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.

Prabhakar is the first woman and the first person of color to serve as OSTP director, and she has broken through the glass ceiling at other agencies as well. She was the first woman to lead the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Arati Prabhakar

Employer

U.S. government

Title

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.”

She was accepted into the program and moved to Washington, D.C. During the yearlong fellowship, she conducted a study on microelectronics R&D for the research and technology subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives committee on science, space, and technology. The subcommittee oversees STEM-related matters including education, policy, and standards.

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.

Prabhakar led the creation of Biden’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. Signed on 30 October 2022, the order outlines goals such as protecting consumers and their privacy from AI systems, developing watermarking systems for AI-generated content, and warding off intellectual property theft stemming from the use of generative models.

“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.”

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.”

This article is part of our exclusive career advice series in partnership with the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society.

With technological advancement and changing societal expectations, the concept of work-life balance has become an elusive goal for many, particularly within the engineering community. The drive to remain continuously engaged with work, the pressure to achieve perfection, and the challenge of juggling work and personal responsibilities have created a landscape where professional and personal spheres are in constant negotiation.

This article covers several factors that can disrupt work-life balance, with recommendations on how to address them.

The myth of urgency

In an era dominated by instant communication via email and text messages, the expectation to respond quickly has led to an illusion of urgency. The perpetual state of constant alertness blurs the distinction between what’s urgent and what isn’t.

Recognizing that not every email message warrants an immediate response is the first step in deciding what’s important. By prioritizing responses based on actual importance, individuals can reclaim control over their time, reduce stress, and foster a more manageable workload.

Throughout my career, I have found that setting specific times to check and respond to email helps avoid distractions throughout the day. There are programs that prioritize email and classify tasks based on its urgency and importance.

Another suggestion is to unsubscribe from unnecessary newsletters and set up filters that move unwanted email to a specific folder or the trash before it reaches your inbox.

Cutting back the endless workday

Today’s work environment, characterized by remote access and flexible hours, has extended the workday beyond a set schedule and has encroached on personal time. The situation is particularly prevalent among engineers committed to solving complex problems, leading to a scenario where work is a constant companion—which leaves little room for personal pursuits or time with family.

A balanced life is healthier and more sustainable, and it enriches the quality of our work and our relationships with those we love.

Establishing clear boundaries between work and personal time is essential. One way to do so is to communicate clear working hours to your manager, coworkers, and clients. You can use tools such as email autoresponders and do-not-disturb modes to reinforce your boundaries.

It’s important to recognize that work, while integral, is only one aspect of life.

The quest for perfectionism

The pursuit of perfection is a common trap for many professionals, leading to endless revisions and dissatisfaction with one’s work. The quest not only wastes an inordinate amount of time. It also detracts from the quality of life.

Embracing the philosophy that “it doesn’t have to be perfect” can liberate individuals from the trap. By aiming for excellence rather than perfection, one can achieve high standards of work while also making time for personal growth and happiness.

To help adopt such a mindset, practice setting realistic standards for different tasks by asking yourself what level of quality is truly necessary for each. Allocating a fixed amount of time to specific tasks can help prevent endless tweaking.

The necessity of exercise

Physical activity often takes a back seat to busy schedules and is often viewed as negotiable or secondary to work and family responsibilities. Exercise, however, is a critical component for maintaining mental and physical health. Integrating regular physical activity into one’s routine is not just beneficial; it’s essential for maintaining balance and enhancing your quality of life.

One way to ensure you are taking care of your health is to schedule exercise as a nonnegotiable activity in your calendar, similar to important meetings or activities. Also consider integrating physical activity into your daily routine, such as riding a bicycle to work, walking to meetings, and taking short strolls around your office building. If you work from home, take a walk around your neighborhood.

Sleep boosts productivity

Contrary to the glorification of overwork and sleep deprivation in some professional circles, sleep is a paramount factor in maintaining high levels of productivity and creativity. Numerous studies have shown that adequate sleep—seven to nine hours for most adults—enhances cognitive functions, problem-solving skills, and memory retention.

For engineers and others in professions where innovation and precision are paramount, neglecting sleep can diminish the quality of work and the capacity for critical thinking.

Sleep deprivation has been linked to a variety of health issues including increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stress-related conditions.

Prioritizing sleep is not a luxury but a necessity for those aiming to excel in their career while also enjoying a fulfilling personal life.

Begin your bedtime routine at the same time each night to cue your body that it’s time to wind down. For a smooth transition to sleep, try adjusting lighting, reducing noise, and engaging in relaxing activities such as reading or listening to calm music.

Relaxation is the counterbalance to stress

Relaxation is crucial for counteracting the effects of stress and preventing burnout. Techniques such as meditation, deep-breathing exercises, yoga, and engaging in leisure activities that bring joy can significantly reduce stress levels, thereby enhancing emotional equilibrium and resilience.

Spending time with friends and family is another effective relaxation strategy. Social interactions with loved ones can provide emotional support, happiness, and a sense of belonging, all of which are essential for limiting stress and promoting mental health. The social connections help build a support network that can serve as a buffer against life’s challenges, providing a sense of stability and comfort.

Allow yourself to recharge and foster a sense of fulfillment by allocating time each week to pursue interests that enrich your life. Also consider incorporating relaxation techniques in your daily routine, such as mindfulness meditation or short walks outdoors.

Guarding time and energy

In the quest for balance, learning to say no and ruthlessly eliminating activities that do not add value are invaluable skills. Make conscious choices about how to spend your time and energy, focusing on activities that align with personal and professional priorities. By doing so, individuals can protect their time, reduce stress, and dedicate themselves more fully to meaningful pursuits.

Practice assertiveness in communicating your capacity and boundaries to others. When asked to take on an additional task, it’s important to consider the impact on your current priorities. Don’t hesitate to decline politely if the new task doesn’t align.

Challenges for women

When discussing work-life balance, it’s essential to acknowledge the specific challenges faced by women, particularly in engineering. They are often expected to manage household duties, childcare, and their professional responsibilities while also supporting their partner’s career goals.

It can be especially challenging for women who strive to meet high standards at work and home. Recognizing and addressing their challenges is crucial in fostering an environment that supports balance for everyone.

One way to do that is to have open discussions with employers about the challenges and the support needed in the workplace and at home. Advocating for company policies that support work-life balance, such as a flexible work schedule and parental leave, is important.

Achieving a healthy work-life balance in the engineering profession—and indeed in any high-pressure field—is an ongoing process that requires self-awareness, clear priorities, and the courage to set boundaries.

It involves a collective effort by employers and workers to recognize the value of balance and to create a culture that supports it.

By acknowledging the illusion of constant urgency, understanding our limitations, and addressing the particular challenges faced by women, we can move toward a future where professional success and personal fulfillment are mutually reinforcing.

A balanced life is healthier and more sustainable, and it enriches the quality of our work and our relationships with those we love.

Schoolchildren around the world are told that they have the potential to be great, often with the cheery phrase: “The sky’s the limit!”

Gladys West took those words literally.

While working for four decades as a mathematician and computer programmer at the U.S. Naval Proving Ground (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center) in Dahlgren, Va., she prepared the way for a satellite constellation in the sky that became an indispensable part of modern life: the Global Positioning System, or GPS.

The second Black woman to ever work at the proving ground, West led a group of analysts who used satellite sensor data to calculate the shape of the Earth and the orbital routes around it. Her meticulous calculations and programming work established the flight paths now used by GPS satellites, setting the stage for navigation and positioning systems on which the world has come to rely.

For decades, West’s contributions went unacknowledged. But she has begun receiving overdue recognition. In 2018 she was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. In 2021 the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences presented her its Webby Lifetime Achievement Award, while the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering gave her the Prince Philip Medal, the organization’s highest individual honor.

West was presented the 2024 IEEE President’s Award for “mathematical modeling and development of satellite geodesy models that played a pivotal role in the development of the Global Positioning System.” The award is sponsored by IEEE.

How the “hidden figure” overcame barriers

West’s path to becoming a technology professional and an IEEE honoree was an unlikely one. Born in 1930 in Sutherland, Va., she grew up working on her family’s farm. To supplement the family’s income, her mother worked at a tobacco factory and her father was employed by a railroad company.

Physical toil in the hot sun from daybreak until sundown with paltry financial returns, West says, made her determined to do something other than farming.

Every day when she ventured into the fields to sow or harvest crops with her family, her thoughts were on the little red schoolhouse beyond the edge of the farm. She recalls gladly making the nearly 5-kilometer trek from her house, through the woods and over streams, to reach the one-room school.

She knew that postsecondary education was her ticket out of farm life, so throughout her school years she made sure she was a standout student and a model of focus and perseverance.

Her parents couldn’t afford to pay for her college education, but as valedictorian of her high school class, she earned a full-tuition scholarship from the state of Virginia. Money she earned as a babysitter paid for her room and board.

West decided to pursue a degree in mathematics at Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), a historically Black school in Petersburg.

At the time, the field was dominated by men. She earned a bachelor’s degree in the subject in 1952 and became a schoolteacher in Waverly, Va. After two years in the classroom, she returned to Virginia State to pursue a master’s degree in mathematics, which she earned in 1955.

