Jean-Claude Simon was a leading contributor to the establishment and success of the IAPR in its earliest years. From his role as a committee member for the First International Joint Conference on Pattern Recognition (IJCPR 1973) until just before his passing in 2000, he contributed over 25 years of dedicated service to the IAPR in a wide range of roles.
For the first seven IJCPR and ICPR conferences, he was one of a small group of Program Committee members, and for the 8th ICPR in Paris (1986), he was Conference Chair. Jean-Claude was also instrumental in establishing two other important pattern recognition conference series: the International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition in 1990 (ICFHR, originally a workshop) and the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition in 1991 (ICDAR).
Jean-Claude held a number of committee leadership roles in the IAPR. He was on the Governing Board as a representative from France for 10 years (1978–88), and held positions on the IAPR Executive Committee, including President (1982–84) and Past President (1984–86). He was Co-Chair of the Publications Committee (1978–80) and served on the Membership Committee (1980–82 and 1986–88) and the Nominating Committee (1984–86), as well as the King-Sun Fu Prize Committee (1998–2000).
Jean-Claude Simon’s scientific and collaborative leadership in the pattern recognition community were instrumental to the development of the IAPR in its first 25 years and beyond.