IEEE Collabratec has made it easier for volunteers to display their IEEE positions. The online networking platform released a new benefit this year for its users: digital certificates for IEEE volunteering. They reflect contributions made to the organization, such as leading a committee or organizing an event.
Members can download the certificates and add them to their LinkedIn profile or résumé. Volunteers also can print their certificates to frame and display in their office.
Each individualized document includes the person’s name, the position they’ve held, and the years served. Every position held has its own certificate. The member’s list of roles is updated annually.
The feature is a result of a top recommendation to improve volunteer recognition made by delegates at the 2023 IEEE Sections Congress, according to Deepak Mathur. The senior member is vice president of IEEE Member and Geographic Activities. The new feature “respects the time and effort of our volunteers and is a testament to the power and versatility of the Collabratec platform,” Mathur said in an announcement.
Members can download their certificates by selecting the Certificates tab on their Collabratec page and scrolling to each of their positions.
In the two years since Arati Prabhakar was appointed director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, she has set the United States on a course toward regulating artificial intelligence. The IEEE Fellow advised the U.S. President Joe Biden in writing the executive order he issued to accomplish the goal just six months after she began her new role in 2022.
Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Member grade
Fellow
Alma maters
Texas Tech University; Caltech
Working in the public sector wasn’t initially on her radar. Not until she became a DARPA program manager in 1986, she says, did she really understand what she could accomplish as a government official.
“What I have come to love about [public service] is the opportunity to shape policies at a scale that is really unparalleled,” she says.
Prabhakar’s passion for tackling societal challenges by developing technology also led her to take leadership positions at companies including Raychem (now part of TE Connectivity), Interval Research Corp., and U.S. Venture Partners. In 2019 she helped found Actuate, a nonprofit in Palo Alto, Calif., that seeks to create technology to help address climate change, data privacy, health care access, and other pressing issues.
“I really treasure having seen science, technology, and innovation from all different perspectives,” she says. “But the part I have loved most is public service because of the impact and reach that it can have.”
Discovering her passion for electrical engineering
Prabhakar, who was born in India and raised in Texas, says she decided to pursue a STEM career because when she was growing up, her classmates said women weren’t supposed to work in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
“Them saying that just made me want to pursue it more,” she says. Her parents, who had wanted her to become a doctor, supported her pursuit of engineering, she adds.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1979 from Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, she moved to California to continue her education at Caltech. She graduated with a master’s degree in EE in 1980, then earned a doctorate in applied physics in 1984. Her doctoral thesis focused on understanding deep-level defects and impurities in semiconductors that affect device performance.
After acquiring her Ph.D., she says, she wanted to make a bigger impact with her research than academia would allow, so she applied for a policy fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to work at the congressional Office of Technology Assessment. The office examines issues involving new or expanding technologies, assesses their impact, and studies whether new policies are warranted.
“We have huge aspirations for the future—such as mitigating climate change—that science and technology have to be part of achieving.”
“I wanted to share my research in semiconductor manufacturing processes with others,” Prabhakar says. “That’s what felt exciting and valuable to me.”
While there, she worked with people who were passionate about public service and government, but she didn’t feel the same, she says, until she joined DARPA. As program manager, Prabhakar established and led several projects including a microelectronics office that invests in developing new technologies in areas such as lithography, optoelectronics, infrared imaging, and neural networks.
In 1993 an opportunity arose that she couldn’t refuse, she says: President Bill Clinton nominated her to direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST develops technical guidelines and conducts research to create tools that improve citizens’ quality of life. At age 34, she became the first woman to lead the agency.
Believing in IEEE’s Mission
Like many IEEE members, Prabhakar says, she joined IEEE as a student member while attending Texas Tech University because the organization’s mission aligned with her belief that engineering is about creating value in the world.
She continues to renew her membership, she says, because IEEE emphasizes that technology should benefit humanity.
“It really comes back to this idea of the purpose of engineering and the role that it plays in the world,” she says.
After leading NIST through the first Clinton administration, she left for the private sector, including stints as CTO at appliance-component maker Raychem in Menlo Park, Calif., and president of private R&D lab Interval Research of Palo Alto, Calif. In all, she spent the next 14 years in the private sector, mostly as a partner at U.S. Venture Partners, in Menlo Park, where she invested in semiconductor and clean-tech startups.
In 2012 she returned to DARPA and became its first female director.
“When I received the call offering me the job, I stopped breathing,” Prabhakar says. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference at an agency that I had loved earlier in my career. And it proved to be just as meaningful an experience as I had hoped.”
For the next five years she led the agency, focusing on developing better military systems and the next generation of artificial intelligence, as well as creating solutions in social science, synthetic biology, and neurotechnology.
Under her leadership, in 2014 DARPA established the Biological Technologies Office to oversee basic and applied research in areas including gene editing, neurosciences, and synthetic biology. The office launched the Pandemic Prevention Platform, which helped fund the development of the mRNA technology that is used in the Moderna and Pfizer coronavirus vaccines.
She left the agency in 2017 to move back to California with her family.
“When I left the organization, what was very much on my mind was that the United States has the most powerful innovation engine the world has ever seen,” Prabhakar says. “At the same time, what kept tugging at me was that we have huge aspirations for the future—such as mitigating climate change—that science and technology have to be part of achieving.”
That’s why, in 2019, she helped found Actuate. She served as the nonprofit’s chief executive until 2022, when she took on the role of OSTP director.
Although she didn’t choose her career path because it was her passion, she says, she came to realize that she loves the role that engineering, science, and technology play in the world because of their “power to change how the future unfolds.”
Leading AI regulation worldwide
When Biden asked if Prabhakar would take the OSTP job, she didn’t think twice, she says. “When do you need me to move in?” she says she told him.
“I was so excited to work for the president because he sees science and technology as a necessary part of creating a bright future for the country,” Prabhakar says.
A month after she took office, the generative AI program ChatGPT launched and became a hot topic.
