Sharlene Brown often accompanied her husband, IEEE Senior Member Damith Wickramanayake, to organization meetings. He has held leadership positions in the IEEE Jamaica Section, in IEEE Region 3, and on the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities board. Both are from Jamaica.

She either waited outside the conference room or helped with tasks such as serving refreshments. Even though her husband encouraged her to sit in on the meetings, she says, she felt uncomfortable doing so because she wasn’t an engineer. Brown is an accountant and human resources professional. Her husband is a computer science professor at the University of Technology, Jamaica, in Kingston. He is currently Region 3’s education activities coordinator and a member of the section’s education and outreach committee for the IEEE Educational Activities Board.

Sharlene Brown

Employer

Maritime Authority of Jamaica, in Kingston

Title

Assistant accountant

Member grade

Senior member

Alma mater

University of Technology, Jamaica, in Kingston; Tsinghua University, in Beijing

After earning her master’s degree in public administration in 2017, Brown says, she felt she finally was qualified to join IEEE, so she applied. Membership is open to individuals who, by education or experience, are competent in different fields including management. She was approved the same year.

“When I joined IEEE, I would spend long hours at night reading various operations manuals and policies because I wanted to know what I was getting into,” she says. “I was always learning. That’s how I got to know a lot of things about the organization.”

Brown is now a senior member and an active IEEE volunteer. She founded the Jamaica Section’s Women in Engineering group; established a student branch; sits on several high-level IEEE boards; and ran several successful recruitment campaigns to increase the number of senior members in Jamaica and throughout Region 3.

Brown was also a member of the subcommittee of the global Women in Engineering committee; she served as membership coordinator and ran several successful senior member campaigns, elevating women on the committee and across IEEE.

Brown also was integral in the promotion and follow-up activities for the One IEEE event held in January at the University of Technology, Jamaica. The first-of-its-kind workshop connected more than 200 participants to each other and to the organization by showcasing Jamaica’s active engineering community. The Jamaica Section has 135 IEEE members.

From factory worker to accountant

Brown grew up in Bog Walk, a rural town in the parish of St. Catherine. Because she had low grades in high school, the only job she was able to get after graduating was as a temporary factory worker at the nearby Nestlé plant. She worked as many shifts as she could to help support her family.

“I didn’t mind working,” she says, “because I was making my mark. Anything I do, I am going to be excellent at, whether it’s cleaning the floor or doing office work.” But she had bigger plans than being a factory worker, she says.

A friend told her about a temporary job overseeing exams at the Jamaican Institute of Management, now part of the University of Technology. Brown worked both jobs for a time until the school hired her full time to do administrative work in its accounting department.

One of the perks of working there was free tuition for employees, and Brown took full advantage. She studied information management and computer applications, Jamaican securities, fraud detection, forensic auditing, and supervisory management, earning an associate degree in business administration in 2007. The school hired her in 2002 as an accountant, and she worked there for five years.

In 2007 she joined the Office of the Prime Minister, in Kingston, initially as an officer handling payments to suppliers. Her hard work and positive attitude got her noticed by other managers, she says. After a month she was tapped by the budget department to become a commitment control officer, responsible for allocating and overseeing funding for four of the country’s ministries.

“What I realized through my volunteer work in IEEE is that you’re never alone. There is always somebody to guide you.”

As a young accountant, she didn’t have hands-on experience with budgeting, but she was a quick learner who produced quality work, she says. She learned the budgeting process by helping her colleagues when her work slowed down and during her lunch breaks.

That knowledge gave her the skills she needed to land her current job as an assistant accountant with the budget and management accounts group in the Maritime Authority of Jamaica accounts department, a position she has held since 2013.

While she was working for the Office of the Prime Minister, Brown continued to further her education. She took night courses at the University of Technology and, in 2012, earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She majored in accounting and minored in human resources management.

She secured a full scholarship in 2016 from the Chinese government to study public administration in Beijing at Tsinghua University, earning a master’s degree with distinction in 2017.

Brown says she is now ready to shift to a human resources career. Even though she has been supervising people for more than 17 years, though, she is having a hard time finding an HR position, she says.

Still willing to take on challenges, she is increasing her experience by volunteering with an HR consulting firm in Jamaica. To get more formal training, she is currently working on an HR certification from the Society for Human Resource Management.

Sharlene Brown arranged for the purchase of 350 desk shields for Jamaican schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.Sharlene Brown

Building a vibrant community

After graduating from Tsinghua University, Brown began volunteering for the IEEE Jamaica Section and Region 3.

In 2019 she founded the section’s IEEE Women in Engineering affinity group, which she chaired for three years. She advocated for more women in leadership roles and has run successful campaigns to increase the number of female senior members locally, regionally, and globally across IEEE. She herself was elevated to senior member in 2019.

Brown also got the WIE group more involved in helping the community. One project she is particularly proud of is the purchase of 350 desk shields for Jamaican schools so students could more safely attend classes and examination sessions in person during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brown was inspired to undertake the project when a student explained on a local news program that his family couldn’t afford Internet for their home, so he was unable to attend classes remotely.

“Every time I watched the video clip, I would cry,” she says. “This young man might be the next engineer, the country’s next minister, or the next professional.

“I’m so happy we were able to get funding from Region 3 and a local organization to provide those shields.”

