[Women in GRS]

As the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) embarks on publishing the new GRS Magazine in 2013, the Society has also inaugurated an initiative to focus on women in the geoscience and remote sensing fields. In future issues this regular magazine column will explore such topics as promoting networking among women, recruiting a diverse workforce, work-life balance, diversity, professional development and gender/diversity statistics for IEEE as a whole, our Society, our publications and our annual symposium, IGARSS. We will also occasionally publish feature articles on female leaders, trailblazers, and up-andcoming scientists and engineers within our society. We hope and expect the topics of this column to be of interest to both women and men. In this issue we report on our initial activities during 2012. These consist mainly of a new LinkedIn group, the first-ever Women in Geoscience and Remote Sensing Luncheon at IGARSS and GRSS participation with a Society liaison to the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Committee.