I attended this year’s IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit and Honors Ceremony on 23 and 24 April at the Hilton Tokyo Odaiba hotel. The event celebrates pioneers in engineering who have developed technology that changes the way people connect and learn about the world. This year’s celebrants included the engineers behind the first digital cable set-top box modem chipset and the James Webb Space Telescope.
The event included the inaugural IEEE Distinguished Young Professionals and Laureate Forum. Fifty young professionals attended the networking event with IEEE leaders, IEEE Medal of Honor laureates, and award recipients.
Here are highlights of the sessions, which are available to watch in full on IEEE.tv.
Networking opportunities for young professionals
Before the VIC summit got underway on 23 April, the networking forum took place that morning.
In her speech welcoming the attendees, Sophie Muirhead, IEEE executive director and chief operating officer, encouraged the young professionals to engage in IEEE’s mission of developing technology for the benefit of humanity.
The participants heard from 2020 IEEE President Toshio Fukuda and award recipient Aishwarya Bandla about their careers and volunteer work. Bandla received this year’s IEEE Theodore W. Hissey Young Professionals Award for her “leadership in patient-centric health technology innovation and inspiring IEEE young professionals to drive meaningful change.” The award is sponsored by the IEEE Photonics and IEEE Power & Energy societies, as well as IEEE Young Professionals.
She is an IEEE senior member and the clinical innovation manager at Paxman, a medical equipment manufacturer headquartered in Huddersfield, England. She is developing a wearable device that cools a person’s limbs. The Paxman limb “cryocompression” system helps prevent nerve damage associated with certain types of intravenous chemotherapy.
As someone who follows the Japanese concept of ikigai—a sense of purpose—Bandla said her “passion and profession intersected not at technology in the lab but at bringing technology to the people.”
She shows similar passion in her role as chair of IEEE Region 10’s Young Professionals group. Encouraging attendees to become active in the organization, she said IEEE has given her a purpose and the opportunity to give back to the community.
Fifty yong professionals attended the inaugural IEEE Distinguished Young Professionals and Laureate Forum.Junko Kimura; Tomohiro Ohsumi
Attendees were surprised by a guest speaker whose name is well known outside of the technology and engineering fields: Steve Wozniak.
The summit’s emcee Miho Noguchi interviewed the IEEE Fellow and Apple cofounder about what inspired him to pursue a career in engineering and launch a startup. Noguchi, a former Japanese radio broadcaster, is the voice for Google Maps navigation in Japanese.
Wozniak said he was inspired by his father, who was an engineer at Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, Calif.
“I visited the company several times and watched him work and started asking him what engineers did,” he said. His father told him engineers build things that make life easier for people.
When asked what career advice he would give to young professionals, Wozniak said, “Always be a good person. Even if someone is bad to you, always be good to them.”
Reflecting on the benefits of IEEE membership, he said being an IEEE Fellow is the most important honor he has received.
The forum concluded with a networking opportunity. Each table was given a set of questions to break the ice. Attendees paired up and were given 10 minutes to ask each other about their schooling, work experiences, and career aspirations. When the time was up, they switched partners.
Several young professionals I interviewed about their experience said they enjoyed the event. One said she really liked learning about where everyone came from, their work, and their passions. All said they were in awe that they got the opportunity to see and hear Wozniak.
Governing AI and a telescope’s foray into the past
The summit featured a “fireside chat” with Henry Samueli, this year’s IEEE Medal of Honor recipient for his “pioneering research and commercialization of broadband communication and networking technologies” and his promotion of STEM education. He is the first recipient of the award since its monetary prize was increased to US $2 million from $50,000.
Glenn Zorpette, IEEE Spectrum’s editorial director for content development, interviewed Samueli, who reminisced about working in his parents’ liquor/grocery store in Los Angeles as a teenager, where he stocked shelves, operated the cash register, and helped out with the bookkeeping. He told Zorpette that his parents inspired him to become an entrepreneur and that a hands-on project in a seventh-grade shop class prompted him to become an engineer.
Samueli helped to found Broadcom in 1991 in San Jose, Calif. The company developed the first digital cable set-top box modem chipset, which served as the cable signal receiver. Today he is chairman of the company’s board.
When asked about the future of broadband, he said the application of existing technology is more important than its advancement. He added that he’s excited to see what the future will bring.
An audience member asked him what advice he would give to engineers in developing countries.
“Take it one step at a time and let [your career] unfold how it is meant to,” he said.
The conversation was followed by keynote speeches and panel discussions with award recipients on topics including artificial intelligence and space exploration.
