IEEE President-Elect Candidates Address Computer Society Concerns

 
 
As the largest IEEE Society, the IEEE Computer Society (CS) serves computing and IT professionals at all levels of their careers, through IEEE’s network of more than 400,000 members in 168 countries. The IEEE president and Board of Directors define a vision for the association, and therefore, the decisions they make and plans they put in place impact us as CS members and volunteers.

To ensure CS members are well informed about the candidates on the IEEE election slate, the CS asked the IEEE president-elect candidates for their responses to four important questions that affect our Society and membership. The questions and candidates’ responses (limited to 250 words each) are provided here.

Please take a few moments to read what these candidates have to say, and be sure to vote in the election, which opens on 15 August 2024 and closes at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time USA/16:00 UTC on 1 October 2024.

For full information on IEEE president-elect candidates, along with their personal statements and lists of accomplishments, please visit www.ieee.org/elections.

In addition, we encourage all members to participate in this important ballot process. We also remind and encourage you to cast your votes for the Computer Society Election by 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, 16 September 2024.

—Hironori Washizaki, IEEE Computer Society President-Elect

Below are the candidates for the 2025 IEEE President-Elect. The 2025 President-Elect will become President in 2026.

The sequence of candidates was determined by a lottery process,  and indicates no preference.

MARY ELLEN RANDALL
(Nominated by IEEE Board of Directors)

President and CEO
Ascot Technologies, Inc.
Cary, North Carolina, USA
ieee.org/pe25/randall

Mary Ellen Randall is an IEEE Fellow and member of the IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu honor society.

Ms. Randall is founder/CEO of Ascot Technologies, Inc., an award-winning company which develops enterprise applications using mobile data delivery technologies.

She held technical and management positions in IBM, including an international assignment, hardware and software development, digital video chips, client/server services, network management, operating systems, and test design automation. She routinely managed projects on an international scale.

She served on the IEEE Board of Directors as IEEE Treasurer, IEEE Vice President of MGA, R3 Director, and served as IEEE WIE Committee Chair among other leadership positions.

She created/developed the IEEE MOVE International Community Outreach Program for Disaster Relief and STEM education. She received awards for this work, including the IEEE Haraden Pratt Award.

She was named a top “Woman In Business” in the Research Triangle North Carolina area and made Business Leader Magazine’s “Impact 100” List.

 JOHN P. VERBONCOEUR, FIEEE
(Nominated by IEEE Board of Directors)

Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, and
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Professor of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan, USA
ieee.org/pe25/verboncoeur

Verboncoeur is senior associate dean for research and graduate studies in Michigan State University’s (MSU) engineering college. He founded the computational engineering science program at UC-Berkeley in 2001, chairing it until 2010. In 2015 he cofounded the MSU computational mathematics, science, and engineering department. His research area is plasma physics, with over 500 publications and over 6,600 citations.

He serves on the Boards of Physics of Plasmas, the American Center for Mobility, and the U.S. Department of Energy Fusion Energy Science Advisory Committee.

Verboncoeur led startups developing digital exercise and health systems, a consumer credit report, and a role in developing the U.S. Postal Service’s mail-forwarding system.

His IEEE experience includes 2023 Vice-President of Technical Activities, 2020 acting Vice-President of Publication Services and Products Board, 2019-2020 Division IV Director, and 2015-2016 President of the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society.

He received a Ph.D. in 1992 in nuclear engineering from UC-Berkeley.

S. K. RAMESH, FIEEE
(Nominated by IEEE Board of Directors)

Director SfS2 (SECURE for Student Success) Program
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
California State University (CSU), Northridge
Northridge, California, USA
https://ieee.org/pe25/ramesh

S. K. Ramesh is an engineering educator with almost four decades of service as a dean, department chair, and faculty member. As dean, he established innovative programs to serve industry in renewable energy, assistive technology, and advanced manufacturing. The IEEE Learning Network (ILN) that he championed as Vice President of Educational Activities is a model for collaboration across IEEE.

