MESSAGE FROM IEEE REGION 10 DIRECTOR
The past three months have been somewhat challenging as we continued to organize Region 10 events in virtual mode. The Region 10 Executive Committee Meeting in January and R10 Annual General Meeting in early March were both held virtually and were well participated. The Region 10 AGM was attended by IEEE President Susan Kathy Land, Past-President Toshio Fukuda, Executive Director Stephen Welby, VP MGA Maike Luiken, Past VP MGA Kukjin Chun, MD MGA Cecelia Jankowski, and Regional Directors Barry Tilton (R2), Tim Lee (R6) and Jason Gu (R7). The AGM was a great success and ran without a glitch thanks to the excellent coordination between Region 10 volunteers and IEEE staff from the Singapore office and MGA in the USA.
The other important presentations in Region 10 AGM were by Janina Mazierska, IEEE History Committee Chair and past Region 10 Director, Loretta Arellano on Sections Congress Virtual Training, Lorena Garcia on New IEEE Pre-University Volunteer STEM Portal, and by Sampathkumar
on IEEE Humanitarian Activities/ SIGHT.
As we still don’t see any relief in the near future from the ongoing pandemic, there is a strong possibility that we shall continue with virtual events in the next quarter too. Organizing large scale virtual events can be very challenging requiring innovative and creative thinking by our
volunteers for using online resources advantageously. I am happy to share that our volunteers outperformed and came out with great ideas to organize events with value.
Our philosophy is “Member Value Creation – Let our programs create value to address memberrecruitment and member retention.”
Region 10 continues its efforts on training volunteers. We organized a training workshop on ‘Governance’ and ‘Conference Leadership Program’ for the volunteer leaders of Region 10. The Region focuses on Conference Quality and there is a plan to organize more such programs to train more volunteers this year.
We have added one more subsection in Region 10. The newly formed Kuala Lumpur Subsection is the 40th Subsection. A new Life Member Affinity Group in Singapore Section has been formed and many more are expected this year. Region 10 is a very large, diverse, and growing region and we’ll see further growth in the coming years.
A dedication ceremony, commemorating the recognition of 42nd IEEE Region 10 Milestone ‘Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune, India’ was held virtually on 30th March 2021. There are a total of 234 milestones in IEEE and 42 in Region 10 (38 in Japan, 3 in India, 1 in Australia). Countries in Region 10 have great potential and there is a need to explore further possibilities of such milestone recognitions.
As Collaboration is key to success, I encourage organizational units to collaborate for various activities. Region 10 Young Professionals, Student Activities, Women in Engineering, Industry Relation, and Professional Activities have collaborated to organize member-focused events on enhancing the awareness of trending topics. Region 10 launched the ‘IEEE 10Talk’ webinar series with the first webinar on ‘Innovation and Funding’ on 3rd April. We would be coming up with more such webinars throughout the year keeping the interest of members and current trends in mind.
Region 10 Information Management committee has come out with an innovative idea of funding a portal, which would facilitate submission of proposals in an effective way. The committee is also planning a Q&A, ‘Region 10 Director’s Dialogue’, recorded sessions for members, where Region 10 Director shall address various questions on selected topics. This is expected to be a regular feature.
Region 10 Educational activities committee is promoting the ‘Reaching Locals’ initiative and has started a YouTube Channel focussed on different local languages aiming at effective dissemination of information to members and the community.
The Region 10 Awards and Recognition Committee has issued the call for nominations. I urge you to nominate deserving candidates for the R10 prestigious awards by the closing date of 30 May. Also please watch out for opportunities for funding and to participate in various contests
organized by several Region 10 committees. IEEE has established a single platform for all COVID19 related resources to support members
during the pandemic. You can access the latest virtual educational opportunities, free ebooks, virtual networking, and more in one place by visiting covid19.ieee.org.
As we all are waiting for the pandemic to be over, we wish soon to be able to meet and greet each other in person. It is time to be creative and innovative. Let us put all our efforts to enhance our skills to be future-ready. We have knowledge, resources, and potential, let our programs be designed to address challenges of the new normal.
Thank you.
Deepak Mathur
2021-2022 Region 10 Director
MESSAGE FROM IEEE REGION 10 NEWSLETTER COORDINATOR
Dear Region 10 Members,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the second edition of 2021 IEEE Region 10 Newsletter. First of all, I would like to apologize for the slight delay in releasing this newsletter. As you may have noticed, we have a new name for our newsletter, and with the new name we are also giving the newsletter a new look and format. IEEE R10 Today has been the name for our newsletter since July 2017, and we think it is a good time to change the name and look of the newsletter to better reflect its current objectives and content. We ran the R10 Newsletter Naming Contest in March, and within just over a week, received more than 100 unique suggestions from around 90 enthusiastic members.
We really appreciate the strong support from our members. After going through all the suggestions, we have decided to name our newsletter the IEEE Region 10 Connect. Thank you and congratulations to the contest winners Navaneethakrishnan Ramanathan and Rajnish Gupta who independently came up with the suggestion. We will soon call for another contest to design a logo based on the new name, so watch out for the announcement.
The first edition of the IEEE R10 Connect features excellent content for your reading pleasure. We continue with our recently introduced technical column, and are honored to have another two (2) of our IEEE Fellows, Sri Niwas Singh and Sushmita Mitra, to write about their latest work on Control Strategies for Grid-connected PV System utilizing MPPT and Reactive Power Capability, and Radiogenomics and Deep Learning in Management of Brain Cancer, respectively. This issue also features a special report on the IEEE Region 10 Executive Committee Meeting in January and the IEEE Region 10 Annual General Meeting in March, both of which were held virtually. This issue also features another five (5) Personalities of the Month as well as six (6) Organizational Units of the Month articles. Besides, another COVID-19 heroes were also featured in the COVID-19 Personality of the Month column. Other articles received from various sections throughout the region rounded out this latest newsletter issue. We again thank all the contributors.
I would like to take this opportunity also to introduce the current line-up of our newsletter committee, with their short biographies below. The committee consists of old and new faces, and as we continue to expand, drop us a line if you are interested to be part of the team. Last but not least, to all readers, enjoy the newsletter and stay safe wherever you are.
Mohammad Faizal Ahmad Fauzi
Chair, IEEE R10 Newsletter Committee