets the ISCAS quality standards. If, at the end of the review process, fewer than four (4) papers are accepted, the session will be canceled and the accepted papers will be moved to regular sessions.

Important Dates:

Proposals due: September 9, 2011
Notification of acceptance: October 2, 2011
Submission for full 4-page papers in Special (Invited) Sessions: October 28, 2011
Notification of paper acceptance: January 6, 2012
Submission Deadline for final papers: February 10, 2012