Because the philanthropic accomplice of IEEE, the IEEE Foundation expands the group’s charitable physique of labor by inspiring philanthropic engagement that ignites a donor’s innermost pursuits and values.
A technique the Basis does so is by partnering with IEEE items to create memorial funds, which pay tribute to members, household, buddies, lecturers, professors, college students, and others. This sort of giving honors somebody particular whereas additionally supporting future generations of engineers and celebrating innovation.
Under are three lately created memorial funds that not solely have made an impression on their beneficiaries and perpetuated the legacy of the namesake but additionally have a deep that means for many who launched them.
EPICS in IEEE Fischer Mertel Group of Initiatives
The EPICS in IEEE Fischer Mertel Community of Projects was established to assist tasks “designed to encourage multidisciplinary groups of engineering college students to collaborate and engineer options to handle local people wants.”
The fund was created by the youngsters of Joe Fischer and Herb Mertel to honor their fathers’ ardour for mentoring college students. Longtime IEEE members, Fischer and Mertel have been energetic with the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society. Fischer was the society’s 1972 president and served on its board of administrators for six years. Mertel served on the society’s board from 1979 to 1983 and once more from 1989 to 1993.
“The EPICS in IEEE Fischer Mertel Group of Initiatives was established to encourage and assist excellent engineering concepts and efforts that assist communities worldwide,” says Tina Mertel, Herb’s daughter. “Joe Fischer and my father had a lifelong friendship and excelled as engineering leaders and founders of their respective corporations [Fischer Custom Communications and EMACO]. I feel that my father would have been proud to know that their friendship and work are being honored on this means.”
The 9 tasks supported to this point have the potential to impression greater than 104,000 individuals due to the work and collaboration of 190 college students worldwide. The tasks funded are meant to characterize at the least two of the EPICS in IEEE’s focus classes: training and outreach; human providers; environmental; and entry and skills.
Listed here are a couple of of the tasks:
IEEE AESS Michael C. Wicks Radar Pupil Journey Grant
The IEEE Michael C. Wicks Radar Student Travel Grant was established by IEEE Fellow Michael Wicks previous to his loss of life in 2022. The grant offers journey assist for graduate college students who’re the first authors on a paper being introduced on the annual IEEE Radar Conference. Wicks was an electronics engineer and a radio trade chief who was identified for creating knowledge-based space-time adaptive processing. He believed in investing within the subsequent era and he needed to supply a possibility for that to occur.Ten graduate students have been awarded the Wicks grant thus far. This yr two college students from Region 8 (Africa, Europe, Center East) and two college students from Region 10 (Asia and Pacific) have been in a position to journey to Denver to attend the IEEE Radar Convention and current their analysis. The papers they introduced are “Target Shape Reconstruction From Multi-Perspective Shadows in Drone-Borne SAR Systems” and “Design of Convolutional Neural Networks for Classification of Ships from ISAR Images.”
Life Fellow Fumio Koyama and IEEE Fellow Constance J. Chang-Hasnain proudly show their IEEE Nick Holonyak, Jr. Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Applied sciences at this yr’s IEEE Honors Ceremony. They’re accompanied by IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Coughlin.Robb Cohen
IEEE Nick Holonyak Jr. Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Applied sciences
The IEEE Nick Holonyak Jr. Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies was created with a memorial fund supported by a few of Holonyak’s former graduate college students to honor his work as a professor and mentor. Offered on behalf of the IEEE Board of Administrators, the medal acknowledges excellent contributions to semiconductor optoelectronic gadgets and methods together with high-energy-efficiency semiconductor gadgets and electronics.
Holonyak was a prolific inventor and longtime professor {of electrical} engineering and physics. In 1962, whereas working as a scientist at General Electric’s Superior Semiconductor Laboratory in Syracuse, N.Y., he invented the primary sensible visible-spectrum LED and laser diode. His improvements are the idea of the gadgets now utilized in high-efficiency mild bulbs and laser diodes. He left GE in 1963 to affix the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a professor {of electrical} engineering and physics on the invitation of John Bardeen, his Ph.D. advisor and a two-time Nobel Prize winner in physics. Holonyak retired from UIUC in 2013 however continued analysis collaborations on the college with younger college members.
“Along with his exceptional technical contributions, he was a wonderful trainer and mentor to graduate college students and younger electrical engineers,” says Russell Dupuis, certainly one of his doctoral college students. “The impression of his improvements has improved the lives of most individuals on the earth, and this impression will solely improve with time. It was my nice honor to be certainly one of his college students and to assist create this necessary IEEE medal to make sure that his work might be remembered sooner or later.”
The award was introduced for the primary time at this yr’s IEEE Honors Ceremony, in Boston, to IEEE Fellow Constance Chang-Hasnain and Life Fellow Fumio Koyama for “pioneering contributions to vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and VCSEL-based photonics for optical communications and sensing.”
Establishing a memorial fund by means of the IEEE Basis is a gratifying strategy to acknowledge somebody who has touched your life whereas additionally advancing expertise for humanity. In case you are serious about studying extra about memorial and tribute funds, attain out to the IEEE Basis crew: donate@ieee.org.