Ramesh is an IEEE Fellow recognized for “contributions to entrepreneurship in engineering education”, and has created internationally recognized programs that attract and support underrepresented students in engineering. He served as 2022-2023 ABET President broadening engagement globally. His recognitions include the John Guarrera Engineering Educator of the Year, William Johnson International award for “leadership and contributions to the profession”, and IEEE Region 6 Community Service award. Ramesh has served on the Boards of IEEE, HKN, and ABET, strengthening diversity, inclusion, and collaboration between volunteers and staff, with financial transparency and measurable outcomes.

Question 1. With generative AI at the center, AI significantly impacts technical and non-technical activities. How can IEEE deal with AI properly and efficiently, in areas such as innovation, ethics and governance, standards, authorship and documentation, media and events, and professional development?

Randall.  Generative AI is a major technological advancement. IEEE has a significant role to play here. This includes convening experts, stimulating intellectual discussions of issues, defining standards on ethical use, ensuring reliable results. Further IEEE should educate the public, business leaders, technical leaders, and students on AI and its proper use.

IEEE should drive innovation to support AI’s need for more power and larger data centers, faster chips, and software. IEEE can drive new policy to ensure ethical use of AI and help resolve ownership issues of both training data and results.

IEEE Standards can be used to address responsible use, safety, testing, and reliability of results.

Our expertise in publications, makes us well suited for providing documentation, which is necessary for vetted, peer-reviewed reporting of advancements and research. It also provides educational and professional development opportunities for new students, professionals and the general public. New media formats using AI will enable new ways to present documentation.

Above all, IEEE must remain a trusted source of information and lead the way by utilizing state-of-the-art AI in our own products and services.

Verboncoeur.    IEEE must take AI seriously as both a threat and an opportunity. As 2022 Technical Activities (TA) VP-elect, I took a key role in the committee to understand the IEEE opportunity. When it was discontinued in 2023, as VP-TA I moved it to TA. It is developing products leveraging IEEE data to create products using AI to provide value to the IEEE technical and adjacent communities including media, policymakers, tech-investors, tech-lawyers, K12 and the public, each with a role in advancing technology for humanity.

Prototype app AskIEEE uses AI to deliver trusted technology information to each of those audiences in a context-based encyclopedic form with cross-referencing to Xplore articles for researchers, standards for application engineers, and lists of experts willing to be interviewed for media. Foresight uses AI to discover emerging technology trends by making connection in publication and conference data, as well as the aggregated transaction data. The virtual MyJournal will build a sharable personalized dynamic periodical from IEEE journals using AI.

While many of these items will use generative capabilities on the assistive side while maintaining the factual nature of the underlying content. In recognition of the growing importance of tech-ethics in the AI space, we have been strengthening the IEEE TechEthics program to support ethical AI. As acting VP-PSPB in 2020, we were already grappling with AI-authored materials, converging on a permissive transparent policy requiring citation of the AI engine. Other human-centric opportunities include engineering AI to mitigate rather than exacerbate socio-economic inequity.

Ramesh.    AI is ubiquitous and is an integral part of our daily lives with the confluence of the physical, digital and biological worlds. Thanks to AI, we are witnessing tremendous progress in fields such as computer vision, speech recognition, and robotics, impacting the way we live, and with the potential to address societal grand challenges from health care to climate change.

With the rapid growth and application of generative AI, there is an urgent need to establish standards for their application that are ethical and inclusive. IEEE members are at the forefront in developing these technologies, and have an important role to play. A fundamental concern is eliminating inherent bias in the data sets that are used to train generative AI. Access and Equity are vital. AI research requires expanded access to advanced computing power, and high-quality data that are not universally available. Issues related to authenticity, rights and privacy, social responsibility, and the future of work are especially important as generative AI continues to evolve rapidly. Policies and regulations are playing catch up in this rapidly changing environment. Initiatives such as the Open AI act (European Union), and the National AI Research Resource Pilot (US National Science Foundation) are on the right track and attempt to balance equitable and ethical development of generative AI while ensuring security.