She established an IEEE student branch at the Caribbean Maritime University, in Kingston. The branch had almost 40 students at the time of formation.

Brown is working to form student branches at other Jamaican universities, and she is attempting to establish an IEEE Power & Energy Society chapter in the section.

She is a member of several IEEE committees including the Election Oversight and Tellers. She serves as chair for the region’s Professional Activities Committee.

“What I realized through my volunteer work in IEEE is that you’re never alone,” she says. “There is always somebody to help guide you. If they don’t know something, they will point you to the person who does.

“Also, you’re allowed to make mistakes,” she says. “In some organizations, if you make a mistake, you might lose your job or have to pay for your error. But IEEE is your professional home, where you learn, grow, and make mistakes.”

On some of the IEEE committees where she serves, she is the only woman of color, but she says she has not faced any discrimination—only respect.

“I feel comfortable and appreciated by the people and the communities I work with,” she says. “That motivates me to continue to do well and to touch lives positively. That’s what makes me so active in serving in IEEE: You’re appreciated and rewarded for your hard work.”

Telecom engineers and researchers face several challenges when it comes to testing their 5G and 6G prototypes. One is finding a testbed where they can run experiments with their new hardware and software.

The experimentation platforms, which resemble real-world conditions, can be pricey. Some have a time limit. Others may be used only by specific companies or for testing certain technologies.

The new IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed has eliminated many of those barriers. Built by IEEE, the platform is for those who want to try out their 5G enhancements, run trials of future 6G functions, or test updates for converged networks. Users may test and retest as many times as they want at no additional cost.

Telecom operators can use the new virtual testbed, as can application developers, researchers, educators, and vendors from any industry.

“The IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed creates an environment where industry can break new ground and work together to develop the next generation of technology innovations,” says Anwer Al-Dulaimi, cochair of the IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed working group. Al-Dulaimi, an IEEE senior member, is a senior strategy manager of connectivity and Industry 4.0 for Veltris, in Toronto.

The testbed was launched this year with support from AT&T, Exfo, Eurecom, Veltris, VMWare, and Tech Mahindra.

The subscription-based testbed is available only to organizations. Customers receive their own private, secure session of the testing platform in the cloud along with the ability to add new users.

A variety of architectures and experiments

The platform eliminates the need for customers to travel to a location and connect to physical hardware, Al-Dulaimi says. That’s because its digital hub is based in the cloud, allowing companies, research facilities, and organizations to access it. The testbed allows customers to upload their own software components for testing.

“IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed provides a unique platform for the service providers, and various vertical industries—including defense, homeland security, agriculture, and automotive—to experiment various use cases that can take advantage of advanced 5G technologies like ultra low latency, machine-to-machine type communications and massive broadband to help solve their pain points,” says IEEE Fellow Ashutosh Dutta, who is a cochair of the working group. Dutta works as chief 5G strategist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, Md. He also heads the university’s Doctor of Engineering program.

“The IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed creates an environment where industry can break new ground and work together to develop the next generation of technology innovations.”

The collaborative, secure, cloud-based platform also can emulate a 5G end-to-end network within the 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP), which defines cellular communications standards.

“Companies can use the platform for testing, but they can also use the environment as a virtual hands-on showcase of new products, services, and network functions,” Dutta says.

In addition to the cloud-based end-to-end environment, the testbed supports other architectures including multiaccess edge computing for reduced latency, physical layer testing via 5G access points and phones installed at IEEE, and Open RAN (radio access network) environments where wireless radio functionality is disaggregated to allow for better flexibility in mixing hardware and software components.

A variety of experiments can be conducted, Al-Dulaimi says, including:

• Voice and video call emulation.
• Authentication and encryption impact evaluation across different 5G platforms.
• Network slicing.
• Denial-of-service attacks and interoperability and overload incidents.
• Verifying the functionality, compatibility, and interoperability of products.
• Assessing conformity of networks, components, and products.

The testbed group plans to release a new graphical user interface soon, as well as a test orchestration tool that contains hundreds of plug-and-play test cases to help customers quickly determine if their prototypes are working as intended across a variety of standards and scenarios. In addition to basic “sanity testing,” it includes tools to measure a proposed product’s real-time performance.

The proofs of concept—lessons learned from experiments—will help advance existing standards and create new ones, Dutta says, and they will expedite the deployment of 5G and 6G technologies.

The IEEE 5G/6G testbed is an asset that can be used by the academics, researchers, and R&D labs, he says, to help “close the gap between theory and practice. Students across the world can take advantage of this testbed to get hands-on experience as part of their course curriculum.”

Partnership with major telecom companies

The IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed recently joined the Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments project. A public-private consortium, ACCORD includes AT&T, Verizon, Virginia Tech and the University of Texas at Dallas. The group is funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, whose programs and policymaking efforts focus on expanding broadband Internet access and adoption throughout the country.

“The 3GPP-compliant end-to-end 5G network is built with a suite of open-source modules, allowing companies to customize the network architecture and tailor their testbed environment according to their needs,” Al-Dulaimi says.

The testbed was made possible with a grant from the IEEE New Initiatives Committee, which funds potential IEEE services, products, and other creations that could significantly benefit members, the public, customers, or the technical community.

