Message from the IEEE President
and the Executive Director
In our 50th year since the merger of the Institute of
Radio Engineers (IRE) and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
(AIEE) that created the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
IEEE became a stronger and more global organization, and a more vigorous
advocate for technology in the service of humanity.
In 1963, the newly formed IEEE had about 155,000 members, 9 percent of
them outside of the United States. At the end of 2012, we had nearly 430,000
members, 52 percent of them in 190 countries outside of the United States.
About 9,400 of today’s members have maintained their membership continuously
since 1963. The loyalty and diversity of our members are among our greatest assets.
We accelerated our global activities in 2012. In Asia, we moved our offices in
Tokyo and Bangalore to new, larger facilities and broadened the geographic
responsibility of our Singapore office. We introduced a Chinese edition of
IEEE Spectrum, the first non-English edition of our award-winning magazine.
In Europe, we set the stage for stronger member engagement in the development of
standards and public policy, which included joining other dignitaries at the 4th
European Innovation Summit held in the European Parliament in Brussels to discuss
The Role of Science and Technology in Support of Innovation. A new
partnership with UNESCO on engineering education in Africa strengthens our efforts
to assist in building engineering capacity on the continent.
We installed the first four IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu honorary society chapters outside
of the United States, in Hong Kong, India, Qatar, and Canada. Members elected the
first IEEE president from outside of North America, J. Roberto Boisson de Marca
from Brazil, who will serve as IEEE president in 2014. And for the first time,
we offered an IEEE-sponsored insurance product to members outside of North America.
The growing strength of our organization is evident in the expansion of our
products and services, in major upgrades to our infrastructure, and in the health
of our financial position.
We acted on our commitment to provide open access publishing options to those
authors who wish, or are required, to publish in open access publications. We
created a new multidisciplinary, open access, online journal, IEEE Access,
which was launched in 2013. We expanded our portfolio of topical open access journals
and created an open access option for our traditional journals.
We strengthened our commitment to emerging technologies, notably in the areas of
life sciences, smart grid, electric transportation, and cloud computing. For each of
these areas we have created an IEEE Virtual Community and a web portal that directly
provides access to topical resources throughout IEEE.
The new IEEE Business Platform, a major and long awaited upgrade of our IT systems
to support our operations, was brought online seamlessly and now provides greater
reliability, efficiency, and simplicity. New features were added to IEEE Xplore,
our digital library, and the conversion of Xplore content to HTML is
proceeding steadily, with more than 100,000 articles now accessible in the new format.
Two new journals and two new magazines joined our growing publications portfolio,
and our publication metrics, including time to publish and publication costs, are
steadily improving.
Overall, IEEE operations continue to perform well and support our commitment to
provide the best service possible to our members and customers. Total revenue grew
5.6 percent in 2012 compared to 2011, and for the first time exceeded US$400 million.
The voices of IEEE members, long heard in the United States as advocates for the
role of technology in improving quality of life and economic prosperity, are
increasingly being heard elsewhere. In 2012, IEEE brought together 50 engineering
societies, headquartered in 30 countries, in support of the United Nations’
Sustainable Energy for All Initiative. The IEEE Standards Association
joined OpenStand, a statement of principles for the development of modern
international technical standards. Contacts between IEEE leaders and policy makers
around the world are frequent, and the reliable, objective information we provide
is sought and welcomed. This past year, IEEE twice responded to requests from the
European Commission to provide technical experts to serve on high-level advisory
groups.
2012 was a very good year. But along with our accomplishments, we will also
remember the unprecedented challenges posed by Hurricane Sandy, which not only
disrupted our operations for nearly two weeks, but also dramatically affected the
lives of many of our members and professional staff in the eastern United States.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our sympathy to those who suffered
losses and our thanks to those whose extraordinary efforts minimized disruption to
the services we provide.
Sincerely,
Connect With IEEE