Brijesh Verma is chair of the Computational Intelligence Society Queensland Chapter. CQUniversity's Brijesh Verma is chair of the Computational Intelligence Society Queensland Chapter which has been selected for the 2009 IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Outstanding Chapter Award.

The motion to bestow the award was approved by the Society's administrative committee during its June 1 meeting in Hong Kong.

A formal presentation of the award (Certificate and US$2000) will take place next year during the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in Atlanta (June 2009).

IEEE CIS Queensland chapter has members at 4 universities (CQUniversity, QUT, UQ and GU) and it runs presentations and meetings using Access Grid.

Every year, the chapter brings a number of distinguished researchers from academia and industry and runs a postgraduate symposium.

In the next half of this year, the chapter is planning to host Professor Xin Yao and a postgraduate symposium. Professor Yao is the Director of the Centre of Excellence for Research in Computational Intelligence and Applications at the University of Birmingham, UK and Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Algorithms.

Professor Yao's visit will be funded by the IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecturer program. The postgraduate symposium will be a full-day event involving 3-4 research students from each of the 4 universities and it will be run using CQUniversity's Access Grid.

Information about IEEE CIS and the awards can be found at http://ieee-cis.org/ .

For information about IEEE CIS QLD Chapter activities, please contact. Brijesh Verma, IEEE CIS QLD Chapter Chair, Faculty of Business & Informatics, E-mail: b.verma@cqu.edu.au .