“[The IEEE Nick Holonyak Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies] represents the power of collaboration, the strength of shared innovation, and the enduring spirit of those who dare to dream.”— Frederick A. Kish Jr
During a presentation on artificial intelligence, Tshilidzi Marwala, rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo, led a deep dive into how lawmakers can create policies to govern AI use.
While AI is already being used by Google, Microsoft, and X, as well as students and professionals in different fields, Marwala noted there are still many concerns surrounding the technology, especially when it comes to safety and information accuracy.
He stressed the importance of international collaboration, and he called for lawmakers to involve technologists when creating policy.
AI is complicated, he pointed out and “needs consistency when it comes to writing rules for its use.”
AI might be the future, but innovations such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are helping people understand the past.
The telescope, which gathers images of stars and galaxies created soon after the big bang, took 20 years to develop and build. Its development was led by Bill Ochs, Mike Menzel, and Scott Willoughby at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. For their work, they received this year’s IEEE Simon Ramo Medal, sponsored by Northrop Grumman.
Ochs, who was a project manager at the flight center during its development, is now the principal engineer at FTS International, in Chantilly, Va. Menzel is the telescope’s mission systems engineer, and Willoughby is vice president and project manager at the flight center.
In a panel session moderated by Noguchi, the three talked about the challenges they faced during the JWST spacecraft’s development and launch.
One hurdle was the inability to test the telescope’s flight capabilities before launch, Ochs said. The telescope was built to orbit the sun, and it isn’t possible to simulate that environment on Earth. Therefore, Ochs said, the team completed tests and analyses on the telescope’s components and systems to mitigate potential risks.
The Webb telescope, which launched in 2022, is still collecting data.
The three engineers also shared advice about what it takes to be a project manager. Take one big problem and break it down into several small problems you can solve, Willoughby said. He added that managers need to communicate with the entire team and “get empirical, fast.”
A royal visitor and honoring innovators
This year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony, held on the evening of 24 April, recognized people who spearheaded innovations in areas including solid-state circuits, wireless communication, and broadband technology.
The opening speaker was Hisako, Princess Takamodo of Japan. “It is a great honor that Japan has been allowed to host this premier event,” she said.
This was the first time the ceremony was held in Asia.
“I stand here in total awe of how far the human brain has come in the past century,” the princess said.
LEDs play an important role in sustainability, as they reduce energy consumption and can be recycled, unlike incandescent lighting. The technology wouldn’t have been possible without photonic integrated circuits developed by Frederick A. Kish Jr.
Kish, an IEEE Fellow, also advanced telecommunications technology by creating and integrating a full optical system for transmissions onto a single chip, reducing manufacturing costs and enabling significantly higher bandwidths and faster data transfer speeds. For his innovations, he received the IEEE Nick Holonyak Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies. The award is sponsored by Friends of Nick Holonyak Jr. The 2003 Medal of Honor recipient invented the first practical visible-spectrum LED.
Kish thanked his former colleagues at Agilent Technologies, Hewlett Packard, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and other organizations.
“We’ve worked together to leave the world brighter, greener, and more connected,” he said. “This medal represents the power of collaboration, the strength of shared innovation, and the enduring spirit of those who dare to dream.”
Honoring work that helps connect the world continued with the presentation of the IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal to IEEE Fellow Andrea Goldsmith, who received the award for “contributions to and leadership in wireless communications theory and practice.” The award is sponsored by Google.
While at Stanford, Goldsmith developed foundational mathematical approaches for increasing the capacity, speed, and range of wireless systems. She helped found two communications startups: Quantenna Communications of San Jose, Calif., and Plume Design of Palo Alto, Calif. This year, the current dean of engineering and applied sciences at Princeton was appointed president of Stony Brook University, in New York. She is set to start her new position on 1 August.
“Mildred Dresselhaus was a pioneer in the days when there were very few women in science and technology,” Goldsmith said. “She was a role model and an early champion of diversity, ensuring the best and the brightest could enter the field and thrive within it. Her contributions to science and engineering are unparalleled, and receiving an award named for her is deeply meaningful to me.”
The ceremony concluded with the presentation of the IEEE Medal of Honor to Samueli, who received a standing ovation.
At the end of his speech, he announced that he was giving his $2 million prize to IEEE–Eta Kappa Nu, the organization’s honors society.
“I was made an eminent member of IEEE-HKN in 2019, and [the Samueli Foundation] has supported [the society] for years,” he said. “It is truly an honor for me to endow such a wonderful student organization.”
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