“AI was already being used in different areas, but all of a sudden it became visible to everyone in a way that it really hadn’t been before,” she says.
Regulating AI became a priority for the Biden administration because of the technology’s breadth and power, she says, as well as the rapid pace at which it’s being developed.
“The executive order is possibly the most important accomplishment in relation to AI,” Prabhakar says. “It’s a tool that mobilizes the [U.S. government’s] executive branch and recognizes that such systems have safety and security risks, but [it] also enables immense opportunity. The order has put the branches of government on a very constructive path toward regulation.”
Meanwhile, the United States spearheaded a U.N. resolution to make regulating AI an international priority. The United Nations adopted the measure this past March. In addition to defining regulations, it seeks to use AI to advance progress on the U.N.’s sustainable development goals.
“There’s much more to be done,” Prabhakar says, “but I’m really happy to see what the president has been able to accomplish, and really proud that I got to help with that.”
The annual IEEE election process begins this month, so be sure to check your mailbox for your ballot. To help you choose the 2025 IEEE president-elect, The Institute is publishing the official biographies and position statements of the three candidates, as approved by the IEEE Board of Directors. The candidates are IEEE Fellows Mary Ellen Randall, John Verboncoeur, and S.K. Ramesh.
Randall founded Ascot Technologies in 2000 in Cary, N.C. Ascot develops enterprise applications using mobile data delivery technologies. She serves as the award-winning company’s CEO.
Before launching Ascot, she worked for IBM, where she held several technical and managerial positions in hardware and software development, digital video chips, and test design automation. She routinely managed international projects.
Randall has served as IEEE treasurer, director of IEEE Region 3, chair of IEEE Women in Engineering, and vice president of IEEE Member and Geographic Activities.
In 2016 she created the IEEE MOVE (Mobile Outreach VEhicle) program to assist with disaster relief efforts and for science, technology, engineering, and math educational purposes.
The IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu honor society member has received several honors including the 2020 IEEE Haraden Pratt Award, which recognizes outstanding volunteer service to IEEE.
She was named a top businesswoman in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park area, and she made the 2003 Business Leader Impact 100 list.
Candidate Statement
Aristotle said, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Certainly, when looking at IEEE, this metaphysics phrase comes to my mind. In IEEE we have engineers and technical professionals developing, standardizing and utilizing technology from diverse perspectives. IEEE members around the world:
perform and share research, product development activities, and standard development
network and engage with each other and their communities
educate current and future technology professionals
measure performance and quality
formulate ethics choices
and many more – these are just a few examples!
We perform these actions across a wide spectrum of in-depth subjects. It is our diversity, yet oneness, that makes me confident we have a positive future ahead. How do we execute on Aristotle’s vision? First, we need to unite on mission goals which span our areas of interest. This way we can bring multiple disciplines and perspectives together to accomplish those big goals. Our strategy will guide our actions in this regard.
Second, we need to streamline our financing of new innovations and systematize the introduction of these programs.
Third, we need to execute and support our best ideas on a continuing basis.
As President, I pledge to:
Institute innovative products and services to ensure our mutually successful future;
Engage stakeholders (members, partners and communities) to unite on a comprehensive vision;
Expand technology advancement and adoption throughout the world;
Execute with excellence, ethics, and financial responsibility.
Finally, I promise to lead by example with enthusiasm and integrity and I humbly ask for your vote.
IEEE Fellow John Verboncoeur
Steven Miller
Nominated by the IEEE Board of Directors
Verboncoeur is senior associate dean for research and graduate studies in Michigan State University’s (MSU) engineering college, in East Lansing.
In 2001 he founded the computational engineering science program at the University of California, Berkeley, chairing it until 2010.
In 2015 he cofounded the MSU computational mathematics, science, and engineering department.
His area of interest is plasma physics, with over 500 publications and over 6,800 citations.
He is on the boards of Physics of Plasmas, the American Center for Mobility, and the U.S. Department of Energy Fusion Energy Science Advisory Committee.
Verboncoeur has led startups developing digital exercise and health systems and the consumer credit report. He also had a role in developing the U.S. Postal Service’s mail-forwarding system.
His IEEE experience includes serving as 2023 vice president of Technical Activities, 2020 acting vice president of Publication Services and Products Board, 2019-2020 Division IV director, and 2015—2016 president of the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society.
He received a Ph.D. in 1992 in nuclear engineering from UC Berkeley.
Candidate Statement
Ensure IEEE remains THE premier professional technical organization, deliver value via new participants, products and programs, including events, publications, and innovative personalized products and services, to enable our community to change the world. Key strategic programs include:
Climate Change Technologies(CCT): Existential to humanity, addressing mitigation and adaptation must include technology R&D, local relevance for practitioners, university and K-12 students, the general public, media and policymakers and local and global standards.
Smart Agrofood Systems(SmartAg): Smart technologies applied to the food supply chain from soil to consumer to compost.
Artificial Intelligence(AI): Implications from technology to business to ethics. A key methodology for providing personalized IEEE products and services within our existing portfolio, and engaging new audiences such as technology decision makers in academia, government and technology finance by extracting value from our vast data to identify emerging trends.
Organizational growth opportunities include scaling and coordinating our public policy strategy worldwide, building on our credibility to inform and educate. Global communications capability is critical to coordinate and amplify our impact. Lastly, we need to enhance our ability to execute IEEE-wide programs and initiatives, from investment in transformative tools and products to mission-based education, outreach and engagement. This can be accomplished by judicious use of resources generated by business activities through creation of a strategic program to invest in our future with the goal of advancing technology for humanity.
With a passion for the nexus of technology with finance and public policy, I hope to earn your support.
IEEE Fellow S.K. Ramesh
S.K. Ramesh
Nominated by the IEEE Board of Directors
Ramesh is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at California State University Northridge’s college of engineering and computer science, where he served as dean from 2006 to 2017.