Watch this short demonstration of how the IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed works. youtube

To help find ways to solve transportation issues such as poorly maintained roads, traffic jams, and the high rate of accidents, researchers need access to the most current datasets on a variety of topics. But tracking down information about roadway conditions, congestion, and other statistics across multiple websites can be time-consuming. Plus, the data isn’t always accurate.

The new National Transportation Data & Analytics Solution (NTDAS), developed with the help of IEEE, makes it easier to retrieve, visualize, and analyze data in one place. NTDAS combines advanced research tools with access to high-quality transportation datasets from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration’s National Highway System and the entire Traffic Message Channel network, which distributes information on more than 1 million road segments. Anonymous data on millions of cars and trucks is generated from vehicle probes, which are vehicles equipped with GPS or global navigation satellite systems that gather traffic data on location, speed, and direction. This information helps transportation planners improve traffic flow, make transportation networks more efficient, and plan budgets.

The platform is updated monthly and contains archival data back to 2017.

“The difference between NTDAS and other competitors is that our data comes from a trusted source that means the most: the U.S. Federal Highway Administration,” says Lavanya Sayam, senior manager of data analytics alliances and programs for IEEE Global Products and Marketing. “The data has been authenticated and validated. The ability to download this massive dataset provides an unparalleled ease to data scientists and machine-learning engineers to explore and innovate.”

IEEE is diversifying its line of products beyond its traditional fields of electrical engineering, Sayam adds. “We are not just focused on electrical or computer science,” she says. “IEEE is so diverse, and this state-of-the-art platform reflects that.”

Robust analytical tools

NTDAS was built in partnership with INRIX, a transportation analytics solutions provider, and the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory, a leader in transportation science research. INRIX provided the data, while UMD built the analytics tools. The platform leverages the National Performance Management Research Data Set, a highly granular data source from the Federal Highway Administration.

The suite of tools allows users to do tasks such as creating a personal dashboard to monitor traffic conditions on specific roads, downloading raw data for analysis, building animated maps of road conditions, and measuring the flow of traffic. There are tutorials available on the platform on how to use each tool, and templates for creating reports, documents, and pamphlets.

“The difference between National Transportation Data & Analytics Solutions and other competitors is that our data comes from a trusted source that means the most: the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.” —Lavanya Sayam

“This is the first time this type of platform is being offered by IEEE to the global academic institutional audience,” she says. “IEEE is always looking for new ways to serve the engineering community.”

A subscription-based service, NTDAS has multidisciplinary relevance, Sayam says. The use cases it includes serve researchers and educators who need a robust platform that has all the data that helps them conduct analytics in one place, she says. For university instructors, it’s an innovative way to teach the courses, and for students, it’s a unique way to apply what they’ve learned with real-world data and uses.

The platform goes beyond just those working in transportation, Sayam notes. Others who might find NTDAS useful include those who study traffic as it relates to sustainability, the environment, civil engineering, public policy, business, and logistics, she adds.

50 ways to minimize the impact of traffic

NTDAS also includes more than 50 use cases created by IEEE experts to demonstrate how the data could be analyzed. The examples identify ways to protect the environment, better serve disadvantaged communities, support alternative transportation, and improve the safety of citizens. “Data from NTDAS can be easily extrapolated to non-U.S. geographies, making it highly relevant to global researchers,” according to Sayam. This is explained in specific use cases too.

The cases cover topics such as the impact of traffic on bird populations, air-quality issues in underserved communities, and optimal areas to install electric vehicle charging stations.

Two experts covered various strategies for how to use the data to analyze the impact of transportation and infrastructure on the environment in this on-demand webinar held in May.

Thomas Brennan, a professor of civil engineering at the College of New Jersey, discussed how using NTDAS data could aid in better planning of evacuation routes during wildfires, such as determining the location of first responders and traffic congestion in the area, including seasonal traffic. This and other data could lead to evacuating residents faster, new evacuation road signage, and better communication warning systems, he said.

“Traffic systems are super complex and very difficult to understand and model,” said presenter Jane MacFarlane, director of the Smart Cities and Sustainable Mobility Center at the University of California’s Institute of Transportation Studies, in Berkeley. “Now that we have datasets like these, that’s giving us a huge leg up in trying to use them for predictive modeling and also helping us with simulating things so that we can gain a better understanding.”

Watch this short demonstration about the National Transportation Data & Analytics Solutions platform.

“Transportation is a basic fabric of society,” Sayam says. “Understanding its impact is an imperative for better living. True to IEEE’s mission of advancing technology for humanity, NTDAS, with its interdisciplinary relevance, helps us understand the impact of transportation across several dimensions.”

By all accounts, Andrea J. Goldsmith is successful. The wireless communications pioneer is Princeton’s dean of engineering and applied sciences. She has launched two prosperous startups. She has had a long career in academia, is a science advisor to the U.S. president, and sits on the boards of several major companies. So it’s surprising to learn that she almost dropped out in her first year of the engineering program at the University of California, Berkeley.

“By the end of my first year, I really thought I didn’t belong in engineering, because I wasn’t doing well, and nobody thought I should be there,” acknowledges the IEEE Fellow. “During the summer break, I dusted myself off, cut down my hours from full time to part time at my job, and decided I wasn’t going to let anybody but me decide whether I should be an engineer or not.”

