Jae-Hyun Kim, CheonWon Choi, Heewon Seo, JeongYeon Shim,
Hongil Yoon, and Seokhyun Yoon, IEEE Seoul Section
IEEE Seoul Section was established in 1976. Since then, the membership of the Seoul Section has increased gradually. Presently, the Seoul Section is working as a large section of Region 10, supporting 26 chapters and 18 student branches. For the last 25 years, the Seoul Section has not only built a large membership base but also hosted a large number of educational and technical activities. No doubt, such an enhancement of the Seoul Section was enabled by the efforts – made by the Seoul Section consistently – to well educate students, to host conference and technical workshops beneficial to members, to patiently coordinate chapter and student branches, and not to forget recognizing invaluable members.
Initially, the Seoul Section made good efforts to educate students. One such effort was to hold IEEE Seoul Section Student Paper Contest annually. Last year, the Student Paper Contest was held on 12 December, 2020, wherein 34 high-quality papers were presented in the three sessions in a virtual form. It was a meaningful contest to recognize students who have steadily demonstrated advanced research in the difficult situation of COVID 19. After a rigorous review process, one Grand Prize, two Gold Prizes and three Silver Prizes were awarded to winners. The Student Paper Contest in 2020 is noteworthy that the research results were not only original and high impact. The Student Paper Contest is providing a great opportunity and stimulus to preliminary engineering researchers by presenting guidelines for future dreams and technologies that can contribute to humankind.
Secondly, the Seoul Section has made efforts to host conferences and workshops beneficial to its members. It is notable that the Seoul Section hosted IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON) in 2018 and will hold IEEE Region 10 Symposium (TENSYMP) this year. With the experience of TENCON 2018, the Seoul Section is hosting TENSYMP 2021 (www.tensymp2021.org) this year. It will be held at Grand Hyatt Jeju, Republic of Korea, from 23rd to 25th August, 2021. This is a prestigious flagship technical conference of IEEE Region 10. The theme of TENSYMP 2021 is “Good Technologies for Creating the Future” and its aim is to bring together researchers and engineers from academia and industry to overcome the present difficulties and create a prosperous future. There will be best paper awards and student travel grants. All accepted and presented papers will be submitted to IEEE Xplore digital library.
Thirdly, the Seoul Section has made efforts to patiently coordinate chapters and student branches. Such efforts resulted in the vitalization of chapters and student branches. This year, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) Seoul chapter held the “Mobile Communication Technology Workshop” from 23rd to 24th February, 2021 in Seoul. This workshop, which was conducted in both online and offline formats due to COVID 19, focused on contemporary topics; vertical 5G services and 6G technologies. 160 participants joined in this event and discussed the communications technologies for realizing the theme “Beyond 5G and Toward 6G”. It was also notable that most of the participants were the VTS Seoul chapter and the Seoul Section members. The graduate and undergraduate student membership of the student branches in the Seoul Section number over 200. They are supervised by 19 volunteering faculty. Most activities focus to serve as the lively intramural networking of students and faculties with major emphasis in the provision of mentoring on academic/research/career activities and plans. Many academic events serve to challenge the students’ research endeavors. Many other activities in the form of formal seminar meetings or informal get-together meetings are hosted in local bases.
Fourthly, the Seoul Section has made efforts not to forget recognizing invaluable members. As ways of recognizing members, the Seoul Section endeavors to elevate the grade of an eligible member, strives to explore a well-deserved member for IEEE awards and discovers a potential member to voluntarily work for IEEE.