This yr’s IEEE Imaginative and prescient, Innovation, and Challenges Summit and Honors Ceremony, held on 2 and three Might in Boston, celebrated pioneers in engineering who’ve developed applied sciences that modified individuals’s lives, such because the Web and GPS. The occasion additionally included a visit to the headquarters of cloud service supplier Akamai Applied sciences.
Listed here are highlights of the classes, which can be found on IEEE.television.
Akamai hosted a panel dialogue on 2 Might on innovation, moderated by Robert Blumoff, the corporate’s govt vp and CTO. The panel featured IEEE Senior Member Simay Akar, IEEE Life Fellow Deepak Divan, and IEEE Fellows Andrea Goldsmith and Tsu-Jae King Liu. Akar is the founder and CEO of AK Vitality Consulting, which helps firms meet their sustainability objectives. Divan heads Georgia Tech’s Heart for Distributed Vitality. Goldsmith isPrinceton’s dean of engineering and utilized sciences, and King Liu is the dean of the College of California, Berkeley’s College of Engineering.
The panelists have been requested about what or who impressed them to pursue a profession in engineering, in addition to their ideas on persevering with schooling and variety, fairness, and inclusion.
Most mentioned they have been impressed to develop into engineers by a mum or dad. Goldsmith, the recipient of this yr’sIEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Schooling Medal, credit her father. He was a mechanical engineering professor at UC Berkeley and advised she think about majoring in engineering as a result of she excelled in math and science in highschool.
“Once I was younger, I didn’t actually perceive what being an engineer meant,” Goldsmith mentioned on the panel. As a result of her mother and father have been divorced and he or she didn’t see her father typically, she thought he drove trains. It wasn’t till she was at UC Berkeley, she mentioned, that she realized how expertise may change individuals’s lives for the higher. That’s what pushed her to observe in her father’s footsteps.
When requested what retains them motivated to remain within the engineering area, King Liu mentioned that it’s IEEE’s mission of creating expertise for the advantage of humanity. She is that this yr’s IEEE Founders Medal recipient.
“Variety is about excellence. The most important battle is convincing individuals who don’t consider that variety has a optimistic affect on groups and corporations.” – Andrea Goldsmith
“Engineering work is finished for individuals and by individuals,” she mentioned. “I draw inspiration from not solely the individuals we serve, but in addition the individuals behind the expertise.” The panelists additionally spoke in regards to the significance of continuous schooling. “Studying is a lifelong course of,” King Liu mentioned. “Engineers want to hunt out studying alternatives, whether or not it’s from having a design fail or from extra skilled engineers of their area of curiosity.”
Variety, fairness, and inclusion was a sizzling dialogue matter. “Variety is about excellence,” Goldsmith mentioned. “The most important battle is convincing individuals who don’t consider that variety has a optimistic affect on groups and corporations.
“One other subject is discovering methods to usher in numerous expertise and serving to them obtain their full potential,” she added. “One of many issues I’m most happy with is the work I’ve executed with IEEE on DEI.”
Goldsmith helped launch theIEEE Variety and Inclusion Committee and serves as its chair. Established in 2019 by the IEEE Board of Administrators, the committee revised a number of insurance policies, procedures, and bylaws to make sure that members have a protected and inclusive place for collegial discourse and that every one really feel welcome. It additionally launched a web site.
Robert E. Kahn proudly shows his IEEE Medal of Honor at this yr’s IEEE Honors Ceremony. He’s accompanied by IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Couglin.Robb Cohen Images & Video
Profession recommendation and the function of AI in society
The IEEE Imaginative and prescient, Innovation, and Challenges Summit received underway on 3 Might on the Encore Boston Harbor. It featured a “hearth chat” with Robert E. Kahn adopted by discussions with panels of award recipients on matters comparable to profession recommendation and issues associated to synthetic intelligence.
Kahn was interviewed by Caroline Hyde, a enterprise and expertise journalist. Broadly generally known as one of many “fathers of the Web,” he’s this yr’s IEEE Medal of Honor recipient for “pioneering technical and management contributions in packet communication applied sciences and foundations of the Web.”
The IEEE Life Fellow reminisced about his expertise collaborating with Vint Cerf on the design of the Transmission Management Protocol and the Web Protocol. Cerf, an IEEE Life Fellow, is one other father of the Web and the 2023 IEEE Medal of Honor recipient.
