It is my great honor to serve for a second term as President of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) for the year 2026.
2025 was an active and fruitful year for the Vehicular Technology Society. Membership has reached a record high of more than 11,000 members, which indicates that the VTS fields of interest, Mobile Radio, Motor Vehicles and Land Transportation, combined in one society form a timely and attractive portfolio.
In 2025, VTS has undergone an IEEE-level review of its publications as well as the society in general and received very good feedback.
VTS publications - in particular the main publications IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT), the IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology (OJVT) and the IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine (VTM) - are among the leading journals in the field and we have made substantial progress in reducing submission-to-publication times despite a significant increase in submissions and published pages.
The VTS education program received particularly positive feedback for its broad content of courses, keynotes, distinguished lecturer talks, and other content in the VTS Resource Center, which is free for VTS members.
Moreover, VTS has specific and well-received offerings for young professionals such as the YP Webinar Series as well as special YP events during the Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC).
In addition to our main conferences, the Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) and the Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC), 2025 brought an inspiring comeback of the Wireless Africa Conference with its first edition post-COVID in Pretoria, South Africa. In 2026, we will launch a new VTS conference, INNOVARail, in the field of Land Transportation.
The VTS technical committees provide platforms to advance and promote technology. They regularly organize workshops at the VTS flagship conferences. VTS technical committees also increasingly hold challenges on various topics.
VTS continues to be very active in standardization with more than 40 standards activities and working groups.
The broad variety of activities is only possible with numerous dedicated volunteers. I would like to thank everyone who is contributing to making VTS such a lively society.
I am thankful to be able to work with a great VTS leadership team, which for 2026 includes Giambattista Gruosso (Executive Vice President), Neeli Prasad (Vice President Membership Development), JR Cruz (Vice President Conferences), Abbas Jamalipour (Vice President Publications), Nicholas Kirsch (Vice President Finance), Oliver Holland (Vice President Standards), Lin Cai (Vice President Mobile Radio), Ricardo de Castro (Vice President Motor Vehicles), Yousef Kimiagar (Vice President Land Transportation), Jae Hong Lee (Treasurer), and Fabrice Labeau (Secretary).
If you have ideas, comments or questions, feel free to contact me or any member of the leadership team via email through the VTS website.
I wish you a happy and successful new year and I hope to see you at our VTS events in 2026.
Gerhard Bauch
President, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society
