2020 IEEE Region 10 Executive Committee Meeting
IEEE Region 10 Executive Committee held their 2019 meeting on 11th January 2020 at Crowne Plaza Queenstown Hotel, Queenstown, New Zealand. The meeting was hosted by the IEEE New Zealand South Section, and attended by all the executive committee members of IEEE Region 10 for the year 2020 (refer Table 1). There are only two changes in the committee from the 2019 lineup; Jong Chang Yi replacing So Young Kim as the R10 History Committee Chair, while Rajendra K. Asthana replacing S.V. Sankaran as the R10 Life Members Committee Chair. A total of 28 members attended the meeting. Due to visa issues, Parkash Lohana (R10 Membership Development Committee Chair) and Huynh Thi Thanh Binh (R10 Student Activities Committee Chair) joined the meeting via video conferencing.
The one-day meeting started with pre-meeting during breakfast led by the three Vice-Chairs (VC); Takao Onoye (VC Professional Activities), Sri Niwas Singh (VC Technical Activities) and Zia Ahmed (VC Membership Activities). This was followed by the formal meeting, which started at 8.30am and concluded at 5.15pm. Andrew Lapthorn, Chair for the IEEE New Zealand South Section gave his welcoming remark to all the committee members, followed by the address by R10 Director, Akinori Nishihara, which summarized the Region’s activities and achievements in 2019 and plan for 2020.
Throughout the meeting, activities and plans were presented and were due for review and approval at R10 AGM scheduled on 7th March 2020. This included the presentation by all committee chairs (grouped into and led by the three Vice-Chairs), financial report, meeting calendar, advisory and nomination, as well as plans for 2020 R10 Annual General Meeting (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) and 2020 Sections Congress (Ottawa, Canada). Two items which would be further discussed and voted during the R10 AGM, the proposed region alignment and R10 e-Notice fee, were presented by the Director and Secretary, Takako Hashimoto, respectively. The day concluded with a networking dinner at the Public Kitchen restaurant, not far from the hotel.
| Table 1: IEEE Region 10 Executive Committee 2020 |
2020 IEEE Region 10 Annual General Meeting
Due to the potential public health risks and uncertainties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Region 10 Annual General Meeting, initially scheduled to be held at the Lotte Legend Saigon Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on 7th & 8th March 2020, was cancelled and replaced with a one-day virtual meeting instead. The virtual meeting was conducted via WebEx on 7th March 2020, with the help from IEEE Meetings, Conferences & Events (MCE) team in New Jersey, USA. Besides the Executive Committees and Section Chairs from Region 10, which itself spans members from eight different time zones, the meeting was also joined by IEEE President, Toshio Fukuda; IEEE Executive Director, Stephen Welby; IEEE Vice-President MGA, Kukjin Chun; MGA Managing Director, Cecelia Jankowski; as well as 2021 IEEE President-Elect Candidates, K. J. Ray Liu (University of Maryland, College Park, USA) and S. K. Ramesh (California State University, Northridge, USA). To ensure a smooth proceeding of the meeting, a 2-hour dry run session was conducted on 4th March 2020. Despite some minor hiccups, the virtual meeting went smoothly, started at 9.30am and concluded at 5.00pm Japan Standard Time, with over 100 participants.
The meeting started with a roll call by the Secretary, Takako Hashimoto, followed by a welcome address by the Director, Akinori Nishihara. After brief addresses by IEEE President, IEEE Executive Director, IEEE Vice President MGA, and Managing Director MGA, the Director presented the Section Incentive Scheme and the proposed Region Re-alignment for discussion. The Director briefed that discussion on IEEE region re-alignment started in March 2018 to improve diversity at Board level. The total number of Regions has to be kept at 10, and after the Governance Committee denied having 2 Directors in a Region, the only option left was to split or merge existing Regions. Eleven options were presented, with the Section Chairs and Executive Committees asked to select their top 3 preferences through online form (the list of alignment options can be obtained from the Regional Realignment poster below).
Then Takako Hashimoto presented a motion on R10 e-Notice Fee. The motion was put forward as a way to avoid mailbox flooding of IEEE R10 members. The motion was discussed and subsequently approved with some changes. Ramakrishna Kappagantu then chaired a discussion session between the delegates and the 2021 IEEE President-Elect Candidates, K. J. Ray Liu and S. K. Ramesh. The election statement for both candidates is attached in Page 45-47 of this newsletter. In the afternoon session, the meeting continued with presentations by the three R10 Vice-Chairs on their activities and plans, financial reporting and budget by the Treasurer, as well as updates on 2020 Sections Congress. Nominations and Advisory Committee Chair, during his presentation informed the candidates for 2020-2021 Director-Elect: Lance Fung (Australia), Norliza Noor (Malaysia) and Supavadee Aramvith (Thailand). The rest of the afternoon session focused on the reports and updates from the region’s three flagship conferences (TENCON, TENSYMP, HTC) for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 editions, as well as SYWL2020 Congress.
