Meet the 2022 Candidates: IEEE President-Elect

The IEEE annual election begins on 15 August and ends on 3 October.  All ballots must be received by 12:00 p.m. EDT/16:00 UTC.  The IEEE Signal Processing Society is committed to ensuring that its members are prepared with sufficient information about the candidates in order to make their best-informed decision. In this month’s issue of Inside Signal Processing, we invite you to meet the IEEE President-Elect candidates. For more information about the candidates, please review the IEEE President-Elect Statements website.

A list of all 2022 elections and the candidates can be found here.  Your vote counts: don’t forget to cast your ballot by 3 October!

Each candidate has provided us with a statement, which are noted below.  

IEEE President-Elect Candidates

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas M. Coughlin (Nominated by IEEE Board of Directors)

 

Almost all of the value generated by the IEEE comes from the efforts of volunteers, who are mostly IEEE members. The average age of IEEE higher grade members is high and increasing, although we recruit well over 100,000 student members per year. That is because we lose more than 30,000 students each year and the conversion rate is low for student to higher grade member. We face a serious problem with the long-term viability of the IEEE.

The 50% discount for student membership (available since 2020) has resulted in increased student recruitment, up about 24% year-over-year. However, unless we engage with these students and new young professionals, understand their needs, and talk to them about the value of IEEE membership, we will have wasted this opportunity to revitalize the IEEE. Engaging with IEEE student and young professional members and providing value to our members at all life stages will be my greatest priority as IEEE President.

Some ways to increase the membership value for students include IEEE career fairs, greater section interaction, and participation in events such as the Rising Stars Conference. Mentorship, continuing education and easier and community driven senior member elevations add value to higher grade members. Life members are great mentors, and we should work with them to capture the history of technology.

I am a past IEEE-USA President who is actively engaged in industry trade groups. I am on the Industry Engagement Committee and am currently working in the IEC on student retention and industry senior member elevation efforts. I have connections inside and outside the IEEE, which I will use to bring various parts of the IEEE together where there are common interests and increase the value of IEEE to the outside world. Find out more about me at the IEEE campaign and my websites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maike Luiken (Nominated by IEEE Board of Directors)

 

Thank you for the opportunity to share my 3-point IEEE strategic agenda:

Advancing Technology for Humanity
Our inspirational mission holds the promise to enable the current and future IEEE ecosystem stakeholders to solve essential challenges impacting humanity; most notably the development and accessibility of technical solutions that support the adaptation to and mitigation of climate change and whose impact and success can be measured by agreed-upon metrics.

Our Professional Home
We should continue to hear and embrace the great ideas shared with us by our members, volunteers, and community members and, building on the input, increase the value of IEEE to technologists. For example:

We should continue to hear and embrace the great ideas shared with us by our members, volunteers, and community members and, building on the input, increase the value of IEEE to technologists. For example:

• Increased promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• More personalized interactions between IEEE and its members.
• Enhanced volunteer support, training, and tools.
• Integration of learnings from the Pandemic into our resiliency strategies.
• Implementation of ‘Local Groups’ for those interested to engage on local issues and opportunities: e.g., Blockchain, Sustainability, STEM education.

The Future is Now - and it Starts with You
Future-proofing IEEE requires us to collectively investigate new, sustainable business models; evolve engagement models; and develop an aligned approach such that we may benefit from the power of organizational scope and scale while encouraging creativity and responsiveness throughout all levels of the organization. A few examples include:

• The development of new products and services in the world of Open Access publishing.
• Investing wisely in key areas of strengths and mitigating risks.
• Internally aligning on outcomes and integrating agile mechanisms to tactically deliver results in a consistently measurable manner.
• Strengthening collaboration across IEEE to grow impact and effectiveness and avoid duplication.

I believe that IEEE members, volunteers, and staff, together, have a tremendous opportunity to contribute sound technical solutions for the greatest challenges of our times, to regenerate the planet and build a sustainable future for all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kazuhiro Kosuge (Nominated by Petition)

 

Diversity and Culture of Trust and Respect

Diversity plays an essential role in enriching IEEE activities: IEEE has diversity of Societies/Councils, diversity of Technical Activities, diversity of Regions, and diversity of IEEE members. The future of IEEE depends on how the diverse activities of different OUs (Organizational Units) can be integrated to advance the mission of IEEE.

IEEE is a large, complex, and multi-layered organization. We could not integrate diverse activities of OUs without a culture of trust and respect inside of IEEE. Further enhancement of a culture of trust and respect is possible through fair, unbiased, and transparent decision-making and management.

Although each OU is operated very well in its own space, IEEE’s strength can be further enhanced by adding more dimensions to the space and improving collaboration among different OUs. Especially collaboration between Technical Activities and Member and Geographic Activities is crucial since IEEE is a global technical organization. If elected,

• I promote geographic technical activities to meet geographic needs in emerging fields and provide them with connections to IEEE by exploring the potential of geographic technical activities and technical communities.
• I promote products and services meeting the needs of regions/countries, which include the translation service of IEEE products as a sustainable and scalable business. The ultimate goal is to utilize modern machine translation technology to enable non-English speaking members to access products and services in their mother tongue.
• I enrich the content for life-long learning and continuing education relevant to industry members, especially in emerging countries and regions, by further exploring the potential of IEEE Academy, including expanding IEEE Academy in local languages with the help of IEEE member volunteers.

Let us make IEEE a further global membership-driven technical organization together with a culture of trust and respect. Visit the website for more details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kathleen A. Kramer (Nominated by IEEE Board of Directors)

 

I offer transformative leadership for a better IEEE. I have proven myself to be a collaborative leader in every leadership position I’ve held, and commit to applying that ability to addressing these five priorities:

• Inspire and engage the next generation of IEEE, especially WIE, Young Professionals, and Students.
• Include our global and diverse membership, effectively and equitably, to better advance technology.
• Collaborate as a community on our transformational public imperatives - education, policy, history, community, and humanitarian.
• Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the IEEE while honoring our obligations to the membership.
• Empower the success of our technical communities, global and local, to share and foster technical knowledge and enhance our professional lives.

In my professional life, I am a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of San Diego and have been a Member of Technical Staff at several companies, including ViaSat, Hewlett Packard, and Bell Communications Research. I received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering with a second major in physics from Loyola Marymount University, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. I am active member of several technical communities, including the Signal Processing Society.

I have demonstrated an ability to work across the IEEE to guide IEEE in fulfilling its mission. My leadership roles include service as IEEE Secretary and Chair of Governance (2019-21), IEEE Aerospace & Electronic Systems Society Vice President (2016-18), and IEEE Director of Region 6 - Western USA (2017-18). My most significant accomplishments have stemmed from sincerely valuing and including different interests and perspectives, and teaming towards strategic goals that allow the whole to become greater than the sum of the parts.

For more on the why for this candidate and these priorities, please visit the website for details.