An IEEE volunteer for 42 years, he has served on the IEEE Board of Directors, the Publication Services and Products Board, Awards Board, and the Fellows Committee. Leadership positions he has held include vice president of IEEE Educational Activities, president of the IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu honor society, and chair of the IEEE Hearing Board.
As the 2016–2017 vice president of IEEE Educational Activities, he championed several successful programs including the IEEE Learning Network and the IEEE TryEngineering Summer Institute.
Ramesh served as the 2022–2023 president of ABET, the global accrediting organization for academic programs in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology.
He received his bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from the University of Madras in India. He earned his master’s degree in EE and Ph.D. in molecular science from Southern Illinois University, in Carbondale.
Candidate Statement
We live in an era of rapid technological development where change is constant. My leadership experiences of four decades across IEEE and ABET have taught me some timeless values in this rapidly changing world: To be Inclusive, Collaborative, Accountable, Resilient and Ethical. Connection and community make a difference. IEEE’s mission is especially important, as the pace of change accelerates with advances in AI, Robotics and Biotechnology. I offer leadership that inspires others to believe and enable that belief to become reality. “I CARE”!
My top priority is to serve our members and empower our technical communities worldwide to create and advance technologies to solve our greatest challenges.
If elected, I will focus on three strategic areas:
Member Engagement:
Broaden participation of Students, Young Professionals (YPs), and Women in Engineering (WIE).
Expand access to affordable continuing education programs through the IEEE Learning Network (ILN).
Volunteer Engagement:
Nurture and support IEEE’s volunteer leaders to transform IEEE globally through a volunteer academy program that strengthens collaboration, inclusion, and recognition.
Incentivize volunteers to improve cross-regional collaboration, engagement and communications between Chapters and Sections.
Industry Engagement:
Transform hybrid/virtual conferences, and open access publications, to make them more relevant to engineers and technologists in industry.
Focus on innovation, standards, and sustainable development that address skills needed for jobs of the future.
Our members are the “heart and soul” of IEEE. Let’s work together as one IEEE to attract, retain, and serve our diverse global members. Thank you for your participation and support.
Lynn Conway, codeveloper of very-large-scale integration, died on 9 June at the age of 86. The VLSI process, which creates integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip, revolutionized microchip design.
Conway, an IEEE Fellow, was transfeminine and was a transgender-rights activist who played a key role in updating the IEEE Code of Conduct to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
She shared her experiences on a blog to help others considering or beginning to transition their gender identity. She also mentored many trans people through their transitioning.
“Lynn Conway’s example of engineering impact and personal courage has been a great source of inspiration for me and countless others,” Michael Wellman, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, told the Michigan Engineering News website. Conway was a professor emerita at the university.
The profile of Conway below is based on an interview The Institute conducted with her in December.
Some engineers dream their pioneering technologies will one day earn them a spot in history books. But what happens when your contributions are overlooked because of your gender identity?
If you’re like Lynn Conway—who faced that dilemma—you fight back.
Conway helped develop very-large-scale integration: the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistors into a single chip. VLSI chips are at the core of electronic devices used today. The technology provides processing power, memory, and other functionalities to smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, televisions, and household appliances.
She and her research partner Carver Mead developed VLSI in the 1970s while she was working at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, in California. Mead was an engineering professor at CalTech at the time. For years, Conway’s role was overlooked partly because she was a woman, she asserts, and partly because she was transfeminine.
Since coming out publicly in 1999, Conway has been fighting for her contributions to be recognized, and she’s succeeding. Over the years, the IEEE Fellow has been honored by a variety of organizations, most recently the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which inducted her last year almost 15 years after it recognized Mead.
From budding physicist to electrical engineer
Conway initially was interested in studying physics because of the role it played in World War II.
“After the war ended, physicists became famous for blowing up the world in order to save it,” she says. “I was naive and saw physics as the source of all wisdom. I went off to MIT, not fully understanding the subject I chose to major in.”
She took many electrical engineering courses because, she says, they allowed her to be creative. It was through those classes that she found her calling.
She left MIT in 1957, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia in 1962 and 1963. While at Columbia, she conducted an independent study under the guidance of Herb Schorr, an adjunct professor and a researcher at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. The study involved installing a list-processing language on the IBM 1620 computer, “which was the most arcane machine to attempt to do that on,” she says laughing. “It was a cool language that Maurice Wilkes from Cambridge had developed to experiment with self-compiling compilers.”
She must have made quite an impression on Schorr, she says, because after she earned her master’s degree, he recruited her to join him at the research center. While working on the advanced computing systems project there, she invented multiple-out-of-order dynamic instruction scheduling, a technique that allows a CPU to reorder instructions based on their availability and readiness instead of following the program order strictly.
That work led to the creation of the superscalar CPU, which manages multiple instruction pipelines to execute several instructions concurrently.
The company eventually transferred her to its offices in California’s Bay Area.
Although her career was thriving, Conway was struggling with gender dysphoria, the distress people experience when their gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth. In 1967 she moved forward with gender-affirming care “to resolve the terrible existential situation I had faced since childhood,” she says.
She notified IBM of her intention to transition, with the hope the company would allow her to do so quietly. Instead, IBM fired her, convinced that her transition would cause “extreme emotional distress in fellow employees,” she says. (In 2020 the company issued an apology for terminating her.)
After completing her transition, at the end of 1968 Conway began her career anew as a contract programmer. By 1971 she was working as a computer architect at Memorex in Silicon Valley. She joined the company in what she calls “stealth mode.” No one other than close family members and friends knew she was transfeminine. Conway was afraid of discrimination and losing her job again, she says. Because of her decision to keep her transition a secret, she says, she could not claim credit for the techniques she had invented at IBM Research because they were credited to the name she had been assigned at birth, her “dead name.”
She was recruited in 1975 to join Xerox PARC as a research fellow and manager of its VLSI system design group.
It was there that she made history.