Whereas working as a program supervisor within the U.S. Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company’s data processing strategies workplace in 1973, Kahn and Cerf designed the Web’s core structure.
One viewers member requested Kahn how engineers can create alternatives for younger individuals to collaborate like he and Cerf did. Kahn mentioned that it begins with having an issue to resolve, after which desirous about it holistically. He additionally suggested college students and younger professionals to associate with others when such alternatives come up.
The dialog on profession recommendation continued on the Innovation and Collaboration in Main Know-how Laboratories panel. Panelists and IEEE Fellows Eric Evans, Anthony Vetro, and Peter Vetter supplied insights on the right way to be a profitable researcher.
It’s essential to determine the correct downside and develop a expertise to resolve it, mentioned Evans, director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
When requested what qualities are essential for job candidates to showcase when interviewing for a place, Vetro mentioned he appears for workers who’re keen to collaborate and are self-driven. Vetro is president and CEO of Mitsubishi Electrical Analysis Labs in Cambridge, Mass. He additionally pressured the significance of studying the right way to fail.
In the course of the AI and Society: Constructing a Future with Accountable Innovation session, Juraj Corba, Christopher D. Manning, Renard T. Jenkins, and IEEE Fellow Claire Tomlin mentioned how the expertise may have an effect on quite a lot of fields. They agreed the expertise is unlikely to switch people within the workforce.
“Individuals want to consider AI techniques as instruments—like what Photoshop is to a photographer.”– Renard T. Jenkins
“Individuals want to consider AI techniques as instruments—like what Photoshop is to a photographer,” mentioned Jenkins, president of consulting agency I2A2 Applied sciences, Labs and Studios.
“AI doesn’t have studying and flexibility [capabilities] like people do,” Manning added. The director of Stanford’s Synthetic Intelligence Laboratory is that this yr’s IEEE John von Neumann Medal recipient. “However there’s a good function for expertise—it may be life-changing for individuals.” One instance he cited was Neuralink’s mind implant, which might allow an individual to manage a pc “simply by pondering,” in response to the startup’s founder, Elon Musk.
ChatGPT, a generative AI program, has develop into a sizzling matter amongst educators since its launch two years in the past, mentioned panel moderator Armen Pischdotchian, knowledge scientist at IBM in Cambridge, Mass. Tomlin, chair of {the electrical} engineering and laptop science division at UC Berkeley, mentioned AI will make schooling extra interactive and supply a greater expertise. “It is going to assist each college students and educators,” mentioned the recipient of this yr’s IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal.
Pioneers of assistive expertise, GPS, and the Web
The spotlight of the night was the Honors Ceremony, which acknowledged those that had developed applied sciences comparable to assistive robots, GPS, and the Web.
The IEEE Spectrum Know-how within the Service of Society Award went to startup Hi there Robotic, headquartered in Atlanta, for its Stretch robotic. The machine offers these with a extreme incapacity, comparable to paralysis, the flexibility to take care of their independence whereas residing at dwelling. For instance, customers can function the robotic to feed themselves, scratch an itch, or cowl themselves with a blanket.
The machine consists of a cell platform with a single arm that strikes up and down a retractable pole. A wrist joint on the finish of the arm bends backwards and forwards and controls a gripper, which might grasp close by objects. Sensors mounted on the base of the arm and a digital camera situated on the high of the pole present the sensing wanted to maneuver round from room to room, keep away from obstacles, and decide up small objects comparable to books, consuming utensils, and tablet bottles.
Greater than six billion individuals world wide use GPS to navigate their environment, in response toGPS World. The expertise wouldn’t have been potential with out Gladys West, who contributed to the mathematical modeling of the form of the Earth. Whereas working on theNaval Floor Warfare Heart, in Dahlgren, Va., she carried out seminal work on satellite tv for pc geodesy fashions that was pivotal within the improvement of the GPS. West, who’s 93, retired in 1998 after working on the middle for 42 years. For her contributions, she obtained the IEEE President’s Award.
The ceremony concluded with the presentation of the IEEE Medal of Honor to Bob Kahn, who obtained a standing ovation.
“That is the respect of my profession,” he mentioned. He ended his speech saying that he “hasn’t stopped but and nonetheless has extra to do.”