With our timeless mission of ‘Advancing Technology for the Benefit of Humanity’, I am confident that IEEE can spur innovation and advance the ethical development of trustworthy AI to serve the public good.

Question 2.  How can IEEE increase diversity and inclusion (including geographic, gender, and age) of members as well as volunteers and increase engagement of a variety of related people, including industry professionals?

Randall.   IEEE has a unique position in the world. We are a place for freely exchanging ideas and debating issues. The more voices in the discussion, the better the result.

We need to be welcoming and lead by example. Proactively, we can encourage people to join and participate in every discussion.

Welcoming IEEE visitors and new members, introducing them to others, and helping to connect them to their IEEE interest areas is a place to start. Our segmentation studies show that we come to IEEE for different reasons, but networking is always a top priority.

In discussions, we can invite everyone in. I admire leaders who give everyone a chance to comment on the subject. Encouraging members to begin volunteering is especially important. The key is to start with a small task and ask them specifically to help, giving them an opportunity to meet other volunteers in the process.

As an industry professional myself, I remember my first experience at a large IEEE meeting breakfast. I entered the large room and knew no one. To change that, I decided to sit with someone I did not know each time and then introduce myself. The welcoming members and staff kindly reciprocated and made it easy to blend in.

Personal connections are important. My section chair introduced me to others who became lifelong friends and introduced me to other society members with like interests. These small actions make a large difference to someone new to IEEE and enrich our global community.

Verboncoeur.   IEEE has the opportunity to deliver value to a much larger fraction of the people in our community. While that incudes increasing the number of underrepresent persons of all demographics, it also includes improving the geographic reach as well as reaching out to deliver value to technology-adjacent communities such as media, policymakers, tech-investors, tech-lawyers and more. We have made progress in setting high workplace standards as part of our professional ethics and have grown affinity groups such as Women In Engineering to elevate best practices as well as career enhancement. IEEE has a strong matrix organization with technology verticals/diagonals in the Societies and Councils, and geographic horizontals in Member Geographic Activities.

However, two key areas where IEEE has special opportunity are the member gap in the transition from student to young professional, and the gap for all variants of industry, from technician to entrepreneur and consultant to engineers and technologists at large corporations. In many discussions with members of these groups, I have learned that it less about the cost of membership and more about the value delivered, including the non-monetary value. That value has to be flexible, since for some it might be career development and networking to find that perfect job or the solution to an obscure problem, but for others it might be cutting edge research papers and proceedings, or standards that ensure compatibility of their products. We have to provide the sockets for these future members to engage on their terms.

Ramesh.   Members are the heart and soul of IEEE and create enormous value for IEEE through their contributions. IEEE’s timeless mission enables members to become engaged volunteers, and transforms volunteers into leaders. Our members value local activities that emphasize IEEE’s mission. Equity and Access are fundamental to Inclusion. Shining exemplars include IEEE’s DEI Volunteer Toolkit, WIE’s Family Cares Grant Program, and the Computer Society Diversity and Inclusion funded projects that broaden participation, support workshops on bias mitigation, advance social justice and equity, and increase D&I awareness.

“Engagement” is the key. We need to highlight our value proposition to current and future members and adapt our structures to serve their evolving career and professional needs. Many Young Professionals look to the IEEE for up-to-date technical content and professional development opportunities. Innovation and standards emphasizing the skills needed for the jobs of the future are important. Programs like the IEEE Learning Network that I championed as VP-Educational Activities provide over 1400 courses and webinars from 44 learning partners that serve over 321,000 learners today. I have proposed an IEEE wide Volunteer Academy program to strengthen collaboration, inclusion and recognition. This will improve engagement between Chapters and Sections, local groups, affinity groups, and better cross-regional collaboration. Working with our Technical Societies, we need to transform our conferences (hybrid/virtual) and publications making them more relevant to engineers and technologists in industry.