Conway was recruited in 1975 to join Xerox PARC as a research fellow.Lynn Conway
Starting the Mead and Conway Revolution
Concerned with how Moore’s Law would affect the performance of microelectronics, the Advanced Research Project Agency (now known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) created a coalition of companies and research universities, including PARC and CalTech, to improve microchip design. After Conway joined PARC’s VLSI system design group, she worked closely with Carver Mead on chip design. Mead, now an IEEE Life Fellow, is credited with coining the term Moore’s Law.
Making chips at the time involved manually designing transistors and connecting them with circuits. The process was time-consuming and error-prone.
“A whole bunch of different pieces of design were being done at different abstraction levels, including the basic architecture, the logic design, the circuit design, and the layout design—all by different people,” Conway said in a 2023 IEEE Annals of the History of Computing interview. “And the various people in the different layers passed the design down in kind of a paternalistic top-down system. The people at any one layer may have no clue what the people at the other levels in that system are doing or what they know.”
Conway and Mead decided the best way to address that communication problem was to use CAD tools to automate the process.
The two also introduced the structured-design method of creating chips. It emphasized high-level abstraction and modular design techniques such as logic gates and modules—which made the process more efficient and scalable.
Conway also created a simplified set of rules for chip design that enabled the integrated circuits to be numerically encoded, scaled, and reused as Moore’s Law advanced.
The method was so radical, she says, that it needed help catching on. Conway and Mead wrote Introduction to VLSI Systems to take the new concepts straight to the next generation of engineers and programmers. The textbook included the basics of structured designs and how to validate and verify them. Before its publication in 1980, Conway tested how well it explained the method by teaching the first VLSI course in 1978 at MIT.
The textbook was successful, becoming the foundational resource for teaching the technology. By 1983 it was being used by nearly 120 universities.
Conway and Mead’s work resulted in what is known as the Mead and Conway Revolution, enabling faster, smaller, and more powerful devices to be developed.
Throughout the 1980s, Conway and Mead were known as the dynamic duo that created VLSI. They received multiple joint awards including the Electronics magazine 1981 Award for Achievement, the University of Pennsylvania’s 1984 Pender Award, and the Franklin Institute’s 1985 Wetherill Medal.
Conway left Xerox PARC in 1983 to join DARPA as assistant director for strategic computing. She led planning of the strategic computing initiative, an effort to expand the technology base for intelligent-weapons systems.
Two years later she began her academic career at the University of Michigan as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. She was the university’s associate dean of engineering and taught there until 1998, when she retired.
Becoming an activist
In 1999 Conway decided to come out as a transfeminine engineer, knowing that not only would her previous work be credited to her again, she says, but also that she could be a source of strength and inspiration for others like her.
After publicly coming out, she spoke openly about her experience and lobbied to be credited for her work.
Some organizations, including IEEE, began to recognize Conway. The IEEE Computer Society awarded her its 2009 Computer Pioneer Award. She received the 2015 IEEE/RSE Maxwell Medal, which honors contributions that had an exceptional impact on the development of electronics and electrical engineering.
The panelists were asked about what or who inspired them to pursue a career in engineering, as well as their thoughts on continuing education and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Most said they were inspired to become engineers by a parent. Goldsmith, the recipient of this year’sIEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal, credits her father. He was a mechanical engineering professor at UC Berkeley and suggested she consider majoring in engineering because she excelled in math and science in high school.
“When I was young, I didn’t really understand what being an engineer meant,” Goldsmith said at the panel. Because her parents were divorced and she didn’t see her father often, she thought he drove trains. It wasn’t until she was at UC Berkeley, she said, that she realized how technology could change people’s lives for the better. That’s what pushed her to follow in her father’s footsteps.
When asked what keeps them motivated to stay in the engineering field, King Liu said that it’s IEEE’s mission of developing technology for the benefit of humanity. She is this year’s IEEE Founders Medal recipient.
“Diversity is about excellence. The biggest battle is convincing people who don’t believe that diversity has a positive impact on teams and companies.” —Andrea Goldsmith
“Engineering work is done for people and by people,” she said. “I draw inspiration from not only the people we serve, but also the people behind the technology.” The panelists also spoke about the importance of continuing education. “Learning is a lifelong process,” King Liu said. “Engineers need to seek out learning opportunities, whether it’s from having a design fail or from more experienced engineers in their field of interest.”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion was a hot discussion topic. “Diversity is about excellence,” Goldsmith said. “The biggest battle is convincing people who don’t believe that diversity has a positive impact on teams and companies.
“Another issue is finding ways to bring in diverse talent and helping them achieve their full potential,” she added. “One of the things I’m most proud of is the work I’ve done with IEEE on DEI.”
Goldsmith helped launch theIEEE Diversity and Inclusion Committee and is its past chair. Established in 2022 by the IEEE Board of Directors, the committee revised several policies, procedures, and bylaws to ensure that members have a safe and inclusive place for collegial discourse and that all feel welcome. It also launched a website.
Robert E. Kahn proudly displays his IEEE Medal of Honor at this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony. He is accompanied by IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Couglin.Robb Cohen Photography & Video
Career advice and the role of AI in society
The IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit got underway on 3 May at the Encore Boston Harbor. It featured a “fireside chat” with Robert E. Kahn followed by discussions with panels of award recipients on topics such as career advice and concerns related to artificial intelligence.
Kahn was interviewed by Caroline Hyde, a business and technology journalist. Widely known as one of the “fathers of the Internet,” he is this year’s IEEE Medal of Honor recipient for “pioneering technical and leadership contributions in packet communication technologies and foundations of the Internet.”
The IEEE Life Fellow reminisced about his experience collaborating with Vint Cerf on the design of the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol. Cerf, an IEEE Life Fellow, is another father of the Internet and the 2023 IEEE Medal of Honor recipient.
While working as a program manager in the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s information processing techniques office in 1973, Kahn and Cerf designed the Internet’s core architecture.
