Dear Colleagues:
Today, members of Technical Activities in IEEE are advancing many of the newest and most vibrant technologies of electrical, electronic and computer engineering. In this Welcome Note, I would like to reflect on those future challenges and discuss how TA responds to the fast-paced growth of these technologies.
Historically, electrical engineering was a discipline about electricity, and its uses, power generation and electric machines. Then it added communications to its scope, and then computer hardware and software, integrated electronics, signal processing and robotics. And it blossomed.
Today, we have expanded into interconnected computers, transducers, actuators, sensors and intelligent devices that facilitate massive flows of information between people and objects. Electrical engineering has made possible unprecedented access to information, education, and many other resources that make modern life possible. These advances go beyond daily conveniences and are revolutionizing the world around us and the realities we know of. We are now immersed in information and soon will be challenged by new services and opportunities that are hard to predict.
Seeing this unprecedented pace of growth, we in Technical Activities and IEEE must move fast to stay ahead of the curve, and nimbly incubate and nurture communities in emerging areas of technology. These communities now include cloud computing, smart grid, electric vehicles, internet of things, life science and others. In conjunction, we must sponsor new conferences and engage in new journals in hot specialties. This year alone has produced new periodicals on exploratory solid-state devices and circuits, molecular, biological and multi-scale communications, multi-scale computing, cognitive communications and networking, big data and computational social systems.
In championing these leading technologies, we are serving both our own communities and humanity. I encourage you to continue your efforts in this noble service.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Jacek M. Zurada
2014 IEEE Technical Activities Vice President
If I can take away the key thoughts from your message, Prof Jacek, it is these.
“Staying ahead of the curve and being nimble” is what is on the dashboard of every Business leader, but IEEE TAB goes the extra mile to incubate and nurture communities.
All the very best.
Great uplifting picture suggesting that IEEE challenge is just that phenomenal accelerating progress in technology.
What would complete that picture is addressing old and new issues affecting technical activities of many engineers such as e.g. intrusion of labor intensive “soft professions” e.g. Project Management, Project Control or Communication, and legitimacy of keeping division between science and technology. Not to mention lagging education e.g. still following the Ford T “assembly line” approach to producing standard engineers while cost-cutting individualized tools are available and merging knowledge and skills seems to be obvious necessity.