We need to work together as ‘one IEEE’ to lower barriers, engage diverse and brilliant minds, transforming members into engaged volunteers, and future leaders.

Question 3.  How can IEEE interact with the next generations, such as pre-college students, and potentially engage them with the engineering field and technical societies?

Randall.     At IEEE, we have many volunteers involved in engaging young people in STEM educational activities. They are in councils, societies, chapters, regions, sections, and affinity groups.

Our many volunteers are developing materials and hands-on activities. Here are just a few examples:

• Circuit building activities and kits
• eMeritbadges
• MOVE (Mobile Outreach using Volunteer Engagement) STEM Activity Book
• REACH – Raising Engineering Awareness through the Conduit of History
• Science Kits for Public Libraries

At IEEE, we have a wealth of lesson plans to help with pre-college educational activities (www.tryengineering.org). We need to continue to share and centralize these lesson plans so that they can be used by our volunteers and teachers. These are designed to meet many curriculum requirements and designed to teach new concepts.

IEEE should continue to develop and customize educational resources to serve our worldwide community, including additional language versions and curriculum matching.

We can enable everyone who volunteers to find and utilize the wonderful programs we have centrally available through our Education Activities Board.

Verboncoeur.   The IEEE organizational structure offers many options to address the diverse needs of our community. Societies, Councils and Technical Communities allow for technical specialization. Sections, chapters and Local Groups allow for geographic engagement. Innovations such as Special Interest Groups within the Computer Society also realize that flexibility. Many IEEE units already have outreach activities designed to stimulate the imaginations of future engineers and technologists.

Societies and Councils can engage both where their members live and work, and by teaming with Sections and Chapters via flagship conferences, for example holding K12 competitions and exhibitions, or expanding the TryEngineering program. With substantial resources generated by core conference and publications businesses, IEEE can be a global partner and leader in outreach activities like Girls Who Code, Coding Bootcamps, First Robotics and Vex Robotics summer camps and competitions, and many more.

Many units within IEEE, especially the societies and councils, generate substantial surplus which allows far more outreach than we presently provide. Let’s get the word out and build infrastructure to create and try new outreach approaches and scale the most successful programs to ensure a new generation will continue to advance technology for the benefit of humanity. Many companies are looking for a way to engage in outreach programs, and IEEE could provide value to them by providing a home for their efforts. We can think holistically about the ecosystem and include future technicians and other non-degree members of our community, made even more important by present challenges in filling many roles.

Ramesh.     IEEE’s Pre-University programs inspire the engineers of tomorrow by mobilizing the global reach of IEEE volunteers to impact as many school-aged children as possible. Tryengineering.org is a free online resource that effectively engages volunteers across IEEE’s technical societies, Pre-university Educators and Students, and Partners.

Our TryEngineering ecosystem features a comprehensive suite of STEM programs, activities and grants to attract, inspire and engage pre-university students in engineering worldwide. Under the leadership of 18,000 volunteers, over 130,000 school-aged children from 60 countries participated in 1500 TryEngineering events in 2023. The STEM Champion Program launched in 2021 creates a local champion who facilitates STEM outreach, provide a link to IEEE’s STEM resources, report metrics, and inspire other volunteers to engage in STEM Outreach. In 2023-24 we had over 100 STEM Champions from 30 countries.

As VP-Educational Activities I championed the impactful Try Engineering Summer Institute (TESI) program that gives high school students the opportunity to explore engineering disciplines through hands-on real world design challenges, field trips, and meet and work alongside professional engineers. 330 students participated in our 9-day TESI program in 2023 across three sites in the US, with 31 students receiving full scholarships thanks to giving to the IEEE Foundation. Transformative programs like EPICS in IEEE allow university and high-school students to work with engineering professionals to solve community challenges through engineering projects addressing topics such as Climate Change and Applications of AI and Autonomous Systems. IEEE’s continued investment in these impactful programs is vital to engage Generation Alpha and beyond.