Andrea J. Goldsmith

Employer

Princeton

Title

Dean of engineering and applied sciences

Member Grade

Fellow

Alma Mater

University of California, Berkeley

Major Recognitions

2024 IEEE Mulligan Education Medal

2024 National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee

2020 Marconi Prize

2018 IEEE Eric E. Sumner Award

Royal Academy of Engineering International Fellow

National Academy of Engineering Member

She kept that promise and earned a bachelor’s in engineering mathematics, then master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley. She went on to teach engineering at Stanford for more than 20 years. Her development of foundational mathematical approaches for increasing the capacity, speed, and range of wireless systems—which is what her two startups are based on—have earned her financial rewards and several recognitions including the Marconi Prize, IEEE awards for communications technology, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

But for all the honors Goldsmith has received, the one she says she cherishes most is the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal. She received this year’s Mulligan award “for educating, mentoring, and inspiring generations of students, and for authoring pioneering textbooks in advanced digital communications.” The award is sponsored by MathWorks, Pearson Education, and the IEEE Life Members Fund.

“The greatest joy of being a professor is the young people who we work with—particularly my graduate students and postdocs. I believe all my success as an academic is due to them,” she says. “They are the ones who came with the ideas, and had the passion, grit, resilience, and creativity to partner with me in creating my entire research portfolio.

“Mentoring young people means mentoring all of them, not just their professional dimensions,” she says. “To be recognized in the citation that I’ve inspired, mentored, and educated generations of students fills my heart with joy.”

The importance of mentors

Growing up in Los Angeles, Goldsmith was interested in European politics and history as well as culture and languages. In her senior year of high school, she decided to withdraw to travel around Europe, and she earned a high school equivalency diploma.

Because she excelled in math and science in high school, her father—a mechanical engineering professor at UC Berkeley—suggested she consider majoring in engineering. When she returned to the states, she took her father’s advice and enrolled in UC Berkeley’s engineering program. She didn’t have all the prerequisites, so she had to take some basic math and physics courses. She also took classes in languages and philosophy.

In addition to being a full-time student, Goldsmith worked a full-time job as a waitress to pay her own way through college because, she says, “I didn’t want my dad to influence what I was going to study because he was paying for it.”

Her grades suffered from the stress of juggling school and work. In addition, being one of the few female students in the program, she says, she encountered a lot of implicit and explicit bias by her professors and classmates. Her sense of belonging also suffered, because there were no female faculty members and few women teaching assistants in the engineering program.

“I don’t believe that engineering as a profession can achieve its full potential or can solve the wicked challenges facing society with technology if we don’t have diverse people who can contribute to those solutions.”

“There was an attitude that if the women weren’t doing great then they should pick another major. Whereas if the guys weren’t doing great, that was fine,” she says. “It’s a societal message that if you don’t see women or diverse people in your program, you think ‘maybe it isn’t for me, maybe I don’t belong here.’ That’s reinforced by the implicit bias of the faculty and your peers.”

This and her poor grades led her to consider dropping out of the engineering major. But during her sophomore year, she began to turn things around. She focused on the basics courses, learned better study habits, and cut back the hours at her job.

“I realized that I could be an engineering major if that’s what I wanted. That was a big revelation,” she says. Plus, she admits, her political science classes were becoming boring compared with her engineering courses. She decided that anything she could do with a political science degree she could do with an engineering degree, but not vice versa, so she stuck with engineering.

She credits two mentors for encouraging her to stay in the program. One was Elizabeth J. Strouse, Goldsmith’s linear algebra teaching assistant and the first woman she met at the school who was pursuing a STEM career. She became Goldsmith’s role model and friend. Strouse is now a math professor at the Institut de Matheématique at the University of Bordeaux, in France.

The other was her undergraduate advisor, Aram J. Thomasian. The professor of statistics and electrical engineering advised Goldsmith to apply her mathematical knowledge to either communications or information theory.

“Thomasian absolutely pegged an area that inspired me and also had really exciting practical applications,” she says. “That goes to show how early mentors can really make a difference in steering young people in the right direction.”

After graduating in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering mathematics, Goldsmith spent a few years working in industry before returning to get her graduate degrees. She began her long academic career in 1994 as an assistant professor of engineering at Caltech. She joined Stanford’s electrical engineering faculty in 1999 and left for Princeton in 2020.

Commercializing adaptive wireless communications

While at Stanford, Goldsmith conducted groundbreaking research in wireless communications. She is credited with discovering adaptive modulation techniques, which allow network designers to align the speed at which data is sent with the speed a wireless channel can support while network conditions and channel quality fluctuate. Her techniques led to a reduction of network disruptions, laid the foundation for Internet of Things applications, and enabled faster Wi-Fi speeds. She has been granted 38 U.S. patents for her work.

To commercialize her research, she helped found Quantenna Communications, in San Jose, Calif., in 2005 and served as its CTO. The startup’s technology enabled video to be distributed in the home over Wi-Fi at data rates of 600 megabits per second. The company went public in 2016 and was acquired by ON Semiconductor in 2019.

IEEE: Where Luminaries Meet

Goldsmith joined IEEE while a grad student at UC Berkeley because that was the only way she could get access to its journals, she says. Another benefit of being a member was the opportunity to network—which she discovered from attending her first conference, IEEE Globecom, in San Diego.