Gladys West at her desk, meticulously crunching numbers manually in the era before computers took over such tasks.Gladys West

Setting the groundwork for GPS

West began her career at the Naval Proving Ground in early 1956. She was hired as a mathematician, joining a cadre of workers who used linear algebra, calculus, and other methods to manually solve complex problems such as differential equations. Their mathematical wizardry was used to handle trajectory analysis for ships and aircraft as well as other applications.

She was one of four Black employees at the facility, she says, adding that her determination to prove the capability of Black professionals drove her to excel.

As computers were introduced into the Navy’s operations in the 1960s, West became proficient in Fortran IV. The programming language enabled her to use the IBM 7030—the world’s fastest supercomputer at the time—to process data at an unprecedented rate.

Because of her expertise in mathematics and computer science, she was appointed director of projects that extracted valuable insights from satellite data gathered during NASA missions. West and her colleagues used the data to create ever more accurate models of the geoid—the shape of the Earth—factoring in gravitational fields and the planet’s rotation.

One such mission was Seasat, which lasted from June to October 1978. Seasat was launched into orbit to test oceanographic sensors and gain a better understanding of Earth’s seas using the first space-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, which enabled the first remote sensing of the Earth’s oceans.

SAR can acquire high-resolution images at night and can penetrate through clouds and rain. Seasat captured many valuable 2D and 3D images before a malfunction caused the satellite to be taken down.

Enough data was collected from Seasat for West’s team to refine existing geodetic models to better account for gravity and magnetic forces. The models were important for precisely mapping the Earth’s topography, determining the orbital routes that would later be used by GPS satellites, as well as documenting the spatial relationships that now let GPS determine exactly where a receiver is.

In 1986 she published the “Data Processing System Specifications for the GEOSAT Satellite Radar Altimeter” technical report. It contained new calculations that could make her geodetic models more accurate. The calculations were made possible by data from the radio altimeter on the GEOSAT, a Navy satellite that went into orbit in March 1985.

West’s career at Dahlgren lasted 42 years. By the time she retired in 1998, all 24 satellites in the GPS constellation had been launched to help the world keep time and handle navigation. But her role was largely unknown.

A model of perseverance

Neither an early bout of imposter syndrome nor the racial tensions that were an everyday element of her work life during the height of the Civil Rights Movement were able to knock her off course, West says.

In the early 1970s, she decided that her career advancement was not proceeding as smoothly as she thought it should, so she decided to go to graduate school part time for another degree. She considered pursuing a doctorate in mathematics but realized, “I already had all the technical credentials I would ever need for my work for the Navy.” Instead, to solidify her skills as a manager, she earned a master’s degree in 1973 in public administration from the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

After retiring from the Navy, she earned a doctorate in public administration in 2000 from Virginia Tech. Although she was recovering from a stroke at the time that affected her physical abilities, she still had the same drive to pursue an education that had once kept her focused on a little red schoolhouse.

A formidable legacy

West’s contributions have had a lasting impact on the fields of mathematics, geodesy, and computer science. Her pioneering efforts in a predominantly male and racially segregated environment set a precedent for future generations of female and minority scientists.

West says her life and career are testaments to the power of perseverance, skill, and dedication—or “stick-to-it-iveness,” to use her parlance. Her story continues to inspire people who strive to push boundaries. She has shown that the sky is indeed not the limit but just the beginning.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum, The Institute, or IEEE.

Many in the civilian artificial intelligence community don’t seem to realize that today’s AI innovations could have serious consequences for international peace and security. Yet AI practitioners—whether researchers, engineers, product developers, or industry managers—can play critical roles in mitigating risks through the decisions they make throughout the life cycle of AI technologies.

There are a host of ways by which civilian advances of AI could threaten peace and security. Some are direct, such as the use of AI-powered chatbots to create disinformation for political-influence operations. Large language models also can be used to create code for cyberattacks and to facilitate the development and production of biological weapons.

Other ways are more indirect. AI companies’ decisions about whether to make their software open-source and in which conditions, for example, have geopolitical implications. Such decisions determine how states or nonstate actors access critical technology, which they might use to develop military AI applications, potentially including autonomous weapons systems.

AI companies and researchers must become more aware of the challenges, and of their capacity to do something about them.

Change needs to start with AI practitioners’ education and career development. Technically, there are many options in the responsible innovation toolbox that AI researchers could use to identify and mitigate the risks their work presents. They must be given opportunities to learn about such options including IEEE 7010: Recommended Practice for Assessing the Impact of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems on Human Well-being, IEEE 7007-2021: Ontological Standard for Ethically Driven Robotics and Automation Systems, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework.

If education programs provide foundational knowledge about the societal impact of technology and the way technology governance works, AI practitioners will be better empowered to innovate responsibly and be meaningful designers and implementers of regulations.

What Needs to Change in AI Education

Responsible AI requires a spectrum of capabilities that are typically not covered in AI education. AI should no longer be treated as a pure STEM discipline but rather a transdisciplinary one that requires technical knowledge, yes, but also insights from the social sciences and humanities. There should be mandatory courses on the societal impact of technology and responsible innovation, as well as specific training on AI ethics and governance.

Those subjects should be part of the core curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at all universities that offer AI degrees.

If education programs provide foundational knowledge about the societal impact of technology and the way technology governance works, AI practitioners will be empowered to innovate responsibly and be meaningful designers and implementers of AI regulations.

Changing the AI education curriculum is no small task. In some countries, modifications to university curricula require approval at the ministry level. Proposed changes can be met with internal resistance due to cultural, bureaucratic, or financial reasons. Meanwhile, the existing instructors’ expertise in the new topics might be limited.

An increasing number of universities now offer the topics as electives, however, including Harvard, New York University, Sorbonne University, Umeå University, and the University of Helsinki.

There’s no need for a one-size-fits-all teaching model, but there’s certainly a need for funding to hire dedicated staff members and train them.

Adding Responsible AI to Lifelong Learning

The AI community must develop continuing education courses on the societal impact of AI research so that practitioners can keep learning about such topics throughout their career.

AI is bound to evolve in unexpected ways. Identifying and mitigating its risks will require ongoing discussions involving not only researchers and developers but also people who might directly or indirectly be impacted by its use. A well-rounded continuing education program would draw insights from all stakeholders.

Some universities and private companies already have ethical review boards and policy teams that assess the impact of AI tools. Although the teams’ mandate usually does not include training, their duties could be expanded to make courses available to everyone within the organization. Training on responsible AI research shouldn’t be a matter of individual interest; it should be encouraged.

Organizations such as IEEE and the Association for Computing Machinery could play important roles in establishing continuing education courses because they’re well placed to pool information and facilitate dialogue, which could result in the establishment of ethical norms.

Engaging With the Wider World

We also need AI practitioners to share knowledge and ignite discussions about potential risks beyond the bounds of the AI research community.

Fortunately, there are already numerous groups on social media that actively debate AI risks including the misuse of civilian technology by state and nonstate actors. There are also niche organizations focused on responsible AI that look at the geopolitical and security implications of AI research and innovation. They include the AI Now Institute, the Centre for the Governance of AI, Data and Society, the Distributed AI Research Institute, the Montreal AI Ethics Institute, and the Partnership on AI.

Those communities, however, are currently too small and not sufficiently diverse, as their most prominent members typically share similar backgrounds. Their lack of diversity could lead the groups to ignore risks that affect underrepresented populations.

What’s more, AI practitioners might need help and tutelage in how to engage with people outside the AI research community—especially with policymakers. Articulating problems or recommendations in ways that nontechnical individuals can understand is a necessary skill.

We must find ways to grow the existing communities, make them more diverse and inclusive, and make them better at engaging with the rest of society. Large professional organizations such as IEEE and ACM could help, perhaps by creating dedicated working groups of experts or setting up tracks at AI conferences.

Universities and the private sector also can help by creating or expanding positions and departments focused on AI’s societal impact and AI governance. Umeå University recently created an AI Policy Lab to address the issues. Companies including Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI have established divisions or units dedicated to such topics.

There are growing movements around the world to regulate AI. Recent developments include the creation of the U.N. High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence and the Global Commission on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain. The G7 leaders issued a statement on the Hiroshima AI process, and the British government hosted the first AI Safety Summit last year.

The central question before regulators is whether AI researchers and companies can be trusted to develop the technology responsibly.

In our view, one of the most effective and sustainable ways to ensure that AI developers take responsibility for the risks is to invest in education. Practitioners of today and tomorrow must have the basic knowledge and means to address the risk stemming from their work if they are to be effective designers and implementers of future AI regulations.

Authors’ note: Authors are listed by level of contributions. The authors were brought together by an initiative of the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute launched with the support of a European Union initiative on Responsible Innovation in AI for International Peace and Security.

Tsunenobu Kimoto, a professor of electronic science and engineering at Kyoto University, literally wrote the book on silicon carbide technology. Fundamentals of Silicon Carbide Technology, published in 2014, covers properties of SiC materials, processing technology, theory, and analysis of practical devices.

