In the Voice of Governing Board Section, we are repeating the informative article “What’s your membership level?” written by Miriam P. Sanders, IEEE Division VII Director. She found that many members are “not aware of grade or its benefits”. She focused on the benefits IEEE higher grades: Senior Member and Fellow grades. She explained the process of membership grade elevation. She also emphasized the value of serving as a referee in this process.

Next, we included an update on the 2021 IEEE PES and IEEE Election Results. Congratulations to the elected individuals in the 2021 IEEE PES Election: Shay Bahramirad – President-Elect, Jonathan Sykes – Secretary, and Juan Carlos Montero – Treasurer, and in the 2021 IEEE Election: Saifur Rahman – IEEE President-Elect, and Celia Shahnaz – IEEE Women in Engineering Committee Chair-Elect.

In this issue, we are presenting updates from three PES Chapters, PES Spanish Chapter, PES Kerala Chapter and PES Bangladesh Chapter. Recently PES Spanish Chapter organized a PES Distinguished Lecturer Programs (DLP) in Spanish facilitating students and industry professionals from Spain and Latin America. The DLP talk was delivered by Dr. Julio Romero Agüero, PES Vice President, Membership and Image and the title was “Distribution Network Modernization”. IEEE PES Kerala Chapter updated some of their recent events, such as IEEE PES STEP 2021, WOW 2.0 and some volunteer guidance and leadership programs. In these events, many distinguished speakers and guests joined along with chapter’s executive committee members. An update from the PES Bangladesh Chapter is received where they presented their newly launched initiatives: Lead the Young Leaders with Technology Beyond the Border. In this webinar series, some PES distinguished speakers delivered keynote talks.

We received updates from different student branch chapters. The UFSM and UNICAMP PES SB chapters updated about Sustainable Energy Technology Innovation Symposium focusing on e-Mobility in Brazil. The event hosted a large number of eminent speakers, professionals and students. PES Distinguished Lecturer Dr. Siri Varadan delivered a talk organized by PES SBC RIT. The title of the talk was “Using the Power of Data Analytics in Electric Utilities”. IEEE PES/IAS joint SB Chapter, IIT, Mandi organized a PES DL talk delivered by Dr. Siri Varadan. They conducted a membership drive in association with the IEEE MDC Delhi Section where they distributed unused IEEE Magazines to nearby institutes.
I humbly request PES volunteers to submit articles in PES Enews containing a comprehensive description with relevant photographs (videos/links) of PES related activities/events/webinars/initiatives/achievements.

I wish you a safe life during this global crisis.

Shaikh Fattah, Ph.D. SMIEEE, FIEB
Professor, Department of EEE, BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh
https://sites.google.com/site/drshaikhfattah/
E-mail: enewsupdatepes@gmail.com; s.a.fattah@ieee.org