This October issue represents the fifth annual Special Issue of the IEEE-LEOS Newsletter. Our goal in publishing an annual Special Issue is to provide LEOS members with an overview of research in a selected topic.

This year’s Special Issue features articles on the subject of “Fast Optical Signal Processing in Optical Transmission” by researchers who presented invited talks at the 2002 LEOS Summer Topical on July 15-17. 2002, at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, Canada. The Chair of this conference is Prof. Kristian Stubkjaer, who is profiled in this Special Issue. Prof. Stubkjaer is an elected member of the LEOS Board of Governors and is presently at the Technical University of Denmark. For more information on the 2002 LEOS Summer Topicals, see the website: http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/leos/LEOSCONF/SUM2002/sum02.htm. We hope that you enjoy reading the invited articles that are contained in this issue.

The last meeting in 2002 of the LEOS Board of Governors will be held on Nov. 11-14 in Glasgow, Scotland. For more details, see the LEOS Conference web page at the URL: http://www.i-leos.org/info/calendar2002.html.

Please feel free to suggest comments and suggestions to improve the Newsletter and to submit articles: myl@watson.ibm.com