“It was remarkable to me that as a graduate student and a nobody, I was meeting people whose work I had read,” she says. “I was just so in awe of what they had accomplished, and they were interested in my work as well.

“It was very clear to me that being part of IEEE would allow me to interact with the luminaries in my field,” she says.

That early view of IEEE has panned out well for her career, she says. She has published more than 150 papers, which are available to read in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

Goldsmith has held several leadership positions. She is a past president of the IEEE Information Theory Society and the founding editor in chief of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Information Theory.

She volunteers, she says, because “I feel I should give back to a community that has supported and helped me with my own professional aspirations.

“I feel particularly obligated to create the environment that will help the next generation as well. Investing my time as a volunteer has had such a big payoff in the impact we collectively have had on the profession.”

In 2010, she helped found another communications company, Plume Design, in Palo Alto, Calif., where she also was CTO. Plume was first to develop adaptive Wi-Fi, a technology that uses machine learning to understand how your home’s bandwidth needs change during the day and adjusts to meet them.

With both Quantenna and Plume, she could have left Stanford to become their long-term CTO, but decided not to because, she says, “I just love the research mission of universities in advancing the frontiers of knowledge and the broader service mission of universities to make the world a better place.

“My heart is so much in the university; I can’t imagine ever leaving academia.”

The importance of diversity in engineering

Goldsmith has been an active IEEE volunteer for many years. One of her most important accomplishments, she says, was launching the IEEE Board of Directors Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which she chairs.

“We put in place a lot of programs and initiatives that mattered to a lot of people and that have literally changed the face of the IEEE,” she says.

Even though several organizations and universities have recently disbanded their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, DEI is important, she says.

“As a society, we need to ensure that every person can achieve their full potential,” she says. “And as a profession, whether it’s engineering, law, medicine, or government, you need diverse ideas, perspectives, and experiences to thrive.

“My work to enhance diversity and inclusion in the engineering profession has really been about excellence,” she says. “I don’t believe that engineering as a profession can achieve its full potential or can solve the wicked challenges facing society with technology if we don’t have diverse people who can contribute to those solutions.”

She points out that she came into engineering with a diverse set of perspectives she gained from being a woman and traveling through Europe as a student.

“If we have a very narrow definition of what excellence is or what merit is, we’re going to leave out a lot of very capable, strong people who can bring different ideas, out-of-box thinking, and other dimensions of excellence to the roles,” she says. “And that hurts our overarching goals.

“When I think back to my first year of college, when DEI didn’t exist, I almost left the program,” she adds. “That would have been really sad for me, and maybe for the profession too if I wasn’t in engineering.”

The IEEE–Eta Kappa Nu honor society for engineers celebrates its 120th anniversary this year. Founded in October 1904, IEEE-HKN recognizes academic experience as well as excellence in scholarship, leadership, and service. Inductees are chosen based on their technical, scientific, and leadership achievements. There are now more than 270 IEEE-HKN chapters at universities around the world.

The society has changed significantly over the years. Global expansion resulted from the merger of North America–based HKN with IEEE in 2010. There are now 30 chapters outside the United States, including ones recently established at universities in Ecuador, Hungary, and India.

IEEE-HKN has more than 200,000 members around the world. Since the merger, more than 37,000 people have been inducted. Membership now extends beyond just students. Among them are 23 former IEEE presidents as well as a who’s who of engineering leaders and technology pioneers including GM Chief Executive Mary Barra, Google founding CEO Larry Page, and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su. Last year more than 100 professional members were added to the rolls.

“If you want to make sure that you’re on the forefront of engineering leadership, you should definitely consider joining IEEE-HKN.” —Joseph Greene

In 1950 HKN established the category of eminent member to honor those whose contributions significantly benefited society. There now are 150 such members. They include the fathers of the Internet and IEEE Medal of Honor recipients Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn; former astronaut Sandra Magnus; and Henry Samueli, a Broadcom founder.

IEEE-HKN is celebrating its anniversary on 28 October, Founders Day, the date the society was established. A variety of activities are scheduled for the day at chapters and other locations around the world, says Nancy Ostin, the society’s director.

New chapters in Ecuador, Hungary, and India

Several chapters have been established in recent months. The Nu Eta chapter at the Sri Sairam Engineering College, in Chennai, India, was founded in September, becoming the fourth chapter in the country. In October the Nu Theta chapter debuted at Purdue University Northwest in Hammond, Ind.

Students from the IEEE-HKN Lambda Chi chapter at Hampton University in Virginia celebrate their induction with a cake. IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu

So far this year, chapters were formed at the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, in Guayaquil, Ecuador; Hampton University in Virginia; Óbuda University, in Budapest; and Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico in San Juan, the second chapter in the territory. Hampton is a historically Black research university.

A focus on career development

IEEE-HKN’s benefits have expanded over time. The society now focuses more on helping its members with career development. Career-related services on the society’s website include a job board and a resource center that aids with writing résumés and cover letters, as well as interview tips and career coaching services.

2024 IEEE-HKN president Ryan Bales [center] with members of the Nu Iota chapter at Óbuda University in Budapest. IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu

There’s also the HKN Career Conversations podcast, hosted by society alumni. Topics they’ve covered include ethics, workplace conflicts, imposter syndrome, and cultivating creativity.