Question 4.  Innovations and sustainable endeavors for global crises and SDGs need interdisciplinary and open approaches. In such a direction, how can IEEE strengthen technical collaboration across technical societies and communities?

Randall.   Many challenging problems in the world today will be best solved by multi-disciplinary efforts. Enabling these problem teams to work together is a key focus of my candidacy.

To do this, we need to develop goals or mission statements that span many societies and areas of IEEE. This way we can develop broader solutions in a synergistic way. The focus on climate change showed us an example of a problem in our domain and demonstrated our ability to bring together multiple diverse groups to work towards a comprehensive solution. These efforts help us make a greater impact.

Programs like IEEE MOVE bring together members in many specialties to address the problems created by natural disasters. Here we utilize the work of many of our societies and apply this to the multitude of failures created by large scale storms and other disasters.

Addressing common problems is a powerful way for us to work together across interdisciplinary areas to solve bigger challenges. This technical collaboration is extremely important to solving the problems of the world and IEEE can speed up and facilitate this process by utilizing the vast and varied technical expertise of our members.

Verboncoeur.    Many societal scale challenges (climate change, sustainable technologies including SmartAg, sustainable computing, and electrification in transportation and manufacturing, as well as the current AI wave,) will require re-engineering our world. Software, sensors and actuators are becoming ubiquitous as we increasingly seek to optimize. This is a real opportunity for IEEE to do what it does best: convene, curate, disseminate and educate. IEEE provides the platform for our community to create and innovate, and supports the translation of those innovations to societal impact by curating and disseminating the knowledge and standards for real-world impact.

As key architects in the recent five years building IEEE infrastructure for interdisciplinary programs such as Climate Change, SmartAg, and others, we developed Technical Communities 2.0 (TC) and Local Groups. TCs are designed to generate resources through conferences, events and publications driven by global R&D, with integrated financial/intellectual stakeholders in societies, councils, and major OUs including education, public policy, geographic specialization and relevance, with standards. Local Groups enable geographically based relevance and use cases. For example, the Blockchain TC anchors the global R&D in blockchain theory and mechanics, with 70 Local Groups supporting localized use cases worldwide allowing participation by those without a research budget including non-researchers from industry to attend international meetings. In addition, the virtual MyJournal will enable authors to continue to publish in their field-specific journals, while providing a discoverable and browsable personalized interdisciplinary journal assembled by AI based on individual specifications.  Financial sustainability achieved through integrated collaboration is a proven incentive model.

Ramesh.    The globalization of the economy, industry, and education in the past two decades has been propelled by tremendous advances in the STEM fields. Yet we are also facing unprecedented intersecting, cascading, interlinked crises over the past few years. The current geo-political climate and wars are exacerbating food, energy, humanitarian and refugee crises – against the background of a full-fledged climate emergency. In this context, challenges we face from climate change have been multiplied with more frequent droughts, floods and heatwaves affecting billions globally.

IEEE leads the way with its Climate Change Initiative to address these existential threats by focusing on the role of technology in helping shape the global energy landscape and in responsible sustainable development. From satellite imaging and AI-driven models that detect and prevent wildfires, to quantum computing to optimize energy use, members across several IEEE Technical Societies are working collaboratively to develop innovative technological solutions to address the challenges.

Conferences like COMPENG provide a forum for experts from multiple disciplines to work collaboratively to address complex engineering problems. Successful programs abound, like ILN that I championed as VP-EA, IEEE Smart Village, IEEE Entrepreneurship, IEEE SIGHT, and IEEE Standards that address sustainability, climate change and social responsibility solutions (IEEE 1547, 1888, and P7802). Collaboration is the key to success. It requires trust that is built on a foundation of open and transparent communications. These are non-negotiable values as far as I am concerned. We are unstoppable when we work together as ‘one IEEE’ with shared accountability and shared objectives.