Vincenzo Piuri, IEEE PRESIDENT ELECT 2018 in talk with Saurabh Verma, Consultant & Founder, Fundarc Communication (xgnlab) On IEEE Future Stake
Q. IEEE is mostly perceived as highly technical and academic and research oriented organization, through its papers, activities, etc. What do you think about its future role and relevance in highly disruptive and unsecured emerging technological ecosystems?
A. IEEE should continue to be the leading scientific and professional association also in emerging technologies and applications in its field of interest, as we did for smart cities, internet-of-things, cloud computing, and several other topics.
IEEE should continue to disseminate high-quality knowledge, offer networking opportunities, and provide continuing education in these areas that are fundamental for industry innovation and our future daily life.
What would be the recent focus for making the IEEE more aligned with industry and upcoming ventures?
A. Develop more practical knowledge to solve real-world problems and use standards, including methodologies, guidelines, best practices, and successful cases, by showing how to translate effectively the knowledge learned in university courses into working solutions and be more effective in the industry.
– Expand technical activities, communities, and standards in emerging technologies and applications, multi-disciplinary areas, and areas which are broadly using technologies in the IEEE field.
– Increase continuing education programs to support the transition from student to professional, the evolving career of young professionals, entrepreneurship, and people changing jobs as well as the industry needs for tailored corporate-wide approaches.
– Extract fundamental and advanced knowledge from the technical material already available, by knowledge discovery approaches and aggregating this material, for example, into overviews, tutorials, and webinars.
– Develop services for sharing knowledge through data, algorithms, and experimental results, with data mining and data analytics, by fostering innovation in the industry.
– Enhance people networking with specialized forums and events to foster dissemination of knowledge and best practices, mentoring on technology and career development, supporting inclusivity, and providing competence directories and repositories.
-Introduce a recommendation system to facilitate identification of knowledge, products, services, and volunteering opportunities according to the profiles of each individual, by taking into account her/his area of work, her/his recent searches, and the searches of people with similar interests.
Q. Do we have any plan to encourage start-ups by granting fund and access to IEEE contents?
A. IEEE can help technology innovation and economic development also by promoting and facilitating the access to knowledge and services for start-ups.
Directories of competences and achievements may be developed to increase visibility of start-ups and facilitate matching with funding entities. Mentoring may be expanded to support entrepreneurs. Awards may be expanded to recognize the excellence and achievements of start-ups, thus contributing to their visibility.
Appropriate agreements and opportunities to access knowledge and services may be studied for start-ups by considering their limited financial resources, possibly by facilitating start-ups aggregation and incubators to defragment costs.
Q. What is your utmost priority and what are three points you will make to re-define IEEE?
A. Nurturing the scientific and professional community, globally and locally, by ensuring cooperation as One IEEE.
– Continuing to be the trusted source of high-quality knowledge for scientists and professionals, adopting a human-centric approach, addressing emerging topics, providing more practical knowledge to professionals, and facilitating the access to knowledge with a recommendation system;
– Empowering and engaging the IEEE members and all people in the scientific and professional community, promoting active participation of members in IEEE management, and ensuring transparency and control of finances;
– Promoting inclusivity and diversity, pervasively embracing the underserved groups and areas, and reinforcing cooperation among all groups.
Q. How do you see to increase the reach of IEEE across the globe, either creating representations or setting up franchise.
A. IEEE can further increase its presence around the world by nurturing and expanding its local roots (i.e., Sections, Chapters, and the other local organizational units), reinforcing their cooperation with the global organizational units (i.e., Societies, Technical Councils, and emerging technologies groups) as One IEEE, and promoting cooperation with national scientific and professional associations.