One audience member asked Kahn how engineers can create opportunities for young people to collaborate like he and Cerf did. Kahn said that it begins with having a problem to solve, and then thinking about it holistically. He also advised students and young professionals to partner with others when such opportunities arise.
The conversation on career advice continued at the Innovation and Collaboration in Leading Technology Laboratories panel. Panelists and IEEE Fellows Eric Evans, Anthony Vetro, and Peter Vetter offered insights on how to be a successful researcher.
It’s important to identify the right problem and develop a technology to solve it, said Evans, director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
When asked what qualities are important for job candidates to showcase when interviewing for a position, Vetro said he looks for employees who are willing to collaborate and are self-driven. Vetro is president and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Cambridge, Mass. He also stressed the importance of learning how to fail.
During the AI and Society: Building a Future with Responsible Innovation session, Juraj Corba, Christopher D. Manning, Renard T. Jenkins, and IEEE Fellow Claire Tomlin discussed how the technology could affect a variety of fields. They agreed the technology is unlikely to replace humans in the workforce.
“People need to think of AI systems as tools—like what Photoshop is to a photographer.”- Renard T. Jenkins
“People need to think of AI systems as tools—like what Photoshop is to a photographer,” said Jenkins, president of consulting firm I2A2 Technologies, Labs and Studios.
“AI doesn’t have learning and adaptability [capabilities] like humans do,” Manning added. The director of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is this year’s IEEE John von Neumann Medal recipient. “But there is a good role for technology—it can be life-changing for people.” One example he cited was Neuralink’s brain implant, which would enable a person to control a computer “just by thinking,” according to the startup’s founder, Elon Musk.
ChatGPT, a generative AI program, has become a hot topic among educators since its launch two years ago, said panel moderator Armen Pischdotchian, data scientist at IBM in Cambridge, Mass. Tomlin, chair of the electrical engineering and computer science department at UC Berkeley, said AI will make education more interactive and provide a better experience. “It will help both students and educators,” said the recipient of this year’s IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal.
Pioneers of assistive technology, GPS, and the Internet
The highlight of the evening was the Honors Ceremony, which recognized those who had developed technologies such as assistive robots, GPS, and the Internet.
The IEEE Spectrum Technology in the Service of Society Award went to startup Hello Robot, headquartered in Atlanta, for its Stretch robot. The machine gives those with a severe disability, such as paralysis, the ability to maintain their independence while living at home. For example, users can operate the robot to feed themselves, scratch an itch, or cover themselves with a blanket.
The machine consists of a mobile platform with a single arm that moves up and down a retractable pole. A wrist joint at the end of the arm bends back and forth and controls a gripper, which can grasp nearby objects. Sensors mounted at the base of the arm and a camera located at the top of the pole provide the sensing needed to move around from room to room, avoid obstacles, and pick up small items such as books, eating utensils, and pill bottles.
More than six billion people around the world use GPS to navigate their surroundings, according toGPS World. The technology wouldn’t have been possible without Gladys West, who contributed to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth. While working at theNaval Surface Warfare Center, in Dahlgren, Va., she conducted seminal work on satellite geodesy models that was pivotal in the development of the GPS. West, who is 93, retired in 1998 after working at the center for 42 years. For her contributions, she received the IEEE President’s Award.
The ceremony concluded with the presentation of the IEEE Medal of Honor to Bob Kahn, who received a standing ovation.
“This is the honor of my career,” he said. He ended his speech saying that he “hasn’t stopped yet and still has more to do.”
Ever since she was an undergraduate student in Turkey, Simay Akar has been interested in renewable energy technology. As she progressed through her career after school, she chose not to develop the technology herself but to promote it. She has held marketing positions with major energy companies, and now she runs two startups.
One of Akar’s companies develops and manufactures lithium-ion batteries and recycles them. The other consults with businesses to help them achieve their sustainability goals.
Simay Akar
Employer
AK Energy Consulting
Title
CEO
Member grade
Senior member
Alma mater
Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey
“I love the industry and the people in this business,” Akar says. “They are passionate about renewable energy and want their work to make a difference.”
Akar, a senior member, has become an active IEEE volunteer as well, holding leadership positions. First she served as student branch coordinator, then as a student chapter coordinator, and then as a member of several administrative bodies including the IEEE Young Professionals committee.
Akar received this year’s IEEE Theodore W. Hissey Outstanding Young Professional Award for her “leadership and inspiration of young professionals with significant contributions in the technical fields of photovoltaics and sustainable energy storage.” The award is sponsored by IEEE Young Professionals and the IEEE Photonics and Power & Energy societies.
Akar says she’s honored to get the award because “Theodore W. Hissey’s commitment to supporting young professionals across all of IEEE’s vast fields is truly commendable.” Hissey, who died in 2023, was an IEEE Life Fellow and IEEE director emeritus who supported the IEEE Young Professionals community for years.
“This award acknowledges the potential we hold to make a significant impact,” Akar says, “and it motivates me to keep pushing the boundaries in sustainable energy and inspire others to do the same.”
A career in sustainable technology
After graduating with a degree in the social impact of technology from Middle East Technical University, in Ankara, Turkey, Akar worked at several energy companies. Among them was Talesun Solar in Suzhou, China, where she was head of overseas marketing. She left to become the sales and marketing director for Eko Renewable Energy, in Istanbul.
In 2020 she founded Innoses in Shanghai. The company makes batteries for electric vehicles and customizes them for commercial, residential, and off-grid renewable energy systems such as solar panels. Additionally, Innoses recycles lithium-ion batteries, which otherwise end up in landfills, leaching hazardous chemicals.
“Recycling batteries helps cut down on pollution and greenhouse gas emissions,” Akar says. “That’s something we can all feel good about.”
She says there are two main methods of recycling batteries: melting and shredding.
Melting batteries is done by heating them until their parts separate. Valuable metals including cobalt and nickel are collected and cleaned to be reused in new batteries.
