IEEE Trips To Singapore, Japan, New Jersey, San Francisco, Bologna And Milan

This is the last month of my IEEE Presidency and still a few things to do. I estimate I have been away from home over 250 days this year, flown on 17 different airlines and given over 100 talks either in person, remotely or via recordings at various IEEE and other events. It has been quite a year!

We had a virtual board of directors meeting this month to approve the winner of the 2025 IEEE Medal of Honor, who will be awarded a $2M prize in April of 2025 in Tokyo. This month I visited and spoke at IEEE Tencon, a Region 10 conference in Singapore, attended and spoke at a YP/student-oriented event and visited a milestone in Kyoto, Japan as well as the Nintendo Museum with other IEEE volunteers and staff. I then flew to San Francisco, CA to give out some IEEE field awards at the IEDM and then to Italy to give some talks in Bologna and another IEEE field award in Milan, Italy.

At Tencon, I spoke about IEEE AI Ethics activities in a keynote talk as well as giving a talk on recent IEEE board activities and encouraging our younger members to stay with us and make IEEE their professional home. I also visited the local Schneider Electronics Office, a startup called Black Sesame, the IEEE Singapore office and A-Star, a Singapore government funded research organization. The image below is me during my keynote talk. The shirt was a gift from the Singapore IEEE office, a batik print shirt, which are common wear in this part of the world.

Below is an image of me at the Schneider Electric visitors center in Singapore. We were shown their various electric power and facilities management products and services and spoke with them about stronger engagement between industry and the IEEE. We had a similar conversation with Black Sesame, who have offices in the same building as the Singapore IEEE office and make chips for electric vehicles. At A-star we talked about various IEEE activities include those related to sustainability efforts, including port electrification for ships to connect to the electric grid when in port and for charging electric boats.

In Kyoto, Japan I gave a talk at a virtual and physical event for students and young professionals about recent activities approved at the IEEE November board of directors meeting, about stronger engagement with industry and how IEEE can the professional home for our younger members and support their careers. I also visited two milestones in Kyoto.

The first was to Shimadzu Corporation, a biomedical company in Kyoto. There I joined Nobel laureate Koichi Tanaka, shown with me below next to the milestone plaque at Shimadzu, who invented the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization technique, which allowed ionization of large organic molecules so they could be detected by a mass spectrometer. This allows detection of useful large organic molecules for various medical and biological research applications. This milestone was installed in November 2024.

The image below is from my visit to the Keage Hydro Power Station in Kyoto, which used water from the lake Biwa Canal to create electricity for the city starting in 1897. The first power plant was DC powered and later converted to AC. In 1936 a new facility near to the original building was completed which used water from a second canal to increase the AC power output. This facility is still working to provide low-carbon power to Kyoto. The image below shows me next to one of three copies of the milestone plaque near the hydro-power generators.

Nintendo recently opened a museum near Kyoto. I visited it with 2020 IEEE President Toshio Fukuda, IEEE Council Office’s Makiko Koto and my Kyoto host, Tomohiro Hase-sensei, from left to right, shown below with some animated Nintendo Toads, Toadstools, at the museum. Nintendo started in the 19^th century making card games, expanded into board and other games in the mid-20^th century and offered its first electronic game devices in the 1970’s.

I flew from Kyoto to New Jersey to give out the Charles Proteus Steinmetz award to Gary Hoffman at the IEEE Standards award event and then flew back to San Francisco to attend the IEEE IEDM, International Electron Devices Meeting, to give out three more technical field awards and attend some sessions at the IEDM and the MRAM Forum following the IEDM on Thursday. I also attended an IEEE Magnetics Society standards meeting on Wednesday night.

After half a day at home in San Jose I then headed to Bologna and Milan Italy to give some talks in Bologna, including at the Italian Academy of Science and give out the IEEE Control Systems Society award at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC, in Milan Italy before heading home for some time with my family.

The picture below shows me with my gracious hosts Cecilia Metra, left, and Carlo Alberto Nucci, right, at the amazing meeting room where I spoke at the Italian Academy of Science about the IEEE and things that our IEEE board has been working on in 2024. Those are hand painted drawings on the ceiling of this room and there were busts of famous Italian scientists on the walls.

Cecilia is an IEEE Fellow and a professor in Electrical Engineering at the University of Bologna, the world’s oldest university, founded in 1088. She has been very involved in fault-tolerant design of digital circuits and systems and is a past President of the IEEE Computer Society and will be an IEEE director again in 2025. Carlo Alberto is a member of the Italian Academy of Science and is a professor of Electrical Power Systems at the University of Bologna and the Editor and Chief of the Electric Power Systems Research Journal.

I also gave a talk at the University of Bologna to students and faculty about IEEE and other sustainability efforts for data centers, particularly involving digital storage and memory technologies. I visited the Marconi estate, Sasso Marconi, near Bologna where I had a chance to see where Guglielmo Marconi did his pioneering radio work. The image below shows me with the IEEE Engineering milestones outside of the house in front of the hill where he and his associates were able to demonstrate radio communication beyond line of sight, using a spark gap transmitter.

The next day I traveled to Milan to participate in an awards ceremony to present an IEEE Technical Field Award, TFA, at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, CDC, put on by the Control Systems Society. We had social events at the Alfa Romeo Museum and at the National Museum of Science and Technology near and in Milan. On December 19 I flew home to be with my family for the holidays.

This trip was my last as IEEE President. I have been honored to have been part of the 2024 IEEE board and I am very proud of the things we have been able to accomplish this year. I look forward to working with the 2025 IEEE President, Kathleen Kramer, as IEEE Past President in 2025.