Kimoto, whose silicon carbide research has led to better fabrication techniques, improved the quality of wafers and reduced their defects. His innovations, which made silicon carbide semiconductor devices more efficient and more reliable and thus helped make them commercially viable, have had a significant impact on modern technology.

Tsunenobu Kimoto

Employer

Kyoto University

Title

Professor of electronic science and engineering

Member grade

Fellow

Alma mater

Kyoto University

For his contributions to silicon carbide material and power devices, the IEEE Fellow was honored with this year’s IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award, sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society.

Silicon carbide’s humble beginnings

Decades before a Tesla Model 3 rolled off the assembly line with an SiC inverter, a small cadre of researchers, including Kimoto, foresaw the promise of silicon carbide technology. In obscurity they studied it and refined the techniques for fabricating power transistors with characteristics superior to those of the silicon devices then in mainstream use.

Today MOSFETs and other silicon carbide transistors greatly reduce on-state loss and switching losses in power-conversion systems, such as the inverters in an electric vehicle used to convert the battery’s direct current to the alternating current that drives the motor. Lower switching losses make the vehicles more efficient, reducing the size and weight of their power electronics and improving power-train performance. Silicon carbide–based chargers, which convert alternating current to direct current, provide similar improvements in efficiency.

But those tools didn’t just appear. “We had to first develop basic techniques such as how to dope the material to make n-type and p-type semiconductor crystals,” Kimoto says. N-type crystals’ atomic structures are arranged so that electrons, with their negative charges, move freely through the material’s lattice. Conversely, the atomic arrangement of p-type crystals’ contains positively charged holes.

Kimoto’s interest in silicon carbide began when he was working on his Ph.D. at Kyoto University in 1990.

“At that time, few people were working on silicon carbide devices,” he says. “And for those who were, the main target for silicon carbide was blue LED.

“There was hardly any interest in silicon carbide power devices, like MOSFETs and Schottky barrier diodes.”

Kimoto began by studying how SiC might be used as the basis of a blue LED. But then he read B. Jayant Baliga’s 1989 paper “Power Semiconductor Device Figure of Merit for High-Frequency Applications” in IEEE Electron Device Letters, and he attended a presentation by Baliga, the 2014 IEEE Medal of Honor recipient, on the topic.

“I was convinced that silicon carbide was very promising for power devices,” Kimoto says. “The problem was that we had no wafers and no substrate material,” without which it was impossible to fabricate the devices commercially.

In order to get silicon carbide power devices, “researchers like myself had to develop basic technology such as how to dope the material to make p-type and n-type crystals,” he says. “There was also the matter of forming high-quality oxides on silicon carbide.” Silicon dioxide is used in a MOSFET to isolate the gate and prevent electrons from flowing into it.

The first challenge Kimoto tackled was producing pure silicon carbide crystals. He decided to start with carborundum, a form of silicon carbide commonly used as an abrasive. Kimoto took some factory waste materials—small crystals of silicon carbide measuring roughly 5 millimeters by 8 mm­—and polished them.

He found he had highly doped n-type crystals. But he realized having only highly doped n-type SiC would be of little use in power applications unless he also could produce lightly doped (high purity) n-type and p-type SiC.

Connecting the two material types creates a depletion region straddling the junction where the n-type and p-type sides meet. In this region, the free, mobile charges are lost because of diffusion and recombination with their opposite charges, and an electric field is established that can be exploited to control the flow of charges across the boundary.

“Silicon carbide is a family with many, many brothers.”

By using an established technique, chemical vapor deposition, Kimoto was able to grow high-purity silicon carbide. The technique grows SiC as a layer on a substrate by introducing gasses into a reaction chamber.

At the time, silicon carbide, gallium nitride, and zinc selenide were all contenders in the race to produce a practical blue LED. Silicon carbide, Kimoto says, had only one advantage: It was relatively easy to make a silicon carbide p-n junction. Creating p-n junctions was still difficult to do with the other two options.

By the early 1990s, it was starting to become clear that SiC wasn’t going to win the blue-LED sweepstakes, however. The inescapable reality of the laws of physics trumped the SiC researchers’ belief that they could somehow overcome the material’s inherent properties. SiC has what is known as an indirect band gap structure, so when charge carriers are injected, the probability of the charges recombining and emitting photons is low, leading to poor efficiency as a light source.

While the blue-LED quest was making headlines, many low-profile advances were being made using SiC for power devices. By 1993, a team led by Kimoto and Hiroyuki Matsunami demonstrated the first 1,100-volt silicon carbide Schottky diodes, which they described in a paper in IEEE Electron Device Letters. The diodes produced by the team and others yielded fast switching that was not possible with silicon diodes.

“With silicon p-n diodes,” Kimoto says, “we need about a half microsecond for switching. But with a silicon carbide, it takes only 10 nanoseconds.”

The ability to switch devices on and off rapidly makes power supplies and inverters more efficient because they waste less energy as heat. Higher efficiency and less heat also permit designs that are smaller and lighter. That’s a big deal for electric vehicles, where less weight means less energy consumption.

Kimoto’s second breakthrough was identifying which form of the silicon carbide material would be most useful for electronics applications.

“Silicon carbide is a family with many, many brothers,” Kimoto says, noting that more than 100 variants with different silicon-carbon atomic structures exist.

The 6H-type silicon carbide was the default standard phase used by researchers targeting blue LEDs, but Kimoto discovered that the 4H-type has much better properties for power devices, including high electron mobility. Now all silicon carbide power devices and wafer products are made with the 4H-type.

Silicon carbide power devices in electric vehicles can improve energy efficiency by about 10 percent compared with silicon, Kimoto says. In electric trains, he says, the power required to propel the cars can be cut by 30 percent compared with those using silicon-based power devices.

Challenges remain, he acknowledges. Although silicon carbide power transistors are used in Teslas, other EVs, and electric trains, their performance is still far from ideal because of defects present at the silicon dioxide–SiC interface, he says. The interface defects lower the performance and reliability of MOS-based transistors, so Kimoto and others are working to reduce the defects.

A career sparked by semiconductors

When Kimoto was an only child growing up in Wakayama, Japan, near Osaka, his parents insisted he study medicine, and they expected him to live with them as an adult. His father was a garment factory worker; his mother was a homemaker. His move to Kyoto to study engineering “disappointed them on both counts,” he says.

His interest in engineering was sparked, he recalls, when he was in junior high school, and Japan and the United States were competing for semiconductor industry supremacy.

At Kyoto University, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering, in 1986 and 1988. After graduating, he took a job at Sumitomo Electric Industries’ R&D center in Itami. He worked with silicon-based materials there but wasn’t satisfied with the center’s research opportunities.

He returned to Kyoto University in 1990 to pursue his doctorate. While studying power electronics and high-temperature devices, he also gained an understanding of material defects, breakdown, mobility, and luminescence.

“My experience working at the company was very valuable, but I didn’t want to go back to industry again,” he says. By the time he earned his doctorate in 1996, the university had hired him as a research associate.

He has been there ever since, turning out innovations that have helped make silicon carbide an indispensable part of modern life.

Growing the silicon carbide community at IEEE

Kimoto joined IEEE in the late 1990s. An active volunteer, he has helped grow the worldwide silicon carbide community.

He is an editor of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, and he has served on program committees for conferences including the International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs and the IEEE Workshop on Wide Bandgap Power Devices and Applications.

“Now when we hold a silicon carbide conference, more than 1,000 people gather,” he says. “At IEEE conferences like the International Electron Devices Meeting or ISPSD, we always see several well-attended sessions on silicon carbide power devices because more IEEE members pay attention to this field now.”

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.

In the 2000s Conway’s honors began to dry up, while Mead continued to receive awards for VLSI, including a 2002 U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

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.

When Yifeng Chen was a teenager in Shantou, China, in the early 2000s, he saw a TV program that amazed him. The show highlighted rooftop solar panels in Germany, explaining that the panels generated electricity to power the buildings and even earned the owners money by letting them sell extra energy back to the electricity company.

Yifeng Chen

Employer

Trina Solar

Title

Assistant vice president of technology

Member Grade

Member

Alma Maters

Sun Yat-sen University, in Guangzhou, China, and Leibniz University Hannover, in Germany

An incredulous Chen marveled at not only the technology but also the economics. A power authority would pay its customers?

It sounded like magic: useful and valuable electricity extracted from simple sunlight. The wonder of it all has fueled his dreams ever since.

In 2013 Chen earned a Ph.D. in photovoltaic sciences and technologies, and today he’s assistant vice president of technology at China’s Trina Solar, a Changzhou-based company that is one of the largest PV manufacturers in the world. He leads the company’s R&D group, whose efforts have set more than two dozen world records for solar power efficiency and output.

For Chen’s contributions to the science and technology of photovoltaic energy conversion, the IEEE member received the 2023 IEEE Stuart R. Wenham Young Professional Award from the IEEE Electron Devices Society.

“I was quite surprised and so grateful” to receive the Wenham Award, Chen says. “It’s a very high-level recognition, and there are so many deserving experts from around the world.”