The honor society also holds networking events including its annual international leadership conferences, where student leaders from across the world collaborate on how they can benefit the organization and their communities.

Mentorship and networking opportunities

IEEE-HKN’s mentoring program connects recent graduates with alumni. IEEE professionals are paired with graduate students based on technical interest, desired mentoring area, and personality.

Alumnus Joseph Greene, a Ph.D. candidate in computational imaging at Boston University, joined the school’s Kappa Sigma chapter in 2014 and continues to mentor graduate students and help organize events to engage alumni. Greene has held several leadership positions with the chapter, including president, vice president, and student governor on the IEEE-HKN board.

He created a professional-to-student mentoring program for the chapter. It partners people from industry and academia with students to build working relationships and to provide career, technical, and personal advice. Since the program launched in 2022, Greene says, more than 40 people have participated.

“What I found most rewarding about having a mentor is they offer a much broader perspective than just your collegiate needs,” he said in the interview with The Institute.

Another program Greene launched is the IEEE-HKN GradLab YouTube podcast, which he says covers “everything about grad school that they don’t teach you in a classroom.”

“If you want to make sure that you’re on the forefront of engineering leadership, you should definitely consider joining IEEE-HKN,” Greene said in the interview. “The organization, staff, and volunteers are dedicated toward making sure you have the opportunity, resources, and network to thrive and succeed.”

If you were ever inducted into IEEE-HKN, your membership never expires, Ostin notes. Check your IEEE membership record. The honor society’s name should appear there but if it does not, complete the alumni reconnect form.

What’s a secret to getting more students to participate in an IEEE society? Give them a seat at the table so they have a say in how the organization is run.

That’s what the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society has done. Budding engineers serve on the RAS board of directors, have voting privileges, and work within technical committees.

“They have been given a voice in how the society runs because, in the end, students are among the main beneficiaries,” says Enrica Tricomi, chair of the RAS’s student activities committee. The SAC is responsible for student programs and benefits. It also makes recommendations to the society’s board about new offerings.

A Guide for Inspiring the Next Generation Roboticists

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society isn’t focused only on boosting its student membership. It also wants to get more young people interested in pursuing a robotics career. One way the society’s volunteers try to inspire the next generation of roboticists is through IEEE Spectrum’s award-winning Robots website. The interactive guide features more than 250 real-world robots, with thousands of photos, videos, and exclusive interactives, plus news and detailed technical specifications.

The site is designed for anyone interested in robotics, including expert and beginner enthusiasts, researchers, entrepreneurs, students, STEM educators, and other teachers.

Schools and students across the globe use the site. Volunteers on the RAS steering committee suggest robots to add, and they help support new content creation on the site.

“You feel listened to and valued whenever there are official decisions to be made, because the board also wants to know the perspective of students on how to offer benefits to the RAS members, especially for young researchers, since hopefully they will be the society’s future leaders,” says Tricomi, a bioengineer who is pursuing a Ph.D. in robotics at Heidelberg University, in Germany.

The society’s approach has paid off. Since 2018, student membership has grown by more than 50 percent to 5,436. The number of society chapters at student branches has increased from 312 in 2021 to 450.

The ability to express opinions isn’t the only reason students are joining, Tricomi says. The society recently launched several programs to engage them, including career fairs, travel grants, and networking opportunities with researchers.

Giving students leadership opportunities

As SAC chair, Tricomi is a voting member of RAS’s administrative committee, which oversees the society’s operations. She says having voting privileges shows “how important it is to the society to have student representation.”

“We receive a lot of support from the highest levels of the society, specifically the society president, Aude Billard, and past president Frank Chongwoo Park,” Tricomi says. “RAS boards have been rejuvenated to engage students even more and represent their voices. The chairs of these boards—including technical activities, conference activities, and publication activities—want to know the SAC chair and cochairs’ opinion on whether the new activities are benefiting students.”

Student members now can serve on IEEE technical committees that involve robotics in the role of student representatives.

That was an initiative from Kyujin Cho, IEEE Technical Activities vice president. Tricomi says the designation benefits young engineers because they learn about ongoing research in their field and because they have direct access to researchers.

Student representatives also help organize conference workshops.

The students had a hand in creating a welcome kit for conference attendees. The initiative, led by Amy Kyungwon Han, Technical Activities associate vice president, lists each day’s activities and their location.

“I think that all of us, especially those who are younger, can actively contribute and make a difference not only for the society and for ourselves but also for our peers.”

Being engaged with the technical topic in which the students work provides them with career growth, visibility in their field, and an opportunity to share their point of view with peers, Tricomi says.

“Being young, the first time that you express your opinion in public, you always feel uncomfortable because you don’t have much experience,” she says. “This is the opposite of the message the society wants to send. We want to listen to students’ voices because they are an important part of the society.”

Tricomi herself recently became a member of the Technical Activities board.

She joined, she says, because “this is kind of a technical family by choice. And you want to be active and contribute to your family, right? I think that all of us, especially those who are younger, can actively contribute and make a difference not only for the society and for ourselves but also for our peers.”

Job fairs and travel grants

Several new initiatives have been rolled out at the society’s flagship conferences. The meetings have always included onsite events for students to network with each other and to mingle with researchers over lunch. The events give the budding engineers an opportunity to talk with leaders they normally wouldn’t meet, Tricomi says.

