IEEE President’s Note:

Make IEEE Your Professional Home. Ray Liu plans to better engage with members and focus on ethics.

Did you know that the IEEE is more than just a professional organisation for electrical and electronics engineers? All who are interested in and want to contribute to our technological mission are welcome to join us.

IEEE has traditionally been made up of engineers, scientists, technologists, practitioners, and entrepreneurs as the world's largest technical professional organisation. Members come from the highest levels of academia, industry, and government and work in every aspect of technology. As a result, the organisation is now simply known as IEEE—your professional home.

IEEE is your professional home, with members including Computer scientists, Electrical, Mechanical, and Electronics Engineers. Physicists and biologists use our technical literature in their daily work, as do entrepreneurs and marketers who build their businesses on our members' technologies, technicians who demonstrate their expertise through technical advances published in our journals, and teachers who share their knowledge of science and technology with their students through our educational offerings.

Although IEEE still honours its electrical engineering roots, its topics of interest have grown far beyond Electrical and Electronics engineering and computing over the last few decades to include just about any field one can think of. IEEE has kept pace as innovations and the industries that generate them have increasingly crossed national boundaries. It has continued to grow its global presence in order to improve its ability to supply products and services to members, industries, and the general public.

I've contributed my time and effort to making IEEE a better place for all of us over the years. More than 36 years ago, I joined as a student member. As a volunteer, I got involved with the IEEE Signal Processing Society. As vice president of Technical Activities, I eventually oversaw all of IEEE's organisations and councils, as well as served on the IEEE Board of Directors. However, like the rest of you, I am still a member. I will continue to read IEEE journals, attend conferences, and implement IEEE standards, and I like interacting with members of my local chapter.

I understand the challenges many of you, my fellow members, face in your professional lives, whether it's landing a job after graduation, thriving or struggling in your academic or industrial position, or utilising the "gig economy" as an entrepreneur. Though the days of a technician working for a single firm for their whole career are long gone, IEEE can be your professional home base from the time you initially join as a student member until you retire. For any step of your career, IEEE has the products, services, networking opportunities, and educational and professional development programmes you need. IEEE members come from all walks of life, from those who are just starting out in engineering or science to those who are already researching, teaching, practising, inventing, or advocating for technology. IEEE members also benefit from a strong sense of community as well as a global network of personal connections that can mentor and support their professional development.

I began this year with a commitment to shaping the IEEE of the future, working with the IEEE Board of Directors to examine ways in which the organisation may adapt to best fulfil the needs of all technical professionals in the years ahead. Many of the advancements we will make this year will be motivated by a focus on long-term success—all while maintaining a strong focus on our Code of Ethics and member behaviour activities, including our commitment to inclusiveness and diversity.

 My strategy for making IEEE your professional home entails increasing our engagement with our members and audience, identifying the next big opportunities for IEEE and our members, enhancing the prestige of IEEE awards, guiding IEEE in taking a leadership role in addressing the climate crisis, and preparing IEEE for a world full of demographic, technological, economic, and environmental changes.

IEEE's main motivations as a non-profit organisation are to promote technical excellence, intellectual leadership, and collaboration and networking rather than make money. Our organization's core missions have always been to facilitate information sharing, advance the technological state of the art, promote professional excellence criteria and standards, and raise public awareness and appreciation of members' efforts.

I invite all of our members to get interested, get involved, and help us reaffirm IEEE as your professional home for all IEEE members and other technologists throughout the world. IEEE is, after all, your professional home. Please look after yourself and one another. I eagerly anticipate hearing from you at president@ieee.org.