My IEEE Travels In Late April And May 2024

Here is an update about some additional activities I participated in this last April and May as IEEE President. On April 17 I was able to visit the IEEE offices in downtown New York City, which included the offices of IEEE Spectrum. It also has an office for the IEEE President. I got to visit it and sit in the office and that may be the only time I do so this year, since I live in California. I also attended and spoke at the 17th Signal/Power Integrity Symposium in Harrisburg, PA where I spoke about IEEE’s Global Semiconductor Activities, including collaborations for workforce development for global efforts to create new semiconductor supply chains.

During April 23-25 I visited Oppo in Shenzhen and spoke at the 2024 GCZ Forum in Beijing. Oppo is a telecommunications company that makes cell phones and other products. I spoke about IEEE and IEEEs publications and conferences at the GCZ Forum. I also visited the IEEE office in Beijing and met IEEE staff there. Below is a picture in front of the conference center for the ZGC Forum with what I think is the GZC mascot. There was also a female robot that would talk with you inside. I am not sure what the mascot was and nobody I spoke to was sure what it was either.

I participated in the IEEE VICS and Honors Ceremony in Boston in early May, but I have written a separate blog about that.

May 13-14 I was in Jakarta, Indonesia participating in the Region 10 IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) meetings including a televised event in English at Indonesia’s TV service, TVRI, see image below. I spoke about creating a more diverse IEEE and for the TV meeting I discussed what IEEE is doing to get more women into technology, including the importance inclusive STEM. I learned that Indonesia has over 17,000 islands, some very remote, making it difficult to provide good connectivity and modern educational services to some of these remote locations. We also discussed IEEE efforts to help connect the unconnected. I think I spent more time in the air than on the ground for this visit.

From Indonesia I flew to Los Angeles where I presented four IEEE President’s Awards/Scholarships to some very deserving participants in an international Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) Competition (see image below). The IEEE scholarships went to Angelina Kim, a high school junior from Del Mar, CA; Sahiti Bulusu, a high school junior from Fremont, CA; Xiangzhou Sun, a high school junior from Claremont, CA; and Abhishek Amit Shah, a high school junior from Apex, NC.

Other organizations gave more scholarships at this event. I think we should look at doing more such scholarships for future Science Fairs as part of our public imperatives.

After my quick trip to LA I flew back San Jose where I participated in an IEEE milestone event at SRI (formerly Xerox) PARC in Palo Alto. On Sunday I participated in an event honoring the 50^th anniversary of the Internet, which I wrote about in a separate blog.

On May 22 I participated in awarding the Joseph F. Keithley IEEE Field Award to Deepak Uttamchandani for contributions to photonics-based optical frequency and wavelength domain instrumentation and measurement at the 2024 I2MTC IEEE International Instrumentation and Measurement for e a Sustainable Future Conference at his University in Glasgow. This was my second trip to Glasgow this year. In August IEEE will have an exhibit and participate in sessions and talks at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow. That will be three trips to Glasgow this year.

At the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow (not too far from where the conference was held at the University of Strathclyde), there is a large area dedicated to the life and work of William Thompson, otherwise known as Lord Kelvin. In one of these exhibits there is a device that Thompson used to determine the value of the Ohm (the unit of electrical resistance) and an IEEE milestone plaque from 2019 commemorating the standardization of the Ohm as a unit of electrical measurement. The image below shows me with the IEEE milestone plaque.

Thompson was also in business with James White, making scientific instruments for various types of electrical and other measurements and several of these devices were also on display at the Museum. I recommended that folks from the IEEE Instruments and Measurements Conference might want to take a trip to the museum to view these devices and the IEEE milestone.

From Glasgow I went to Belgium to visit IMEC (see image below). IMEC is an international semiconductor and nanotechnology consortium based in Leuven, Belgium. They are doing some very advanced work on advancing semiconductor technology and work closely with ASML (who I visited in the Netherlands earlier this year) on developing their advanced extreme UV (EUV) lithographic equipment.

I spoke to folks from IMEC about the IEEE and possible ways that IMEC and IEEE would work together on topics such as semiconductor workforce education.

In addition to my visit to IMEC in the morning I also visited KU Leuven in the afternoon. KU Leuven is a large university in Leuven and many of the researchers who work at IMEC also have a position at the University and vise versa. I learned about much interesting research going on at the University that extends work being done at IMEC. I also had a chance to wander around Leuven by foot and found it a really interesting, walkable and colorful town.