“It’s much appreciated, especially by very young or shy students,” she says.

Some luncheons have included sessions on career advice from leaders in academia and industry, or from startup founders—giving the students a sense of what it’s like to work for such organizations.

Conferences now include career fairs, where students can meet with hiring companies.

The society also developed a software platform that allows candidates to upload their résumé onsite. If they are a match for an open position, interviews can be held on the spot.

A variety of travel grants have been made available to students with limited resources so they can present their research papers at the society’s major conferences. More than 200 travel grants were awarded to the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Tricomi says.

“It’s very important for them to be there, presenting their work, gaining visibility, sharing their research, and also networking,” she says.

The new IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility) travel grant for underrepresented groups was established by the society’s IEEE Women in Engineering committee and its chair, Karinne Ramirez Amaro. The grant can help students who are not presenters to attend conferences. It also helps increase diversity within the robotics field, Tricomi says.

The Member Support Program is a new initiative from the RAS member activities board’s vice president, Katja Mombaur, and past vice president Stefano Stramigioli. Financial support to attend the annual International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems is available to members and students who have contributed to the society’s mission-related activities. The projects include organizing workshops, discussions, lectures, or networking events at conferences or sponsored events; serving on boards or committees; or writing papers that were accepted for publication by conferences or journals.

The society also gets budding engineers involved in publication activities through its Young Reviewers Program, which introduces them to best practices for peer review. Senior reviewers assign the students papers to check and oversee their work.

Personal and professional growth opportunities

Tricomi joined the society in 2021 shortly after starting her Ph.D. program at Heidelberg. Her research is in wearable assistive robotics for human augmentation or rehabilitation purposes. She holds a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Politecnico di Torino, in Italy.

She was new to the field of robotics, so her Ph.D. advisor, IEEE Senior Member Lorenzo Masia, encouraged her to volunteer for the society. She is now transitioning to the role of SAC senior chair, and she says she is eager to collaborate with the new team to promote student and early career engagement within the robotics field.

“I’ve realized I’ve grown up a lot in the two years since I started as chair,” she says. “At the beginning, I was much shier. I really want my colleagues to experience the same personal and professional growth as I have. You learn not only technical skills but also soft skills, which are very important in your career.”

Diesel cars are a popular choice for those looking to buy a used vehicle in Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. After all, diesel cars cost less to maintain, burn less fuel, and have a longer engine life. Although the pollutant emissions of a diesel engine are less than those of a gasoline one, it still emits carcinogens, nitrous oxides, and soot. Older models don’t even have the emission-control features that newer ones do.

To reduce emissions, diesel vehicles use filters that catch exhaust particles and other contaminants. The filters can cost thousands of dollars to replace, however, because they’re made with precious metals.

Looking to make replacement filters more environmentally friendly and affordable, a team of engineering students from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, in Dhaka, designed a carbon-based version with bamboo. The Green Warriors idea won the US $300 prize for best impact in the IEEE Women in Engineering Big Idea Pitch competition. The contest’s goal is to encourage female engineering students and researchers to become more entrepreneurial as a way to boost the number of technical startups led by women.

“We found that old diesel cars are a significant contributor to CO₂ emissions, and we wanted to do something about that,” team leader Tasmiah Afrin said in an email interview.

“Our groundbreaking activated-carbon-based filter represents a significant leap forward in environmental and economic efficiency,” the electrical engineering student added. “The filters can rapidly and effectively capture carbon-based gases from vehicle emissions, contributing to immediate improvements in air quality and reduced carbon emissions.”

A carbon-based particulate filter

Diesel engines produce more polluting particulate matter than gas engines. Because the particles are so small, they can pass easily through a catalytic converter, which is designed to reduce a vehicle’s toxic emissions. Diesel particulate filters therefore are installed in the exhaust system, generally at the exit of the catalytic converter. The most popular type of catalytic converter forces the exhaust through a ceramic honeycomb structure coated with a thin layer containing a precious metal such as platinum, palladium, or rhodium.

“Our project,” Afrin says, “is based on a modified air filter for incoming air into the catalytic converter.”

The Green Warriors’ prototype filter is made from bamboo and uses carbon granules to further reduce emissions.

Activated carbon granules in an absorption chamber and metallic mesh form the filters, Afrin says. Gases pass through either double or multiple chambers. Their prototype is more aerodynamic and lightweight than existing designs used for carbon filters, Afrin says.

“These filters offer a remarkable 5 to 7 percent cost efficiency improvement compared to existing filters, making them a more cost-effective solution for carbon capture in vehicle exhaust systems,” she says. “Not only are they cost-efficient, but they also boast an impressive absorption speed. This means the filters can rapidly and effectively capture carbon-based greenhouse gases from vehicle emissions, contribute to immediate improvements in air quality and reduce carbon emissions.”

She says she believes the team’s diesel particulate filter would cost less than a current filter, which because of its precious-metal content can cost a few thousand U.S. dollars.

A system for replacing filters

The filters are just one part of the team’s vision for reducing auto emissions. The students’ pitch also included a transport-management system they would build called CarGreenTech and its accompanying smartphone app. Using the app, owners of older diesel cars could purchase the replacement filter or arrange for one to be installed. Another option would be for CarGreenTech to buy the older car, outfit it with a new filter, and resell the vehicle. The goal is to extend the life of these older vehicles, Afrin says.