Despite the virtual nature of the meeting, every R10 Committee Chair was asked to prepare a poster for their activity reports and plans, to be uploaded to IEEE Collaboratec® for Virtual Q&A. All posters can be accessed through the links below, and important messages from some of the posters are highlighted in the next Section.
With this successful virtual meeting, IEEE Region 10 truly leverages on its motto “Advancing Technology for Humanity”.
| Conference and Technical Seminar |
Michael Ong, IEEE Region 10 Conferences and Technical Seminar Chair
The Conference and Technical Seminar Committee has the following activities planned for 2020:
This year Region 10 flagship events will be held in the following cities:
We are also pleased to announce the following organizational units have been awarded the 2021 R10 flagship conferences:
| Professional Activities |
Nirmal Nair, IEEE Region 10 Professional Activities Chair
Web: http://pa.ieeer10.org email: ieeer10pac@ieee.org
We would like to share with members the overall objectives and 2020 project directions of R10 Professional Activities Committee (PAC). Our objectives are: (1) Maintain and enhance members’ lifelong employability and career prospects, (2) Enhance the R10 PA process and leadership for professional activities, (3) Support R10 versions of SMARTECH/HARDTECH & IEEE Future Directions workshops, (4) Design events for members interested in reaching out for Government Activities & Technical Policy Activities.
The 2019 activity report can be obtained at the link below:
Our planned projects/tasks for 2020 are:
| Educational Activities |
Lance Fung, IEEE Region 10 Educational Activities Chair
The 2020 IEEE EAC Plan was presented at the recent IEEE R10 Virtual meeting on 7th March 2020. A copy of the poster summarizing the 2019 report and 2020 plan can be found at: https://www.ieeer10.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/2020-EAC-Lance-Fung.pdf
Four projects have been proposed and approved:
| Industry Relations |
Chris Lee, IEEE Region 10 Industry Relations Chair
The vision of the Industry Relations Committee (IRC) is to provide leadership in bridging industry and academia. Our mission is to cross pollinate between industry and academia to foster innovation, internship & entrepreneurship. With good experiences accumulated in innovating industry forums in 2019, IRC should further extend to foster internship and entrepreneurship in 2020. With the theme for this year being “Human-Centric: Thriving for Health & Wellness in Balancing Mind Body Soul,” we have proposed to extend our experience in IEEE TENCON2019 to TENCON2020 in Osaka, Japan and IEEE HYDCON in Hyderabad, India for the organization of one-day Special Industry Track. A half-day special industry track should also be organized in our biannual SYWL congress in Bangkok, Thailand. Furthermore, industry forums shall also be organized in IEEE R10HTC2020 in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia and IEEE Life Science Workshop in Tainan, Taiwan.
| Humanitarian Activities |
Jing Dong, IEEE Region 10 Humanitarian Technology Activities Chair
The IEEE R10 Humanitarian Activities Committee (HAC) provides multiple opportunities for IEEE individuals and organizational units (OUs) to apply for and receive funding for projects, events, and conference participation support and awards to encourage our members to contribute for humanitarian activities. In 2019, the R10 HAC supported 2 projects for the HAC proposal competition (TENHUMCH 2019) and 3 regional HAC event activities. We also awarded the R10 HTA Outstanding Volunteer Award to Ms. Celia Shahnaz from Bangladesh Section and the R10 HTA Outstanding Section Award to Pune Section.
We would like to share our overall project directions in 2020 with all members and encourage submissions on time. Among our projects for 2020 are:
Thank you for supporting R10 HAC!!!
| Women in Engineering (WIE) |
Emi Yano, IEEE Region 10 WIE Chair
Region 10 WIE promotes women involvement in STEM by enhancing networking, knowledge sharing and recognition of outstanding WIE achievement in R10. Our objectives are: (1) Promote women involvement in science and engineering in R10, (2) Facilitate the development of supporting program and activities of WIE in R10, (3) Enhance networking and knowledge sharing of WIE, (4) Recognize WIE’s outstanding achievement in R10 and promote nominations for MGA awards from R10.
