February and March were eventful months. We underwent our society review by the IEEE Technical Activity Board (TAB) Society/Council Review Committee (SCRC) during the TAB meeting series in February, followed by our AdCom retreat and meeting at the beginning of March.

The comprehensive society review occurs every five years and serves to provide regular feedback and recommendations from TAB to the Societies/Councils (S/C). We were evaluated on several aspects:  Purpose, Strategy and Operations; Governance; Standards; Conferences and Technical Meetings; Publications; Education; Technical Committees; Membership and Finance – which reflects the broad portfolio of activities IEEE S/C engage in. We received very positive feedback from the review committee: we were praised for our NPSS schools, overall conference operations, financial status, and documentation of our operations practices. There are, however, some suggested areas of improvements — in line with the current TAB policies — which include increasing interactions with other S/C, and Standards activities as well as continuing to increase our diversity, and activities in Region 9 (South America). We also need to strive to decrease the time between conferences and conference-related publications to optimize dissemination of information presented at our meetings.

The TAB meeting series was characterized by its usual forward-looking vibrancy. Three actionable topics are highlighted here: establishment of an IEEE AI coalition, IEEE Global Semiconductor Activities and emphasis on increased interactions between S/C in Division 4 (DIV4), to which we belong. The newly formed AI coalition — defined as ‘An Alliance for Combined Action’ —  has two primary goals: (i) to classify and index AI work across IEEE into areas, and identify any gaps and (ii) to review how IEEE can use AI to enhance its services. A list of initial key areas was being formed in real time at the meeting and input was being solicited from S/C. In response to this call, we formed an initial NPSS AI coalition working group at the March AdCom meeting (Nicolaos Karakatsanis, Stefan Ritt and Dimitris Visvikis) with Dimitris being our representative at the AI Coalition Committee level. Any interested members are encouraged to interact with our initial working group to  provide input and possible involvement.

An ad-hoc committee for IEEE Global Semiconductor Activities has been formed under the IEEE Future Direction;  its mission is to work with organizations internally and globally to tackle the challenges of the semiconductor value chain, with the  objective of (i) disseminating information about global semiconductor initiatives, (ii) increasing engagement through identification of opportunities for IEEE members to promote initiatives and guide industry advancements, and (iii) supporting involvement of a diverse, trained, workforce  in the industry. Given its technical expertise, IEEE is very well suited to promote training to fill gaps in the workforce in the semiconductor industry, including contributing to apprenticeships at the community college level.  All S/C are invited to participate in any aspects of  these effort.

The general TAB level approach of drawing expertise from societies with disparate technical backgrounds to address relevant technical and societal problems was also reproduced within DIV4. As a first step, we engaged in an interesting exercise of identifying technical focus areas and applications that are common across societies. We formed a very first draft Sankey diagram (see figure below) linking S/Cs to applications; upon examination, it became immediately apparent that DIV4 S/Cs cluster around electricity and magnetism. Further, more detailed analysis, will include definition of other end-points such as expertise and/or industry (end-users). A goal is to enable backward and forward projections; a specific end-user will be informed which societies’ expertise are best suited to its needs, while each S/C can visualize useful interactions.

The themes of this year’s retreat were inspired by recent TAB activities and by some early feedback from the Society review committee and included: (i) IEEE  Standards Association (SA); (ii) Conference-related publications; (iii) Possible interest overlap with IEEE Brain/ IEEE Councils/Technical Communities; Roadmaps; (iv) Initiatives; (v) NPSS opportunities/activities  in DEI and Climate Change; (vi) ‘Best practices’ and intersociety activities.  I will briefly highlight three topics: SA, interactions with IEEE Brain and Roadmaps.

In response to the SCRC recommendation and in recognition of the increasing importance of standards in the technology translation from research to broad end use, we appointed an NPSS liaison to IEEE SA (Nicolaos Karakatsanis ([email protected]) and we invited  Edward Au, the Chair of the IEEE TAB Committee on Standards to give us a presentation on the available IEEE resources for the establishment of Standards, which was very informative. Nicolaos will interact with our technical area Chairs to help identify possible SA opportunities in our Society– please do contact him, or your AdCom representatives if you’d like to be involved in any way.

We also had a guest presentation by Cynthia Weber on the IEEE Brain Community; possible synergies were identified between some of our technical areas and IEEE Brain activities resulting in AdCom’s approval to join IEEE Brain with a one-year Affiliate Membership – to be renewed upon establishment of successful interactions. We are joining ten other IEEE Operating Units (OUs) as a sponsoring member; Richard Carson (2024 IEEE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award recipient) will be our first representative. There are significant opportunities for synergies and I’d like to encourage you to read the presentation and suggest any ideas for joint projects/activities.

We also focused on development of “Roadmaps” in recognition of their importance in identifying technology gaps and possible solutions in light of major envisioned technology developments. A well-thought Roadmap can be influential in defining technical trends in the context of societal, industrial, research and government needs/policies. Two technical areas are starting to discuss formation of Roadmaps, Pulsed Power Applications in Fusion, and Radiation Instrumentation with Nuclear Medical Imaging Science.  It will be interesting and instructive to follow their progress.

Topics at the retreat were discussed in break-out sessions, which allowed for ample discussions and generation of new ideas. In addition to what described above, there were suggestions for concrete DEI, Climate change and YP-related activities,  as well as further development of best practices; an important one is to keep increasing the value of our society to its members and audience at large.  Please do reach out to any one of us if you’d like more information or are interested in volunteering for any of the NPSS activities.

Vesna Sossi, IEEE NPSS President, can be reached by E-mail at [email protected].