Trina Solar’s push for more efficient hardware

Today’s commercial solar panels typically achieve about 20 percent efficiency: They can turn one-fifth of captured sunlight into electricity. Chen’s group is trying to make the panels more efficient.

The group is focusing on optimizing solar cell designs, including the passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC), which is the industry standard for commodity solar panels.

Invented in 1983, PERCs are used today in nearly 90 percent of solar panels on the market. They incorporate coatings on the front and back to capture sunlight more effectively and to avoid losing energy, both at the surfaces and as the sunlight travels through the cell. The coatings, known as passivation layers, are made from materials such as silicon nitride, silicon dioxide, and aluminum oxide. The layers keep negatively charged free electrons and positively charged electron holes apart, preventing them from combining at the surface of the solar cell and wasting energy.

Chen and his team have developed several ways to boost the performance of PERC panels, hitting a record of 24.5 percent efficiency in 2022. One of the technologies is a multilayer antireflective coating that helps solar panels trap more light. They also created extremely fine metallization fingers—narrow lines on solar cells’ surfaces—to collect and transport the electric current and help capture more sunlight. And they developed an advanced method for laying the strips of conductive metal that run across the solar cell, known as bus bars.

Experts predict the maximum efficiency of PERC technology will be reached soon, topping out at about 25 percent.

IEEE Member Yifeng Chen displays an i-TOPCon solar module, which has a production efficiency of more than 23 percent and a power output of up to 720 watts.Trina Solar

“So the question is: How do we get solar cells even more efficient?” Chen says.

During the past few years he and his group have been working on tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) technology. A TOPCon cell uses a thin layer of “tunneling oxide” insulating material—typically silicon dioxide—which is applied to the solar cell’s surface. Similar to the passivation layers on PERC cells, the tunnel oxide stops free electrons and electron holes from combining and wasting energy.

In 2022 Trina created a TOPCon-type panel with a record 25.5 percent efficiency, and two months ago the company announced it had achieved a record 740.6 watts for a mass-produced TOPCon solar module. The latter was the 26th record Trina set for solar power–related efficiencies and outputs.

To achieve that record-breaking performance for their TOPCon panels, Chen and his team optimized the company’s manufacturing processes including laser-induced firing, in which a laser heats part of the solar cell and creates bonds between the metal contacts and the silicon wafer. The resulting connections are stronger and better aligned, enhancing efficiency.

“We’re trying to keep improving things to trap just a little bit more sunlight,” Chen says. “Gaining 1 or 2 percent more efficiency is huge. These may sound like very tiny increases, but at scale these small improvements create a lot of value in terms of economics, sustainability, and value to society.”

As the efficiency of solar cells rises and prices drop, Chen says, he expects solar power to continue to grow around the world. China currently leads the world in installed solar power capacity, accounting for about 40 percent of global capacity. The United States is a distant second, with 12 percent, according to a 2023 Rystad Energy report. The report predicts that China’s 500 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2023 is likely to exceed 1 terawatt by 2026.

“I’m inspired by using science to create something useful for human beings, and then driven by the pursuit for excellence,” Chen says. “We can always learn something new to make that change, improve that piece of technology, and get just that little bit better.”

Trained by solar-power pioneers

Chen attended Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, earning a bachelor’s degree in optics sciences and technologies in 2008. He stayed on to pursue a Ph.D. in photovoltaics sciences and technologies. His research was on high-efficiency solar cells made from wafer-based crystalline silicon. His adviser was Hui Shen, a leading PV professor and founder of the university’s Institute for Solar Energy Systems. Chen calls him “the first of three very important figures in my scientific career.”

In 2011 Chen spent a year as a Ph.D. student at Leibniz University Hannover, in Germany. There he studied under Pietro P. Altermatt, the second influential figure in his career.

Altermatt—a prominent silicon solar-cell expert who would later become principal scientist at Trina—advised Chen on his computational techniques for modeling and analyzing the behavior of 2D and 3D solar cells. The models play a key role in designing solar cells to optimize their output.

“Gaining 1 or 2 percent more efficiency is huge. These may sound like very tiny increases, but at scale, these small improvements create a lot of value in terms of economics, sustainability, and value to society.”

“Dr. Altermatt changed how I look at things,” Chen says. “In Germany, they really focus on device physics.”

After completing his Ph.D., Chen became a technical assistant at Trina, where he met the third highly influential person in his career: Pierre Verlinden, a pioneering photovoltaic researcher who was the company’s chief scientist.

At Trina, Chen quickly ascended through R&D roles. He has been the company’s assistant vice president of technology since 2023.

IEEE’s “treasure” trove of research

Chen joined IEEE as a student because he wanted to attend the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, the longest-running event dedicated to photovoltaics, solar cells, and solar power.

The membership was particularly beneficial during his Ph.D. studies, he says, because he used the IEEE Xplore Digital Library to access archival papers.

“My work has certainly been inspired by papers I found via IEEE,” Chen says. “Plus, you end up clicking around and reading other work that isn’t related to your field but is so interesting.

“The publication repository is a treasure. It’s eye-opening to see what’s going on inside and outside of your industry, with new discoveries happening all the time.”

In my March column, I discussed the need for IEEE to increase its retention of younger members and its engagement with industry. Another one of my priorities is to increase the organization’s outreach to the broader public. I want people to know who we are and what we do.

To tell the story of IEEE is to share the impact our members, products, and services make around the globe. Did you know the top 50 patenting organizations worldwide cite IEEE publications three times more than those of any other publisher? And that IEEE publishes three of the top five publications on artificial intelligence, automation and control systems, and computer hardware and software? And that IEEE has an active portfolio of more than 1,100 standards in areas including the Internet, the metaverse, blockchain, sustainable and ethical design, and age-appropriate design for children’s digital services? I bet you didn’t know that IEEE members file more than 140,000 patents yearly and have won 21 Nobel Prizes thus far.

Our volunteers write, review, and publish much of the world’s technical literature and convene conferences on every conceivable technical topic. We also establish future directions communities on emerging technologies, pursue technical megatrends, provide opportunities for continued professional development, and develop and publish technology road maps on semiconductors and other important technologies.

Here are some of the ways IEEE is working to amplify its reach.

A powerful voice

As we navigate a new era in technology—one driven by AI and other disruptive technologies—the role of IEEE in advocating for pivotal policy issues in science and technology and engaging with policymakers and stakeholders cannot be understated.

As the world’s largest technical professional organization, IEEE is uniquely positioned to be the bridge among the experts who work in areas across IEEE’s organic technical breadth, including communications, computer science, power and energy, management, reliability, and ethics. IEEE can engage with the policymakers who devise the regulatory environment, and with the public who have varying levels of interaction and acceptance of emerging technologies. That includes collaborating with local technical communities worldwide, promoting outreach and educational activities to the public, and connecting with other organizations that are actively working in these spaces.

For example, in April I participated in the annual IEEE-USA Congressional Visits Day, which provides volunteers with the opportunity to interact with their senators and representatives. The event, a cornerstone in the technology and engineering community, serves as a platform to elevate the voices of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, researchers, educators, and technology executives. It plays a vital role in driving dialogue among engineering and technology professionals and policymakers to advocate for issues pertinent to IEEE members in the United States. It’s a unique opportunity for participants to engage directly with elected officials, fostering discussions on legislation and policies that shape the country’s technology landscape.

By empowering our voice in assisting with global public policymaking, we can reinforce IEEE’s position as the world’s trusted source for information and insights on emerging technology and trends in the marketplace. Each one of us can be an ambassador for the IEEE, telling people about how IEEE has helped us in our careers and benefits humanity.

Thinking outside the box

Other ways IEEE is expanding its reach is by participating at events one might not normally associate with the organization, as well as a new series of videos about members. One such event is the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention to be held in August in Glasgow. Many IEEE members, myself included, were inspired to become involved in technology by science fiction movies, TV shows, and books. As a young man, I dreamed of going into outer space to explore new worlds and discover new things. My interest in science fiction inspired me to want to understand the physical sciences and to learn how to use natural laws and logic to make things. My hope is that IEEE’s presence at such events can inspire the next generation to see the myriad of potential career and professional opportunities available to those interested in science, technology, and engineering.

I am also excited about a new series of videos being distributed to broadcast TV and cable stations, social media platforms, and news media outlets worldwide, targeting early career technology professionals, existing IEEE members, and the general public.

The international “IEEE Is Your Competitive Edge” videos tell stories of IEEE members and how their membership gave them a competitive edge. We selected individuals with diverse backgrounds for the videos, which are being shot on location around the globe. The goal of the videos is to encourage technologists to recognize IEEE as a vital part of their profession and career, as well as to see the advantages of membership and participating in IEEE activities. The benefits of this campaign are wide ranging and include raising IEEE’s public visibility and growing its membership. It is a way to tell our story and increase awareness of a great organization. These videos will also be available to IEEE organizational units, regions, and sections for their promotional efforts to use.

By celebrating the pride and prestige of our professions, we can help increase the public’s understanding of the contributions electrical, electronics, and computer engineers make to society. IEEE consistently and proudly demonstrates how its members improve the global community and have helped to build today’s technologically advanced world.