“CarGreenTech is a platform to make existing vehicles more climate-positive—which provides an all-in-one solution,” Afrin says. “It captures carbon from the diesel engine exhaust by utilizing layered active carbon filters, upcycling older car parts through a car buying/selling/upgrading business-to-business and business-to-consumer solution.” A motivator for student-led startups

The team also includes Ishman Tasnim, Fahmida Sultana Naznin, and Nusrat Subah Shakhawat. Tasnim is studying industrial and production engineering, and Naznin is pursuing a degree in computer science and engineering. Shakhawat recently graduated from the university with a degree in electrical engineering.

The team’s mentor was IEEE Member Toufiqur Rahman Shuvo, a lecturer at the university.

The students are all members of the IEEE student branch at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

“IEEE WIE has a great impact on giving motivation to student startups like us,” Afrin says. “Entering the IEEE WIE pitch competition was one of our best decisions. We were greatly motivated by the judges and getting an award for our work.”

This article was updated on 4 March 2024.

Many college students participate in sports, listen to music, or play video games in their spare time, but IEEE Student Member Gerard Piccini prefers amateur radio, also known as ham radio. He’s been involved with the two-way radio communication, which uses designated frequencies, since his uncle introduced him to it when he was a youngster. His call sign is KD2ZHK.

Piccini, from Monroe Township, N.J., is pursuing an electrical engineering degree at the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania. The junior is president of the university’s W3USR amateur radio club. He’s also a member of Scranton’s IEEE student branch, the IEEE Club.

Gerard Piccini

Member grade

Student member; member of IEEE-HKN’s Lambda Nu chapter

University:

University of Scranton in Pennsylvania

Major:

Electrical engineering

Minors:

Math and physics

Grade:

Junior

Another of his passions is robotics. He captained one of the university club’s teams that participated in the Micro Mouse competition held during the October IEEE Region 2 Student Activities Conference, hosted by Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. The Scranton team competed against other student branches to build and program small robots to navigate a maze in the shortest time possible. The team placed second.

“The contest was a great opportunity for me,” Piccini says, “to learn how to apply the skills I’ve been learning from classes into a project that I designed myself.”

Ham radio researcher

Piccini joined Scranton’s amateur radio club when he was a freshman. Overseeing the club is IEEE Member Nathaniel Frissell, who has taught Piccini physics and electrical engineering. Frissell noticed Piccini’s interest in radio technology and asked the student to assist him with research. Piccini now is helping to develop a low-cost, low-power system to send a signal into the ionosphere and measure the time it takes to return.

“The system will allow us to collect more data about the ionosphere, which is an ionized layer of the atmosphere and is important for radio propagation,” he says. “Right now there are not that many full-sized ionospheric sounding systems. If we can make them cheap enough, we could get ham radio operators to set them up and increase data points.”

“I like it when I have a project and have to try to find a solution on my own.”

Piccini is active with Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation, which includes amateur radio enthusiasts and professional scientists who collaborate on research.

“The idea behind HamSCI is getting citizens involved in science,” Piccini says.

His research, he says, has led him to consider a career in RF engineering or digital signal processing, either in academia or industry.

A born problem-solver

Like other budding engineers, Piccini has enjoyed taking things apart and figuring out how to put them back together again since his youth. Neither of his parents was an engineer, but they encouraged his interest by buying him engineering kits.

A high school physics class inspired him to study electrical engineering. It covered circuits and wave mechanics, a branch of quantum physics in which the behavior of objects is described in terms of their wavelike properties.

He initially was undecided about whether to pursue a degree in physics or engineering. It wasn’t until he learned how to code and work with hardware that he chose engineering. And although he still enjoys coding, he says he’s glad he ultimately chose electrical engineering: “I like it when I have a project and have to try to find a solution on my own.” He is minoring in mathematics and physics.

Student Member Gerard N. Piccini [second from left] with teammates from the IEEE Club Student Branch who competed in the IEEE Region 2 Micro Mouse contest. Gabrina Garangmau

An IEEE student leader

Piccini says he joined IEEE because he felt “trapped in a bubble of academia.” As an underclassman, he recalls, he didn’t really know what was going on in the field of engineering or in industry.

“Being involved with IEEE helps give you that exposure,” he says.

He is a member of the Lambda Nu chapter of IEEE’s honor society, IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu.

Scranton’s IEEE Club offers presentations by engineering companies and technical talks. The club also encourages students to explain the work they’ve done during their internships.

To give members professional boosts, the club holds résumé-writing sessions, conducts mock interviews, and has the students practice their public-speaking skills.

The branch also encourages its members to get involved with community projects.

Piccini is secretary of the student branch. The position has given him leadership experience, he says, including teaching him how to organize and run meetings and coordinate events—skills he wouldn’t have picked up in his classes.

As captain of the Micro Mouse team, he was responsible for mentoring younger students, overseeing the design of the robot, and setting the agenda so the team would meet the competition’s deadlines.

He notes that the IEEE Student Activities Conference is a great way to meet fellow students from around the region.

Being active in IEEE, he says, is “a great opportunity to network, meet people, and learn new skills that you might not have—or already have but want to develop further.”