Among our projects for 2020 are:
| Young Professionals (YP) |
Takuo Suzuki, IEEE Region 10 YP Chair
Region 10 Young Professionals Committee support activities of YP Affinity Groups and strive for establishment of YP Affinity Groups in Sections that do not have one. It is important to increase the number of active YP volunteers to vitalize YP AGs and establish new YP AGs. So, we have set up the following projects for 2020 and continue to discuss other projects.
In the first project, we will request Council Chairs to build a position for YP volunteers as the Council YP Coordinator. Council YP Coordinators will support activities of YP AGs under their Councils and may organize nationwide activities with the help of their Councils. In the second project, we will support operations of YP AGs using the official website of R10 YP, the mailing list for YP AG Chairs, and on-site workshops that will be held at R10 flagship conferences.
In the third project, we will deepen the exchange with industry through SNSs to make the IEEE YP programs well-known. We hope we can find cooperative local industries and conduct technical tours along with R10 flagship conferences. In the fourth project, we will collaborate with the Chinese Institute of Electronics to organize a special session in order to introduce the IEEE YP Program to Chinese young researchers. This is a pilot study, but we hope this project leads to the establishment of YP AGs in China.
We believe that we need to provide YP Membership value not only for YP AGs but also for YP individuals, so if you have any ideas, please let us know.
| Student Activities |
Huynh Thi Thanh Binh, IEEE Region 10 Student Activities Chair
Saaveethya Sivakumar, IEEE Region 10 Student Representative
The Region 10 Student Activities Committee takes care of the needs of 45,000+ student members spread over 1250+ student branches in the Asia-Pacific region (R10) of the IEEE. The committee conducts regular and special activities for students to improve technical knowledge and management skills and to enhance networking among members and student branches.
Our objectives are: (1) Improve student engagement in IEEE R10 SAC activities, (2) Improve student member retention rate in R10, (3) Progress students to Young Professionals transitions.
We propose some projects which are given below:
- Contests:
- Postgraduate Paper Contest: Aims to improve the engineering students’ written communication skills and reporting research results to science & technology community. The contest will facilitate the recognition of these skills and encourage other student members to develop technical, written and verbal communication skills.
- Student Website Contest: Aims to motivate student volunteers to use electronic media.
- Undergraduate Project Video Contest: Aims to improve the engineering students’ communication and presentation skills to a wider online viewing community.
- Awards: Three awards will be considered including IEEE Region 10 SAC Student Branch Award and IEEE Region 10 SAC Volunteer Award. The purpose of these awards is to recognize the work done by individual IEEE members in (a) their service to members and (b) increasing student membership by conducting activities beneficial to student members.
- SAC Student Ambassador Program: To reach out to inactive sections/student branches locally via appointment of student ambassadors.
- Joint SB Initiative: The initiative is targeted so that the newly revived student branches (SBs) will have guidance after revamping the committee in order to make it active.
- Webinar Series: The topics focus on leadership, education and IEEE resources.
- SAC Operation Manual: The Operations Manual for Section Student Activities Committee Chair and Student Representative issued by IEEE Region 10 SAC provides guidelines for Council/Section Student Activities Committee Chair (SAC Chair) and Council/Section Student Representatives (SSR) for conducting student activities, managing Student Branches and streamlining their operations. It can be accessed from http://bit.ly/R10SACnSSR.
| Life Member (LM) |
Rajendra K. Asthana, IEEE Region 10 Life Member Committee Chair
2020 Region 10 Executive Committee meeting was held in Queenstown, New Zealand on 11th January 2020. Few highlights for 2019 were that 5 new LMAGs were formed against the initial plan of 3. New LMAGs were established at Bangalore, Sendai, Hyderabad, Thailand and Madras Sections. Activities like lectures, seminars, symposium, lunch/dinner get together, visit to historical places, support to Section events etc. were accomplished. Total number activities during the year exceeded 50. Australia received its first IEEE milestone in May 2019. Life Member track was part of the SYWL Congress held in Hyderabad on 29th September 2019. A meeting was also arranged for LMAG Chairs from India. 6 LMAG Chairs plus a few more Life Members attended the meeting at SYWL Congress. Similar activities are planned for 2020 but these may be affected by the COVID19 pandemic. Immediately after this, Life Members Committee face-to-face meeting was held at San Antonio, Texas on 17th & 18th January 2020, where plans & budget were discussed.