Joseph L. LoCicero was born on September 18, 1947 in the Borough of The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He received his academic training at the City College of New York (BSEE 1970 and MSEE 1971) and the City University of New York (Ph.D. 1977). He performed his doctoral thesis research under Donald L. Schilling. Upon receipt of his doctoral degree he joined Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) as a faculty member in what is now the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department, where he served for over 30 years as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, and Motorola Chair Professor, as well as undertaking the position of Acting Chair of the ECE Department for two years. He was one of the co-founders of the Wireless Network and Communications (WiNCom) Research Center.While at IIT, Dr. LoCicero worked on problems in signal processing and communications, focusing particularly in the areas of speech processing, video systems, and wireless communications. He specialized in low bit rate voice, computer generated holography for photonic switching, pitch detection, automatic speech recognition, and nonlinear power amplifiers, among other research topics. 

He authored more than ninety technical articles, three book chapters, and co-edited Tutorial in Modern Communications and the IEEE Press Book Television Technology Today. Dr. LoCicero was advisor to many doctoral students and several students who received the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering degree under his guidance.

Wei Zhang is Vice President of IEEE Communications Society (2022-2023, 2024-2025). He received the Ph.D. degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2005. Currently, he is a Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His current research interests include 5G and beyond.  He has been an IEEE Fellow since 2015 and was an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer in 2016-2017.

Within the IEEE ComSoc, he has taken many leadership positions including Chair of Wireless Communications Technical Committee (2019-2020), Vice Director of Asia Pacific Board (2016-2021), Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Wireless Communications Letters (2016-2019), Member-at-Large on the Board of Governors (2018-2020), Technical Program Committee Chair of APCC 2017 and ICCC 2019, Award Committee Chair of Asia Pacific Board and Award Committee Chair of Technical Committee on Cognitive Networks.

In addition, he has served as a member in various ComSoc boards/standing committees, including Journals Board, Technical Committee Recertification Committee, Finance Standing Committee, Information Technology Committee, Steering Committee of IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking and Steering Committee of IEEE Networking Letters. Currently, he serves as an Area Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Communications and Information Networks. Previously, he served as Editor of IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, and IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications – Cognitive Radio Series.