From Belgium I went to Geneva to join an IEEE delegation of volunteers and staff to the WSIS+20 (World Summit on the Information Society) event, organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The volunteers were Maike Luiken and me. The staff attending included Karen McCabe, Karen Mulberry, Mariela Machado Fantacchiotti and Constance Weise. IEEE was one of the specific activity partners for the WSIS. Members of our delegation participated in various events and met with various dignitaries and collaborators from several countries at the nearly week-long conference. In particular we met with representatives from countries who are part of the IEEE Standards Association Government Engagement Program on Standards (GEPS). There was an AI for Good event later in the week, but I was unable to attend it.

I gave a three-minute talk during the opening session of the 2024 WSIS (see the image below) where I discussed why standards will play a big role in reaching the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) and for the future of WSIS.

IEEE also had an exhibit at the WSIS event where many WSIS participants stopped by to meet our delegation. Maike Luiken, Antonello Monti (who participated remotely) and I also participated in an IEEE run workshop on AI for Energy Innovation and Sustainability. This included discussion on energy sources and distribution and ways to reduce energy consumption in data centers, while supporting more digital computation.

Karen McCabe and I also visited the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which creates international patents ,to talk about possible collaborations and various activities which may be of mutual interest. Later in the week IEEE staff and volunteers ran an IEEE Knowledge Café lunch on emerging IEEE standard activities that address sustainable development. I also accepted a certificate from ITU head Doreen Bogdan-Martin. She received the 2023 IEEE President’s Award.

On my last day in Geneva, I visited CERN, the world’s largest particle accelerator, for a tour and discussion about the IEEE and digital storage technologies. This was my first visit to CERN and I was as impressed as I had hoped I would be. My tour included visiting the Antimatter Factory, see two pictures below. The first picture shows me and Jakub Moscicki in front of the building housing equipment for making anti-particles, in particular anti-protons. The second picture shows the machine used to create anti-particles.

The actual production of anti-particles at CERN can’t make anything like the amount shown in Dan Brown’s book, Angels and Demons, or in the movie based upon the book, but it can make enough anti-particles to fuel 5-6 experiments that were running or being assembled in the building. These included experiments to determine the effects of gravity on anti-particles to make sure that it has the same effect as on conventional matter.

In addition to visiting the Antimatter Factory I also visited the CERN data center to find out more about the vast amount of data generated by their experiments and their use of storage devices including hard disk drives and magnetic tape to retain the experimental data. I may write a separate blog on digital storage at CERN.

From Geneva I took a train to Grenoble to visit CEA SpinTec and LETI and to hear about the work going on at these facilities. This included work on creating logic and memory devices using electron spin rather than electron charge. These types of technologies are referred to as spintronics. The image below shows me next to the CEA sign at the front of the entrance. I may write more about what I saw at SpinTec in a separate blog. Thanks to my long time colleague, Bernard Dieny for organizing this meeting.

From Grenoble I flew to Bremen, Germany to give the IEEE Andrew S. Grove Field Award to Tsunenobu Kimoto during the 36^th International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs. Dr. Kimoto is a professor in the Department of Electronic Science and Engineering at Kyoto University. He was awarded for his contributions to silicon carbide material and power devices.

I also attended some of the tutorials and plenary talks at the conference and learned a lot about power electronic devices that use semiconductor materials other than silicon to be able to handle higher power. These include using SiC, GaN and possibly even diamond to make higher powered electronics for electric vehicles (including airplanes as well as for ground transportation), power generation, chargers and other applications where the higher price of the semiconductor devices is of secondary importance to savings in the weight and size of a high-power electronic system.

From Bremen I travelled to Birmingham in the UK where I participated in an IEEE Milestone ceremony and plaque unveiling at the University of Birmingham where the cavity magnetron was invented. The cavity magnetron made advanced higher-powered radar possible in WWII through collaborations between the UK, Canada and the US and which helped the Allies win the Battle of the Atlantic and defeat the Axis powers.

The image below shows me with the newly unveiled IEEE milestone plaque.

The all-day event featured sessions on the history of radar, from initial demonstrations in 1904 to the cavity magnetron, the roles of the UK, US and Canada in developing and implementing radar during WWII and after (including the formation of the Radiation Lab at MIT and later Lincoln Labs) and continuing research on radar at Birmingham University and the MIT Lincoln Lab. I met some interesting folks there and I told some of them about IEEE plans for the World Science Convention in Glasgow in August. Perhaps some folks from Birmingham will come to join us there.

During the afternoon lectures some Palestinian supporting protesters assembled outside the building where we had the lectures and at one point several of the demonstrators came up to try and deliver a letter to a school official and gave a short talk protesting military development. I think this may be the first time that an IEEE milestone event has included a protest.

April and May was a busy month of travel in Europe and Asia for me as IEEE President. I had opportunities to participate in two IEEE Field Award events, be part of IEEE milestone events, participate in IEEE’s presence at the WSIS Conference and visit major technology research centers such as CERN, IMEC and CEA SpinTec.