A shredding machine with high-speed rotating blades cuts batteries into small pieces. The different components are separated and treated with solutions to break them down further. Lithium, copper, and other metals are collected and cleaned to be reused.
The melting method tends to be better for collecting cobalt and nickel, while shredding is better for recovering lithium and copper, Akar says.
“This happens because each method focuses on different parts of the battery, so some metals are easier to extract depending on how they are processed,” she says. The chosen method depends on factors such as the composition of the batteries, the efficiency of the recycling process, and the desired metals to be recovered.
“There are a lot of environmental concerns related to battery usage,” Akar says. “But, if the right recycling process can be completed, batteries can also be sustainable. The right process could keep pollution and emissions low and protect the health of workers and surrounding communities.”
Akar worked at several energy companies including Talesun Solar in Suzhou, China, which manufactures solar cells like the one she is holding.Simay Akar
Helping businesses with sustainability
After noticing many businesses were struggling to become more sustainable, in 2021 Akar founded AK Energy Consulting in Istanbul. Through discussions with company leaders, she found they “need guidance and support from someone who understands not only sustainable technology but also the best way renewable energy can help the planet,” she says.
“My goal for the firm is simple: Be a force for change and create a future that’s sustainable and prosperous for everyone,” she says.
Akar and her staff meet with business leaders to better understand their sustainability goals. They identify areas where companies can improve, assess the impact the recommended changes can have, and research the latest sustainable technology. Her consulting firm also helps businesses understand how to meet government compliance regulations.
“By embracing sustainability, companies can create positive social, environmental, and economic impact while thriving in a rapidly changing world,” Akar says. “The best part of my job is seeing real change happen. Watching my clients switch to renewable energy, adopt eco-friendly practices, and hit their green goals is like a pat on the back.”
Serving on IEEE boards and committees
Akar has been a dedicated IEEE volunteer since joining the organization in 2007 as an undergraduate student and serving as chair of her school’s student branch. After graduating, she held other roles including Region 8 student branch coordinator, student chapter coordinator, and the region’s IEEE Women in Engineering committee chair.
She is an active member of the IEEE Power & Energy Society and is a former IEEE PES liaison to the Women in Engineering committee. She is also a past vice chair of the society’sWomen in Power group, which supports career advancement and education and provides networking opportunities.
“My volunteering experiences have helped me gain a deep understanding of how IEEE operates,” she says. “I’ve accumulated invaluable knowledge, and the work I’ve done has been incredibly fulfilling.”
As a member of the IEEE–Eta Kappa Nu honor society, Akar has mentored members of the next generation of technologists. She also served as a mentor in the IEEE Member and Geographic ActivitiesVolunteer Leadership Training Program, which provides members with resources and an overview of IEEE, including its culture and mission. The program also offers participants training in management and leadership skills.
Akar says her experiences as an IEEE member have helped shape her career. When she transitioned from working as a marketer to being an entrepreneur, she joined IEEE Entrepreneurship, eventually serving as its vice chair of products. She also was chair of the Region 10 entrepreneurship committee.
“I had engineers I could talk to about emerging technologies and how to make a difference through Innoses,” she says. “I also received a lot of support from the group.”
Akar says she is committed to IEEE’s mission of advancing technology for humanity. She currently chairs the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Board’s best practices and projects committee. She also is chair of the IEEE MOVE global committee. The mobile outreach vehicle program provides communities affected by natural disasters with power and Internet access.
“Through my leadership,” Akar says, “I hope to contribute to the development of innovative solutions that improve the well-being of communities worldwide.”
When Marianne Smith was teaching computer science in 2016 at Flathead Valley Community College, in Kalispell, Mont., the adjunct professor noticed the female students in her class were severely outnumbered, she says.
Smith says she believed the disparity was because girls were not being introduced to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in elementary and middle school.
Code Girls United
Founded
2018
Headquarters
Kalispell, Mont.
Employees
10
In 2017 she decided to do something to close the gap. The IEEE member started an after-school program to teach coding and computer science.
What began as a class of 28 students held in a local restaurant is now a statewide program run by Code Girls United, a nonprofit Smith founded in 2018. The organization has taught more than 1,000 elementary, middle, and high school students across 38 cities in Montana and three of the state’s Native American reservations. Smith has plans to expand the nonprofit to South Dakota, Wisconsin, and other states, as well as other reservations.
“Computer science is not a K–12 requirement in Montana,” Smith says. “Our program creates this rare hands-on experience that provides students with an experience that’s very empowering for girls in our community.”
The nonprofit was one of seven winners last year of MIT Solve’s Gender Equity in STEM Challenge. The initiative supports organizations that work to address gender barriers. Code Girls United received US $100,000 to use toward its program.
“The MIT Solve Gender Equity in STEM Challenge thoroughly vets all applicants—their theories, practices, organizational health, and impact,” Smith says. “For Code Girls United to be chosen as a winner of the contest is a validating honor.”
From a restaurant basement to statewide programs
When Smith had taught her sons how to program robots, she found that programming introduced a set of logic and communication skills similar to learning a new language, she says.
Those skills were what many girls were missing, she reasoned.
“It’s critical that girls be given the opportunity to speak and write in this coding language,” she says, “so they could also have the chance to communicate their ideas.”
An app to track police vehicles
Last year Code Girls United’s advanced class held in Kalispell received a special request from Jordan Venezio, the city’s police chief. He asked the class to create an app to help the Police Department manage its vehicle fleet.
The department was tracking the location of its police cars on paper, a process that made it challenging to get up-to-date information about which cars were on patrol, available for use, or being repaired, Venezio told the Flathead Beacon.
The objective was to streamline day-to-day vehicle operations. To learn how the department operates and see firsthand the difficulties administrators faced when managing the vehicles, two students shadowed officers for 10 weeks.
The department’s administrators now more easily can see each vehicle’s availability, whether it’s at the repair shop, or if it has been retired from duty.
“It’s a great privilege for the girls to be able to apply the skills they’ve learned in the Code Girls United program to do something like this for the community,” Smith says. “It really brings our vision full circle.”