2024 IEEE President’s Award

At the IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit and Honors Ceremony, Dr. Gladys B. West was recognized as the recipient of the 2024 IEEE President’s Award for her trailblazing career in mathematics and her vital contributions to modern technology. Dr. West is known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth. While working at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., she conducted seminal work on satellite geodesy models that was pivotal in the development of the GPS. She worked at the center for 42 years, retiring in 1998.

As IEEE continues to enhance its reach, relevance, and value to an inclusive and global community, it was my honor to recognize such a technology giant who serves as a role model and inspiration for early career and young engineers and technologists, as well as those from underrepresented communities, to innovate to solve grand world challenges.

—Tom Coughlin

IEEE president and CEO

This article appears in the June 2024 print issue as “Amplifying IEEE’s Reach.”

Herbert Kroemer

Nobel Laureate

Life Fellow, 95; died 8 March

Kroemer, a pioneering physicist, is a Nobel laureate, receiving the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed and opto-electronics. The devices laid the foundation for the modern era of microchips, computers, and information technology. Heterostructures describe the interfaces between two semiconductors that serve as the building blocks between more elaborate nanostructures.

He also received the 2002 IEEE Medal of Honor for “contributions to high-frequency transistors and hot-electron devices, especially heterostructure devices from heterostructure bipolar transistors to lasers, and their molecular beam epitaxy technology.”

Kroemer was professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, when he died.

He began his career in 1952 at the telecommunications research laboratory of the German Postal Service, in Darmstadt. The postal service also ran the telephone system and had a small semiconductor research group, which included Kroemer and about nine other scientists, according to IEEE Spectrum.

In the mid-1950s, he took a research position at RCA Laboratories, in Princeton, N.J. There, Kroemer originated the concept of the heterostructure bipolar transistor (HBT), a device that contains differing semiconductor materials for the emitter and base regions, creating a heterojunction. HBTs can handle high-frequency signals (up to several thousand gigahertz) and are commonly used in radio frequency systems, including RF power amplifiers in cell phones.

In 1957, he returned to Germany to research potential uses of gallium arsenide at Phillips Research Laboratory, in Hamburg. Two years later, Kroemer moved back to the United States to join Varian Associates, an electronics company in Palo Alto, Calif., where he invented the double heterostructure laser. It was the first laser to operate continuously at room temperature. The innovation paved the way for semiconductor lasers used in CD players, fiber optics, and other applications.

In 1964, Kroemer became the first researcher to publish an explanation of the Gunn Effect, a high-frequency oscillation of electrical current flowing through certain semiconducting solids. The effect, first observed by J.B. Gunn in the early 1960s, produces short radio waves called microwaves.

Kroemer taught electrical engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 1968 to 1976 before joining UCSB, where he led the university’s semiconductor research program. With his colleague Charles Kittel, Kroemer co-authored the 1980 textbook Thermal Physics. He also wrote Quantum Mechanics for Engineering, Materials Science, and Applied Physics, published in 1994.

He was a Fellow of the American Physics Society and a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Born and educated in Germany, Kroemer received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Jena, and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Göttingen, all in physics.

Vladimir G. “Walt” Gelnovatch

Past president of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society

Life Fellow, 86; died 1 March

Gelnovatch served as 1989 president of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (formerly the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society). He was an electrical engineer for nearly 40 years at the Signal Corps Laboratories, in Fort Monmouth, N.J.

Gelnovatch served in the U.S. Army from 1956 to 1959. While stationed in Germany, he helped develop a long-line microwave radiotelephone network, a military telecommunications network that spanned most of Western Europe.

As an undergraduate student at Monmouth University, in West Long Branch, N.J., he founded the school’s first student chapter of the Institute of Radio Engineers, an IEEE predecessor society. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering, Gelnovatch earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1967 from New York University, in New York City.

Following a brief stint as a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Gelnovatch joined the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratory (SCEL) as a research engineer. His initial work focused on developing CAD programs to help researchers design microwave circuits and communications networks. He then shifted his focus to developing mission electronics. Over the next four years, he studied vacuum technology, germanium, silicon, and semiconductors.

He also spearheaded the U.S. Army’s research on monolithic microwave-integrated circuits. The integrated circuit devices operate at microwave frequencies and typically perform functions such as power amplification, low-noise amplification, and high-frequency switching.

Gelnovatch retired in 1997 as director of the U.S. Army Electron Devices and Technology Laboratory, the successor to SCEL.

During his career, Gelnovatch published 50 research papers and was granted eight U.S. patents. He also served as associate editor and contributor to the Microwave Journal for more than 20 years.

Gelnovatch received the 1997 IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Service Award. The U.S. Army also honored him in 1990 with its highest civilian award—the Exceptional Service Award.

Adolf Goetzberger

Solar energy pioneer

Life Fellow, 94; died 24 February

Goetzberger founded the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), a solar energy R&D company in Freiburg, Germany. He is known for pioneering the concept of agrivoltaics—the dual use of land for solar energy production and agriculture.

After earning a Ph.D. in physics in 1955 from the University of Munich, Goetzberger moved to the United States. He joined Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1956 as a researcher. The semiconductor manufacturer was founded by Nobel laureate William Shockley. Goetzberger later left Shockley to join Bell Labs, in Murray Hill, N.J.

He moved back to Germany in 1968 and was appointed director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid-State Physics, in Breisgau. There, he founded a solar energy working group and pushed for an independent institute dedicated to the field, which became ISE in 1981.

In 1983, Goetzberger became the first German national to receive the J.J. Ebers Award from the IEEE Electron Devices Society. It honored him for developing a silicon field-effect transistor. Goetzberger also received the 1997 IEEE William R. Cherry Award, the 1989 Medal of the Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg, and the 1992 Order of Merit First Class of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Michael Barnoski

Fiber optics pioneer

Life senior member, 83; died 23 February

Barnoski founded two optics companies and codeveloped the optical time domain reflectometer, a device that detects breaks in fiber optic cables.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Dayton, in Ohio, Barnoski joined Honeywell in Boston. After 10 years at the company, he left to work at Hughes Research Laboratories, in Malibu, Calif. For a decade, he led all fiber optics–related activities for Hughes Aircraft and managed a global team of scientists, engineers, and technicians.

In 1976, Barnoski collaborated with Corning Glass Works, a materials science company in New York, to develop the optical time domain reflectometer.

Three years later, Theodore Mainman, inventor of the laser, recruited Barnoski to join TRW, an electronics company in Euclid, Ohio. In 1980, Barnoski founded PlessCor Optronics laboratory, an integrated electrical-optical interface supplier, in Chatsworth, Calif. He served as president and CEO until 1990, when he left and began consulting.

In 2002, Barnoski founded Nanoprecision Products Inc., a company that specialized in ultraprecision 3D stamping, in El Segundo, Calif.

In addition to his work in the private sector, Barnoski taught summer courses at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for 20 years. He also wrote and edited three books on the fundamentals of optical fiber communications. He retired in 2018.

For his contributions to fiber optics, he received the 1988 John Tyndall Award, jointly presented by the IEEE Photonics Society and the Optical Society of America.

Barnoski also earned a master’s degree in microwave electronics and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and applied physics, both from Cornell.

Kanaiyalal R. Shah

Founder of Shah and Associates

Senior member, 84; died 6 December

Shah was founder and president of Shah and Associates (S&A), an electrical systems consulting firm, in Gaithersburg, Md.

Shah received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1961 from the Baroda College (now the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda), in India. After earning a master’s degree in electrical machines in 1963 from Gujarat University, in India, Shah emigrated to the United States. Two years later, he received a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri in Rolla.

In 1967, he moved to Virginia and joined the Virginia Military Institute’s electrical engineering faculty, in Lexington. He left to move to Missouri, earning a Ph.D. in EE from the University of Missouri in Columbia, in 1969. He then moved back to Virginia and taught electrical engineering for two years at Virginia Tech.

From 1971 to 1973, Shah worked as a research engineer at Hughes Research Laboratories, in Malibu, Calif. He left to manage R&D at engineering services company Gilbert/Commonwealth International, in Jackson, Mich.

Around this time, Shah founded S&A, where he designed safe and efficient electrical systems. He developed novel approaches to ensuring safety in electrical power transmission and distribution, including patenting a UV lighting power system. He also served as an expert witness in electrical safety injury lawsuits.

He later returned to academia, lecturing at George Washington University and Ohio State University. Shah also wrote a series of short courses on power engineering. In 2005, he funded the construction and running of the Dr. K.R. Shah Higher Secondary School and the Smt. D.K. Shah Primary School in his hometown of Bhaner, Gujarat, in India.

John Brooks Slaughter

First African American director of the National Science Foundation

Life Fellow, 89; died 6 December

Slaughter, former director of the NSF in the early 1980s, was a passionate advocate for providing opportunities for underrepresented minorities and women in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.

