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 folks’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 below are highlights of the periods, 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 corporations meet their sustainability objectives. Divan heads Georgia Tech’s Middle 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 stated they have been impressed to develop into engineers by a guardian. 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 recommended she contemplate majoring in engineering as a result of she excelled in math and science in highschool.
“After I was younger, I didn’t actually perceive what being an engineer meant,” Goldsmith stated on the panel. As a result of her mother and father have been divorced and he or she didn’t see her father usually, she thought he drove trains. It wasn’t till she was at UC Berkeley, she stated, that she realized how know-how may change folks’s lives for the higher. That’s what pushed her to comply with in her father’s footsteps.
When requested what retains them motivated to remain within the engineering subject, King Liu stated that it’s IEEE’s mission of creating know-how for the advantage of humanity. She is that this yr’s IEEE Founders Medal recipient.
“Range is about excellence. The most important battle is convincing individuals who don’t consider that variety has a optimistic influence on groups and firms.” – Andrea Goldsmith
“Engineering work is completed for folks and by folks,” she stated. “I draw inspiration from not solely the folks we serve, but in addition the folks behind the know-how.” The panelists additionally spoke in regards to the significance of continuous schooling. “Studying is a lifelong course of,” King Liu stated. “Engineers want to hunt out studying alternatives, whether or not it’s from having a design fail or from extra skilled engineers of their subject of curiosity.”
Range, fairness, and inclusion was a sizzling dialogue subject. “Range is about excellence,” Goldsmith stated. “The most important battle is convincing individuals who don’t consider that variety has a optimistic influence on groups and firms.
“One other challenge is discovering methods to herald 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 Range 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 each 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 subjects resembling profession recommendation and considerations associated to synthetic intelligence.
Kahn was interviewed by Caroline Hyde, a enterprise and know-how journalist. Broadly often called 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 Initiatives 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 folks to collaborate like he and Cerf did. Kahn stated that it begins with having an issue to resolve, after which fascinated by 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 Expertise Laboratories panel. Panelists and IEEE Fellows Eric Evans, Anthony Vetro, and Peter Vetter supplied insights on tips on how to be a profitable researcher.
It’s vital to establish the proper downside and develop a know-how to resolve it, stated Evans, director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
When requested what qualities are vital for job candidates to showcase when interviewing for a place, Vetro stated he appears for workers who’re prepared to collaborate and are self-driven. Vetro is president and CEO of Mitsubishi Electrical Analysis Labs in Cambridge, Mass. He additionally confused the significance of studying tips on how to fail.
Through 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 know-how may have an effect on a wide range of fields. They agreed the know-how is unlikely to switch people within the workforce.
“Folks want to consider AI methods as instruments—like what Photoshop is to a photographer.”– Renard T. Jenkins
“Folks want to consider AI methods as instruments—like what Photoshop is to a photographer,” stated Jenkins, president of consulting agency I2A2 Applied sciences, Labs and Studios.
“AI doesn’t have studying and adaptableness [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 know-how—it may be life-changing for folks.” One instance he cited was Neuralink’s mind implant, which might allow an individual to manage a pc “simply by considering,” in response to the startup’s founder, Elon Musk.
ChatGPT, a generative AI program, has develop into a sizzling subject amongst educators since its launch two years in the past, stated panel moderator Armen Pischdotchian, knowledge scientist at IBM in Cambridge, Mass. Tomlin, chair of {the electrical} engineering and laptop science division at UC Berkeley, stated AI will make schooling extra interactive and supply a greater expertise. “It can assist each college students and educators,” stated the recipient of this yr’s IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal.
Pioneers of assistive know-how, GPS, and the Web
The spotlight of the night was the Honors Ceremony, which acknowledged those that had developed applied sciences resembling assistive robots, GPS, and the Web.
The IEEE Spectrum Expertise within the Service of Society Award went to startup Hiya Robotic, headquartered in Atlanta, for its Stretch robotic. The machine offers these with a extreme incapacity, resembling paralysis, the flexibility to keep up their independence whereas dwelling 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 resembling books, consuming utensils, and tablet bottles.
Greater than six billion folks world wide use GPS to navigate their environment, in response toGPS World. The know-how wouldn’t have been attainable with out Gladys West, who contributed to the mathematical modeling of the form of the Earth. Whereas working on theNaval Floor Warfare Middle, in Dahlgren, Va., she performed seminal work on satellite tv for pc geodesy fashions that was pivotal within the growth of the GPS. West, who’s 93, retired in 1998 after working on the heart for 42 years. For her contributions, she acquired the IEEE President’s Award.
The ceremony concluded with the presentation of the IEEE Medal of Honor to Bob Kahn, who acquired a standing ovation.
“That is the honour of my profession,” he stated. He ended his speech saying that he “hasn’t stopped but and nonetheless has extra to do.”