At first she wasn’t sure what subjects to teach, she says, reasoning that Java and other programming languages were too advanced for elementary school students.
She came across MIT App Inventor, a block-based visual programming language for creating mobile apps for Android and iOS devices. Instead of learning a coding language by typing it, students drag and drop jigsaw puzzle–like pieces that contain code to issue instructions. She incorporated building an app with general computer science concepts such as conditionals, logic flow, and variables. With each concept learned, the students built a more difficult app.
“It was perfect,” she says, “because the girls could make an app and test it the same day. It’s also very visual.”
Once she had a curriculum, she wanted to find willing students, so she placed an advertisement in the local newspaper. Twenty-eight girls signed up for the weekly classes, which were held in a diner. Assisting Smith were Beth Schecher, a retired technical professional; and Liz Bernau, a newly graduated elementary school teacher who taught technology classes. Students had to supply their own laptop.
At the end of the first 18 weeks, the class was tasked with creating apps to enter in the annual Technovation Girls competition. The contest seeks out apps that address issues including animal abandonment, safely reporting domestic violence, and access to mental health services.
The first group of students created several apps to enter in the competition, including ones that connected users to water-filling stations, provided people with information about food banks, and allowed users to report potholes. The group made it to the competition’s semifinals.
The coding program soon outgrew the diner and moved to a computer lab in a nearby elementary school. From there classes were held at Flathead Valley Community College. The program continued to grow and soon expanded to schools in other Montana towns including Belgrade, Havre, Joliet, and Polson.
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the program to become virtual—which was “oddly fortuitous,” Smith says. After she made the curriculum available for anyone to use via Google Classroom, it increased in popularity.
That’s when she decided to launch her nonprofit. With that came a new curriculum.
What began as a class of 28 students held in a restaurant in Kalispell, Mont., has grown into a statewide program run by Code Girls United. The nonprofit has taught coding and computer science to more than 1,000 elementary, middle, and high school students. Code Girls United
Program expands across the state
Beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes were introduced. Instructors of the weekly after-school program are volunteers and teachers trained by Smith or one of the organization’s 10 employees. The teachers are paid a stipend.
For the first half of the school year, students in the beginner class learn computer science while creating apps.
“By having them design and build a mobile app,” Smith says, “I and the other teachers teach them computer science concepts in a fun and interactive way.”
Once students master the course, they move on to the intermediate and advanced levels, where they are taught lessons in computer science and learn more complicated programming concepts such as Java and Python.
“It’s important to give girls who live on the reservations educational opportunities to close the gap. It’s the right thing to do for the next generation.”
During the second half of the year, the intermediate and advanced classes participate in Code Girls United’s App Challenge. The girls form teams and choose a problem in their community to tackle. Next they write a business plan that includes devising a marketing strategy, designing a logo, and preparing a presentation. A panel of volunteer judges evaluates their work, and the top six teams receive a scholarship of up to $5,000, which is split among the members.
The organization has given out more than 55 scholarships, Smith says.
“Some of the girls who participated in our first education program are now going to college,” she says. “Seventy-two percent of participants are pursuing a degree in a STEM field, and quite a few are pursuing computer science.”
Introducing coding to Native Americans
The program is taught to high school girls on Montana’s Native American reservations through workshops.
Many reservations lack access to technology resources, Smith says, so presenting the program there has been challenging. But the organization has had some success and is working with the Blackfeet reservation, the Salish and Kootenai tribes on the Flathead reservation, and the Nakota and Gros Ventre tribes at Fort Belknap.
The workshops tailor technology for Native American culture. In the newest course, students program a string of LEDs to respond to the drumbeat of tribal songs using the BBC’s Micro:bit programmable controller. The lights are attached to the bottom of a ribbon skirt, a traditional garment worn by young women. Colorful ribbons are sewn horizontally across the bottom, with each hue having a meaning.
The new course was introduced to students on the Flathead reservation this month.
“Montana’s reservations are some of the most remote and resource-limited communities,” Smith says, “especially in regards to technology and educational opportunities.
“It’s important to give girls who live on the reservations educational opportunities to close the gap. It’s the right thing to do for the next generation.”
Every time you use your voice to generate a message on a Samsung Galaxy mobile phone or activate a Google Home device, you’re using tools Chanwoo Kim helped develop. The former executive vice president of Samsung Research’s Global AI Centers specializes in end-to-end speech recognition, end-to-end text-to-speech tools, and language modeling.
“The most rewarding part of my career is helping to develop technologies that my friends and family members use and enjoy,” Kim says.
He recently left Samsung to continue his work in the field at Korea University, in Seoul, leading the school’s speech and language processing laboratory. A professor of artificial intelligence, he says he is passionate about teaching the next generation of tech leaders.
“I’m excited to have my own lab at the school and to guide students in research,” he says.
Bringing Google Home to market
When Amazon announced in 2014 it was developing smart speakers with AI assistive technology, a gadget now known as Echo, Google decided to develop its own version. Kim saw a role for his expertise in the endeavor—he has a Ph.D. in language and information technology from Carnegie Mellon, and he specialized in robust speech recognition. Friends of his who were working on such projects at Google in Mountain View, Calif., encouraged him to apply for a software engineering job there. He left Microsoft in Seattle where he had worked for three years as a software development engineer and speech scientist.
After joining Google’s acoustic modeling team in 2013, he worked to ensure the company’s AI assistive technology, used in Google Home products, could perform in the presence of background noise.
Chanwoo Kim
Employer
Korea University in Seoul
Title
Director of the the speech and language processing lab and professor of artificial intelligence
Member grade
Member
Alma maters
Seoul National University; Carnegie Mellon
He led an effort to improve Google Home’s speech-recognition algorithms, including the use of acoustic modeling, which allows a device to interpret the relationship between speech and phonemes (phonetic units in languages).