Later in his career, he was a distinguished professor of engineering and education at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, in Los Angeles. He helped found the school’s Center for Engineering Diversity, which was renamed the John Brooks Slaughter Center for Engineering Diversity in 2023, as a tribute to his efforts.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1956 from Kansas State University, in Manhattan, Slaughter developed military aircraft at General Dynamics’ Convair division in San Diego. From there, he moved on to the information systems technology department in the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory, also located in the city. He earned a master’s degree in engineering in 1961 from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Slaughter earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego, in 1971 and was promoted to director of the Navy Electronics Laboratory on the same day he defended his dissertation, according to The Institute.

In 1975, he left the organization to become director of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington, in Seattle. Two years later, Slaughter was appointed assistant director in charge of the NSF’s Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth and Ocean Sciences Division (now called the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences), in Washington, D.C.

In 1979, he accepted the position of academic vice president and provost of Washington State University, in Pullman. The following year, he was appointed director of the NSF by U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s administration. Under Slaughter’s leadership, the organization bolstered funding for science programs at historically Black colleges and universities, including Howard University, in Washington, D.C. While Harvard, Stanford, and CalTech traditionally received preference from the NSF for funding new facilities and equipment, Slaughter encouraged less prestigious universities to apply and compete for those grants.

He resigned just two years after accepting the post because he could not publicly support President Ronald Reagan’s initiatives to eradicate funding for science education, he told The Institute in a 2023 interview.

In 1981, Slaughter was appointed chancellor of the University of Maryland, in College Park. He left in 1988 to become president of Occidental College, in Los Angeles, where he helped transform the school into one of the country’s most diverse liberal arts colleges.

In 2000, Slaughter became CEO and president of the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, the largest provider of college scholarships for underrepresented minorities pursuing degrees at engineering schools, in Alexandria, Va.

Slaughter left the council in 2010 and joined USC. He taught courses on leadership, diversity, and technological literacy at Rossier Graduate School of Education until retiring in 2022.

Slaughter received the 2002 IEEE Founders Medal for “leadership and administration significantly advancing inclusion and racial diversity in the engineering profession across government, academic, and nonprofit organizations.”

Don Bramlett

Former IEEE Region 4 Director

Life senior member, 73; died 2 December

Bramlett served as 2009–2010 director of IEEE Region 4. He was an active volunteer with the IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section.

He worked as a senior project manager for 35 years at DTE Energy, an energy services company, in Detroit.

Bramlett was also active in the Boy Scouts of America (which will be known as Scouting America beginning in 2025). He served as leader of his local troop and was a council member. The Boy Scouts honored him with a Silver Beaver award recognizing his “exceptional character and distinguished service.”

Bramlett earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Detroit Mercy.

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.”

So you want your company to begin using artificial intelligence. Before rushing to adopt AI, consider the potential risks including legal issues around data protection, intellectual property, and liability. Through a strategic risk management framework, businesses can mitigate major compliance risks and uphold customer trust while taking advantage of recent AI advancements.

Check your training data

First, assess whether the data used to train your AI model complies with applicable laws such as India’s 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Bill and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which address data ownership, consent, and compliance. A timely legal review that determines whether collected data may be used lawfully for machine-learning purposes can prevent regulatory and legal headaches later.

That legal assessment involves a deep dive into your company’s existing terms of service, privacy policy statements, and other customer-facing contractual terms to determine what permissions, if any, have been obtained from a customer or user. The next step is to determine whether such permissions will suffice for training an AI model. If not, additional customer notification or consent likely will be required.

Different types of data bring different issues of consent and liability. For example, consider whether your data is personally identifiable information, synthetic content (typically generated by another AI system), or someone else’s intellectual property. Data minimization—using only what you need—is a good principle to apply at this stage.

Pay careful attention to how you obtained the data. OpenAI has been sued for scraping personal data to train its algorithms. And, as explained below, data-scraping can raise questions of copyright infringement. In addition, U.S. civil action laws can apply because scraping could violate a website’s terms of service. U.S. security-focused laws such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act arguably might be applied outside the country’s territory in order to prosecute foreign entities that have allegedly stolen data from secure systems.

Watch for intellectual property issues

The New York Times recently sued OpenAI for using the newspaper’s content for training purposes, basing its arguments on claims of copyright infringement and trademark dilution. The lawsuit holds an important lesson for all companies dealing in AI development: Be careful about using copyrighted content for training models, particularly when it’s feasible to license such content from the owner. Apple and other companies have considered licensing options, which likely will emerge as the best way to mitigate potential copyright infringement claims.

To reduce concerns about copyright, Microsoft has offered to stand behind the outputs of its AI assistants, promising to defend customers against any potential copyright infringement claims. Such intellectual property protections could become the industry standard.

Companies also need to consider the potential for inadvertent leakage of confidential and trade-secret information by an AI product. If allowing employees to internally use technologies such as ChatGPT (for text) and Github Copilot (for code generation), companies should note that such generative AI tools often take user prompts and outputs as training data to further improve their models. Luckily, generative AI companies typically offer more secure services and the ability to opt out of model training.

Look out for hallucinations

Copyright infringement claims and data-protection issues also emerge when generative AI models spit out training data as their outputs.

That is often a result of “overfitting” models, essentially a training flaw whereby the model memorizes specific training data instead of learning general rules about how to respond to prompts. The memorization can cause the AI model to regurgitate training data as output—which could be a disaster from a copyright or data-protection perspective.

Memorization also can lead to inaccuracies in the output, sometimes referred to as “hallucinations.” In one interesting case, a New York Times reporter was experimenting with Bing AI chatbot Sydney when it professed its love for the reporter. The viral incident prompted a discussion about the need to monitor how such tools are deployed, especially by younger users, who are more likely to attribute human characteristics to AI.

Hallucinations also have caused problems in professional domains. Two lawyers were sanctioned, for example, after submitting a legal brief written by ChatGPT that cited nonexistent case law.

Such hallucinations demonstrate why companies need to test and validate AI products to avoid not only legal risks but also reputational harm. Many companies have devoted engineering resources to developing content filters that improve accuracy and reduce the likelihood of output that’s offensive, abusive, inappropriate, or defamatory.

Keeping track of data

If you have access to personally identifiable user data, it’s vital that you handle the data securely. You also must guarantee that you can delete the data and prevent its use for machine-learning purposes in response to user requests or instructions from regulators or courts. Maintaining data provenance and ensuring robust infrastructure is paramount for all AI engineering teams.

“Through a strategic risk management framework, businesses can mitigate major compliance risks and uphold customer trust while taking advantage of recent AI advancements.”

Those technical requirements are connected to legal risk. In the United States, regulators including the Federal Trade Commission have relied on algorithmic disgorgement, a punitive measure. If a company has run afoul of applicable laws while collecting training data, it must delete not only the data but also the models trained on the tainted data. Keeping accurate records of which datasets were used to train different models is advisable.

Beware of bias in AI algorithms

One major AI challenge is the potential for harmful bias, which can be ingrained within algorithms. When biases are not mitigated before launching the product, applications can perpetuate or even worsen existing discrimination.

Predictive policing algorithms employed by U.S. law enforcement, for example, have been shown to reinforce prevailing biases. Black and Latino communities wind up disproportionately targeted.

When used for loan approvals or job recruitment, biased algorithms can lead to discriminatory outcomes.

Experts and policymakers say it’s important that companies strive for fairness in AI. Algorithmic bias can have a tangible, problematic impact on civil liberties and human rights.

Be transparent

Many companies have established ethics review boards to ensure their business practices are aligned with principles of transparency and accountability. Best practices include being transparent about data use and being accurate in your statements to customers about the abilities of AI products.

U.S. regulators frown on companies that overpromise AI capabilities in their marketing materials. Regulators also have warned companies against quietly and unilaterally changing the data-licensing terms in their contracts as a way to expand the scope of their access to customer data.

Take a global, risk-based approach

Many experts on AI governance recommend taking a risk-based approach to AI development. The strategy involves mapping the AI projects at your company, scoring them on a risk scale, and implementing mitigation actions. Many companies incorporate risk assessments into existing processes that measure privacy-based impacts of proposed features.

When establishing AI policies, it’s important to ensure the rules and guidelines you’re considering will be adequate to mitigate risk in a global manner, taking into account the latest international laws.

A regionalized approach to AI governance might be expensive and error-prone. The European Union’s recently passed Artificial Intelligence Act includes a detailed set of requirements for companies developing and using AI, and similar laws are likely to emerge soon in Asia.

Keep up the legal and ethical reviews

Legal and ethical reviews are important throughout the life cycle of an AI product—training a model, testing and developing it, launching it, and even afterward. Companies should proactively think about how to implement AI to remove inefficiencies while also preserving the confidentiality of business and customer data.

For many people, AI is new terrain. Companies should invest in training programs to help their workforce understand how best to benefit from the new tools and to use them to propel their business.

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.

In her nearly 20 years as a volunteer, Akar has been a member of several IEEE boards and committees including the Young Professionals committee, the Technical Activities Board, and the Nominations and Appointments Committee for top-level positions.

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’s Women 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 Activities Volunteer 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.”

This article is part of our exclusive career advice series in partnership with the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society.

As you begin your professional career freshly armed with an engineering degree, your initial roles and responsibilities are likely to revolve around the knowledge and competencies you learned at school. If you do well in your job, you’re apt to be promoted, gaining more responsibilities such as managing projects, interacting with other departments, making presentations to management, and meeting with customers. You probably also will gain a general understanding of how your company and the business world work.

At some point in your career, you’re likely to be asked an important question: Are you interested in a management role?

There is no right or wrong answer. Engineers have fulfilling, rewarding careers as individual contributors and as managers—and companies need both. You should decide your path based on your interests and ambitions as well as your strengths and shortcomings.

However, the specific considerations involved aren’t always obvious. To help you, this article covers some of the differences between the two career paths, as well as factors that might influence you.

The remarks are based on our personal experiences in corporate careers spanning decades in the managerial track and the technical track. Tariq worked at Honeywell; Gus at 3M. We have included advice from IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society colleagues.

Opting for either track isn’t a career-long commitment. Many engineers who go into management return to the technical track, in some cases of their own volition. And management opportunities can be adopted late in one’s career, again based on individual preferences or organizational needs.

In either case, there tends to be a cost to switching tracks. While the decision of which track to take certainly isn’t irrevocable, it behooves engineers to understand the pros and cons involved.

Differences between the two tracks

Broadly, the managerial track is similar across all companies. It starts with supervising small groups, extends through middle-management layers, progresses up to leadership positions and, ultimately, the executive suite. Management backgrounds can vary, however. For example, although initial management levels in a technology organization generally require an engineering or science degree, some top leaders in a company might be more familiar with sales, marketing, or finance.

It’s a different story for climbing the technical ladder. Beyond the first engineering-level positions, there is no standard model. In some cases individual contributors hit the career ceiling below the management levels. In others, formal roles exist that are equivalent to junior management positions in terms of pay scale and other aspects.

“Engineers have fulfilling, rewarding careers as individual contributors and as managers—and companies need both.”

Some organizations have a well-defined promotional system with multiple salary bands for technical staff, parallel to those for management positions. Senior technologists often have a title such as Fellow, staff scientist, or architect, with top-of-the-ladder positions including corporate Fellow, chief engineer/scientist, and enterprise architect.

Organizational structures vary considerably among small companies—including startups, medium companies, and large corporations. Small businesses often don’t have formal or extensive technical tracks, but their lack of structure can make it easier to advance in responsibilities and qualifications while staying deeply technical.

In more established companies, structures and processes tend to be well defined and set by policy.

For those interested in the technical track, the robustness of a company’s technical ladder can be a factor in joining the company. Conversely, if you’re interested in the technical ladder and you’re working for a company that does not offer one, that might be a reason to look for opportunities elsewhere.

Understanding the career paths a company offers is especially important for technologists.

The requirements for success

First and foremost, the track you lean toward should align with aspirations for your career—and your personal life.

As you advance in the management path, you can drive business and organizational success through decisions you make and influence. You also will be expected to shape and nurture employees in your organization by providing feedback and guidance. You likely will have more control over resources—people as well as funding—and more opportunity for defining and executing strategy.

The technical path has much going for it as well, especially if you are passionate about solving technical challenges and increasing your expertise in your area of specialization. You won’t be supervising large numbers of employees, but you will manage significant projects and programs that give you chances to propose and define such initiatives. You also likely will have more control of your time and not have to deal with the stress involved with being responsible for the performance of the people and groups reporting to you.

The requirements for success in the two tracks offer contrasts as well. Technical expertise is an entry requirement for the technical track. It’s not just technical depth, however. As you advance, technical breadth is likely to become increasingly important and will need to be supplemented by an understanding of the business, including markets, customers, economics, and government regulations.

Pure technical expertise will never be the sole performance criterion. Soft skills such as verbal and written communication, getting along with people, time management, and teamwork are crucial for managers and leaders.

On the financial side, salaries and growth prospects generally will be higher on the managerial track. Executive tiers can include substantial bonuses and stock options. Salary growth is typically slower for senior technologists.

Managerial and technical paths are not always mutually exclusive. It is, in fact, not uncommon for staff members who are on the technical ladder to supervise small teams. And some senior managers are able to maintain their technical expertise and earn recognition for it.

We recommend you take time to consider which of the two tracks is more attractive—before you get asked to choose. If you’re early in your career, you don’t need to make this important decision now. You can keep your options open and discuss them with your peers, senior colleagues, and management. And you can contemplate and clarify what your objectives and preferences are. When the question does come up, you’ll be better prepared to answer it.

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 students programmed the app using Visual Studio Code, React Native, Expo Go, and GitHub.

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.”

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.”

The IEEE Board of Directors shapes the future direction of IEEE and is committed to ensuring IEEE remains a strong and vibrant organization—serving the needs of its members and the engineering and technology community worldwide—while fulfilling the IEEE mission of advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

This article features IEEE Board of Directors members Sergio Benedetto, Jenifer Castillo, and Fred Schindler.

IEEE Life Fellow Sergio Benedetto

Vice President, Publication Services and Products

Sergio Bregni

Benedetto is a professor emeritus at Politecnico di Torino, in Turin, Italy. His research in digital communications has contributed to the theory of error-correcting codes, which yield performance close to the Shannon theory limits and, according to Benedetto, explain “the astonishing performance” of turbo codes. Benedetto has collaborated with the European Space Agency and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to design codes that are now standard for satellite communications.

As an active member of the IEEE Communications Society and in positions he has held related to IEEE publications for more than 20 years, Benedetto has seen IEEE’s most invaluable asset at work—great scientists in the IEEE field of interests willing to serve their community as volunteers.

Benedetto has been active in digital communications for more than 40 years. He has coauthored five books and more than 250 papers. His publications have received more than 20,000 citations. He is an IEEE Life Fellow and a member of the Academy of Science of Turin. He has received numerous international awards throughout his career, including the 2008 IEEE Communications Society Edwin Howard Armstrong Award.

IEEE Senior Member Jenifer Castillo

Director, Region 9: Latin America

Lufthansa Technik

Castillo is a sales and key account manager in Puerto Rico for a leading maintenance, repair, and overhaul services provider in the aviation industry. In her role, she heads projects, including negotiating and executing contracts, and considers customers’ needs while prioritizing aviation industry safety. Or, as Castillo likes to say, she “plays with planes on the beautiful island of Puerto Rico.”

A member of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society and IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, Castillo has been an active IEEE volunteer for many years. She was the first Latina to chair the IEEE Women in Engineering committee, bringing a different perspective to the organization. During her 2021-2022 term, she introduced several benefits, including two awards and an international scholarship, while nurturing a global volunteer network supporting women’s advancement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

Castillo helped found IEEE MOVE Puerto Rico, which is a portable version of the IEEE-USA MOVE program that provides communities affected by natural disasters with power and Internet access in areas. The disaster response during hurricane Maria, supported by the IEEE Foundation, was the turning point for the local sections to promote this initiative that enabled volunteers to support the Red Cross’ response and recovery efforts.

Castillo has been a member of the IEEE Industry Engagement Committee and chair of the IEEE Puerto Rico and Caribbean Section. In 2020, she was recognized with the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Achievement Award for “sustained and outstanding achievements in promoting students, IEEE Young Professionals, and IEEE WIE membership development in Latin America and the Caribbean.” She was honored with the IEEE Region 9 Oscar C. Fernández Outstanding Volunteer Award in 2020.

IEEE Life Fellow Manfred “Fred” Schindler

Vice President, Technical Activities

Lyle Photos

Schindler has spent his career in industry working on RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave semiconductors. He has led the development of advanced RF semiconductor products for commercial and defense applications. “Taking a technology from the lab and seeing it through to high-volume production is rewarding,” he says, “especially knowing that virtually everyone carries a device using the technologies we developed.”

A member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (IEEE MTT-S), Schindler served as its president in 2003. He also has served as chair of both the IEEE Conferences Committee and the IEEE International Microwave Conference. As vice president of Technical Activities, he is working to overcome structural barriers among established communities to ensure IEEE’s future stability and success.

Schindler holds 11 patents and has published more than 40 technical articles. He founded the IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium, and has contributed a column on microwave business to IEEE Microwave Magazine since 2011. He received the 2018 IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Service Award for his efforts benefiting the society and the microwave profession.

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.

Access to trustworthy information

Kim joined IEEE when he was a doctoral student so he could present his research papers at IEEE conferences. In 2016 a paper he wrote with Stern was published in the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing. It won them the 2019 IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Best Paper Award. Kim felt honored, he says, to receive this “prestigious award.”

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.

He is a regular attendee at the annual IEEE Conference for Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. This year he is the technical program committee’s vice chair for the meeting, which is scheduled for next month in Seoul.

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.

Jung Uck Seo, who served as 2003–2004 IEEE Region 10 director, died on 11 January at the age of 89.

While working at Korea Telecom, the IEEE Life Fellow led the development of the TDX-1 digital telephone switching system. Later he worked to commercialize the code division multiple access method of encoding data sources. CDMA, known as 2G, allowed data to be transmitted over a single radio-frequency carrier by one transmitter, or to use a single RF carrier frequency with multiple transmitters.