“When people used the speech-recognition function on their mobile phones, they were only standing about 1 meter away from the device at most,” he says. “For the speaker, my team and I had to make sure it understood the user when they were talking farther away.”
Kim proposed using large-scale data augmentation that simulates far-field speech data to enhance the device’s speech-recognition capabilities. Data augmentation analyzes training data received and artificially generates additional training data to improve recognition accuracy.
His contributions enabled the company to release its first Google Home product, a smart speaker, in 2016.
“That was a really rewarding experience,” he says.
That same year, Kim moved up to senior software engineer and continued improving the algorithms used by Google Home for large-scale data augmentation. He also further developed technologies to reduce the time and computing power used by the neural network and to improve multi-microphone beamforming for far-field speech recognition.
Kim, who grew up in South Korea, missed his family, and in 2018 he moved back, joining Samsung as vice president of its AI Center in Seoul.
When he joined Samsung, he aimed to develop end-to-end speech recognition and text-to-speech recognition engines for the company’s products, focusing on on-device processing. To help him reach his goals, he founded a speech processing lab and led a team of researchers developing neural networks to replace the conventional speech-recognition systems then used by Samsung’s AI devices.
“The most rewarding part of my work is helping to develop technologies that my friends and family members use and enjoy.”
Those systems included an acoustic model, a language model, a pronunciation model, a weighted finite state transducer, and an inverse text normalizer. The language model looks at the relationship between the words being spoken by the user, while the pronunciation model acts as a dictionary. The inverse text normalizer, most often used by text-to-speech tools on phones, converts speech into written expressions.
Because the components were bulky, it was not possible to develop an accurate, on-device speech-recognition system using conventional technology, Kim says. An end-to-end neural network would complete all the tasks and “greatly simplify speech-recognition systems,” he says.
Chanwoo Kim [top row, seventh from the right] with some of the members of his speech processing lab at Samsung Research.Chanwoo Kim
He and his team used a streaming attention-based approach to develop their model. An input sequence—the spoken words—are encoded, then decoded into a target sequence with the help of a context vector, a numeric representation of words generated by a pretrained deep learning model for machine translation.
The model was commercialized in 2019 and is now part of Samsung’s Galaxy phone. That same year, a cloud version of the system was commercialized and is used by the phone’s virtual assistant, Bixby.
Kim’s team continued to improve speech recognition and text-to-speech systems in other products, and every year they commercialized a new engine.
They include the power-normalized cepstral coefficients, which improve the accuracy of speech recognition in environments with disturbances such as additive noise, changes in the signal, multiple speakers, and reverberation. It suppresses the effects of background noise by using statistics to estimate characteristics. It is now used in a variety of Samsung products including air conditioners, cellphones, and robotic vacuum cleaners.
Samsung promoted Kim in 2021 to executive vice president of its six Global AI Centers, located in Cambridge, England; Montreal; Seoul; Silicon Valley; New York; and Toronto.
In that role he oversaw research on incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning into Samsung products. He is the youngest person to be an executive vice president at the company.
He also led the development of Samsung’s generative large language models, which evolved in Samsung Gauss. The suite of generative AI models can generate code, images, and text.
In March he left the company to join Korea University as a professor of artificial intelligence—which is a dream come true, he says.
“When I first started my doctoral work, my dream was to pursue a career in academia,” Kim says. “But after earning my Ph.D., I found myself drawn to the impact my research could have on real products, so I decided to go into industry.”
He says he was excited to join Korea University, as “it has a strong presence in artificial intelligence” and is one of the top universities in the country.
Kim says his research will focus on generative speech models, multimodal processing, and integrating generative speech with language models.
Chasing his dream at Carnegie Mellon
Kim’s father was an electrical engineer, and from a young age, Kim wanted to follow in his footsteps, he says. He attended a science-focused high school in Seoul to get a head start in learning engineering topics and programming. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Seoul National University in 1998 and 2001, respectively.
Kim long had hoped to earn a doctoral degree from a U.S. university because he felt it would give him more opportunities.
And that’s exactly what he did. He left for Pittsburgh in 2005 to pursue a Ph.D. in language and information technology at Carnegie Mellon.
“I decided to major in speech recognition because I was interested in raising the standard of quality,” he says. “I also liked that the field is multifaceted, and I could work on hardware or software and easily shift focus from real-time signal processing to image signal processing or another sector of the field.”
Kim did his doctoral work under the guidance of IEEE Life Fellow Richard Stern, who probably is best known for his theoretical work in how the human brain compares sound coming from each ear to judge where the sound is coming from.
“At that time, I wanted to improve the accuracy of automatic speech recognition systems in noisy environments or when there were multiple speakers,” he says. He developed several signal processing algorithms that used mathematical representations created from information about how humans process auditory information.
Kim earned his Ph.D. in 2010 and joined Microsoft in Seattle as a software development engineer and speech scientist. He worked at Microsoft for three years before joining Google.
Kim maintains his IEEE membership partly because, he says, IEEE is a trustworthy source of information, and he can access the latest technical information.
Another benefit of membership is IEEE’s global network, Kim says.
“By being a member, I have the opportunity to meet other engineers in my field,” he says.
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Deanna Decker Photography 
Steven Miller
S.K. Ramesh
Conway was recruited in 1975 to join Xerox PARC as a research fellow.Lynn Conway
Robert E. Kahn proudly displays his IEEE Medal of Honor at this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony. He is accompanied by IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Couglin.Robb Cohen Photography & Video
Akar worked at several energy companies including Talesun Solar in Suzhou, China, which manufactures solar cells like the one she is holding.Simay Akar
What began as a class of 28 students held in a restaurant in Kalispell, Mont., has grown into a statewide program run by Code Girls United. The nonprofit has taught coding and computer science to more than 1,000 elementary, middle, and high school students. Code Girls United
Chanwoo Kim [top row, seventh from the right] with some of the members of his speech processing lab at Samsung Research.Chanwoo Kim