Seo also served in leadership positions for several South Korean government divisions including the Agency for Defense Development and the Korean Communications Agency.

Early days in defense technology

After earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National University in 1957, Seo joined the Republic of Korea Air Force Academy, in Cheongju, as an instructor of communications and electronics. Three years later he left for the United States to attend Texas A&M University, in College Station. He earned master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering there in 1963 and 1969, respectively.

He returned to South Korea in 1969 and joined the newly established Agency for Defense Development, in Daejon, as a section chief. There he developed technologies for the military, including a two-way radio, a telephone linking system, and a portable calculator. Seo rose through the ranks and eventually was named president of the electronics and communications division.

He left in 1982 to join Seoul National University, where he taught for a year as a professor of electromagnetic field theory.

In 1983 he joined Korea Telecom (now KT Corp.), in Seongnam-si, where he served as senior executive vice president. He was in charge of R&D for digital switching and quality assurance systems. During his time at the agency, he led the development of the Time Division Exchange, or TDX-1—a digital switching system that was deployed across the country’s telecom networks in 1984.

A leader in telecommunications in South Korea

In 1991 Seo was appointed by the South Korean government to serve as minister of science and technology. In this role, he approved government funding for research and development.

After two years he left to become president of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, in Seoul, where he led the effort to commercialize CDMA technology. Seo and a team of KIST researchers worked with Qualcomm to develop CDMA technology for cellular networks. In 1996 mobile communications carriers in South Korea began to provide CDMA wireless services, becoming the first commercial carriers worldwide to apply the technology.

In addition to his leadership at KIST, Seo served as president and vice chairman of SK Telecom, a wireless operator and former film distributor in Seoul. He was chief executive of the Korea Accreditation Board, which operates accreditation programs for management and systems certifications based on international standards.

A lifelong member of IEEE–Eta Kappa Nu, Seo was named an eminent member in 2012, the honor society’s highest level of membership.

The South Korean government bestowed him with several honors including the Order of Industrial Service Merit, the Order of Civil Merit, and the Order of Service Merit.

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.”

Kingsley Fregene wants to keep people out of harm’s way—so much so that he has ordered his life around that fundamental goal. As director of technology integration at Lockheed Martin, in Grand Prairie, Texas, he leads a team that is actively pursuing breakthroughs designed to, among other things, allow life-saving missions to be performed in hazardous environments without putting humans at risk.

Fregene, an IEEE Fellow, has supervised the development of algorithms for autonomous aircraft used for military missions and disaster-recovery operations. He also contributed to algorithms enabling autonomous undersea vehicles to inspect offshore oil and gas platforms after hurricanes so that divers don’t have to.

Kingsley Fregene

Employer

Lockheed Martin in Grand Prairie, Texas

Title

Director of technology integration and intellectual property

Member grade

Fellow

Alma maters

Federal University of Technology in Owerri, Nigeria; University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada

One of his recent projects was helping to design the world’s first autonomous unmanned aircraft system in which the entire vehicle—not just its rotors—spins. The micro air vehicle was inspired by the aerodynamics of maple seeds, whose twirling slows and prolongs their descent.

The benefits of unmanned aerial vehicles

In a major project more than a decade ago, Fregene and colleagues at Lockheed Martin teamed up with Kaman Aerospace of Bloomfield, Conn., on an unmanned version of its K-Max helicopter. The K-Max can ferry as much as 2,700 kilograms of cargo in a single trip. The Lockheed team created and implemented mission systems and control algorithms that augmented the control system already on the helicopter, enabling it to fly completely autonomously.

The U.S. Marine Corps used the autonomous K-Max helicopters for resupply missions in Afghanistan. It’s been estimated that those delivery flights made hundreds of ground-based convoy missions unnecessary, thereby sparing thousands of troops from being exposed to improvised explosive devices, land mines, and snipers.

The autonomous version of the K-Max also has been demonstrated in disaster-recovery operations. It offers the possibility of keeping humanitarian aid workers away from dangerous situations, as well as rescuing people trapped in disaster zones.

“It is often better to fly in lifesaving supplies instead of loading trucks with supplies to bring them along roads that might not be passable anymore,” Fregene says.

K-Max and one of Lockheed Martin’s small UAVs, the Indago, have been used to fight fires. Indago flies above structures engulfed in flames and maps out the hot zones, on which K-Max then drops flame retardant or water.

“This collaborative mission between two of our platforms means no firefighters are put in harm’s way,” Fregene says.

He and his team also helped in the development of the maple seed–inspired Samarai, the first autonomous wholly rotating unmanned aircraft system. The 41-centimeter-long drone weighs a mere 227 grams. It depends on an algorithm that tells an actuator when and how much to adjust the angle of a flap that determines its direction.

Compared with other aircraft, the spinning drone is simpler to produce, requires less maintenance, and is less complex to control because its only control surface is the trailing-edge flap.

IEEE Fellow Kingsley Fregene holds up the maple seed–inspired Samarai, the first autonomous wholly rotating unmanned aircraft system.Kingsley Fregene

Saving lives in Nigeria

Fregene’s aim to keep people safe started with his first after-school job, as a bus conductor, when he was in the sixth grade. As part of the job, in Oghara, Nigeria, then a small fishing village along the Niger River, he collected fares and directed passengers on and off the bus.

With no traffic cops or traffic lights, there often was chaos at major intersections. People would get injured, and he occasionally would get out and direct traffic.

“I, a little guy, stood out there with a bright orange shirt and started directing traffic,” he says. “It’s amazing that people paid attention and listened to me.”

Many youngsters are inspired to pursue engineering by fiddling with gadgets. Not Fregene.

“The circumstances of my childhood did not provide opportunities to get my hands on devices to tinker with,” he says. “What we had were a lot of opportunities to observe nature.”

The presence of oil and gas installations in his village, which is in the oil-producing part of Nigeria, led him to wonder how they worked and how they were remotely controlled. They didn’t remain mysterious for long.

While attending the Federal University of Technology in Owerri, Nigeria, he interned at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., which was installing those remote operating systems, calibrating them, and validating their operation.

After graduating first in his class in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering, he went on to graduate school at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, where he researched autonomy and automatic control systems. While earning master’s and doctoral degrees, both in electrical and computer engineering, he found time to help those more needy than he was.

He joined a team of student volunteers who organized drop-in homework clubs and provided mentoring to at-risk grade school students in the community. The activity won him the university’s President’s Circle Award in 2001.

Thinking back on that time, Fregene recalls his interaction with one girl whose life he helped turn around.

“She was dragged kicking and screaming most of the time to complete these sessions,” Fregene recalls. “But she started believing in herself and what she could do. And everything changed. She ended up getting accepted to the University of Waterloo and became part of the UW tutor team I was leading.”

Fregene says his commitment to the tutoring and mentoring program came from having once been in need of academic assistance himself. Although he had excellent grades in history and language arts, he did poorly in mathematics and science. Things turned around for him in the ninth grade when a new teacher had a particular way of teaching math that “turned the light bulb on in my brain,” he says. “My grades took off right after he showed up.”

After completing his doctorate in 2002, he began working as an R&D engineer at a Honeywell Aerospace facility in Minneapolis. During six years there, he worked on the development of unmanned aerial vehicles including a drone that was used in remote sensing of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive hazards. The drone became the world’s first aerial robot used for nuclear disaster recovery when it flew inside the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in the aftermath of a 2011 tsunami that struck Japan and knocked out the plant’s power and cooling, causing meltdowns in three reactor cores.

At Honeywell he also worked on microelectromechanical systems, which are used in gyroscopes and inertial measurement units. Both MEMS tools, which are used to measure the angular motion of a body, can be found in cellphones. Fregene also worked on a control system to make corrections to the imperfections that diminished the MEMS sensors’ accuracy.

He left the company in 2008 to become lead engineer and scientist at the Lockheed Martin research facility in Cherry Hill, N.J.

IEEE membership has its benefits

Fregene became acquainted with IEEE as an undergrad by reading journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and the IEEE Control Systems magazine, for which he has served as guest editor.

He joined IEEE in grad school, and that decision has been paying dividends ever since, he says.

The connections he made through the organization helped him land internships at leading laboratories, starting him on his career path. After meeting researchers at conferences or reading their papers in IEEE publications, he would send them notes introducing himself and indicating his interest in visiting the researcher’s lab and working there during the summer. The practice led to internships at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee.

The IEEE connections helped him get his first job. While working on his master’s degree, he presented a paper at the 1999 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control.

“After my presentation,” he says, “somebody from Honeywell came over and said, ‘That was a great presentation. By the way, these are the types of things we do at Honeywell. I think it would be a great place for you when you’re ready to start working.’”

Fregene remains active in IEEE. He’s on the editorial board of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, serves as an associate editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, and recently completed two terms as chair of the IEEE technical committee on aerospace controls.

IEEE “is the type of global organization that provides a forum for stellar researchers to communicate the work they are doing to colleagues,” he says, “and for setting standards that define real-life systems that are changing the world every day.”