New York City was the backdrop of this 12 months’s IEEE Honors Ceremony, held on 24 April.
The occasion celebrates engineering pioneers who’ve developed applied sciences which have modified how folks join and be taught concerning the world. This 12 months’s celebrants included the engineers behind improvements similar to text-to-donate know-how, AI-powered diagnostic tools, and the graphics processing unit, amongst many others.
Previous to the Honors Ceremony, IEEE hosted a discussion board on 23 April for a choose group of early-career achievers to change concepts and experiences with laureates and awardees, audio system, and IEEE leaders. Attendees from around the globe, working in a wide range of technical areas, shared their journeys and explored the intersections of applied sciences, disciplines, and missions.
The occasion culminated in Friday night’s black tie Honors Ceremony, the place IEEE celebrated medal laureates, together with Jensen Huang, who obtained IEEE’s highest recognition, the IEEE Medal of Honor. Huang is a cofounder of Nvidia and its chief government.
“IEEE has all the time been a house to those that see the longer term earlier than others see it,” Mary Ellen Randall, IEEE president and CEO, mentioned in her welcome speech.
Video highlights and photos from the event can be found on the IEEE Awards website.
Exploring mission-driven tech and AI in artwork
Friday morning started with a dialog between Randall and Marian Croak, the recipient of this 12 months’s IEEE Founders Medal. Croak was honored for “management in communication networks, together with acceleration of digital fairness, accountable artificial intelligence, and the promotion of range and inclusion.”
Croak, who serves as vp of engineering at Google, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., pioneered Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applied sciences. When an individual speaks right into a phone, VoIP converts their voice into digital alerts which are transmitted over the Web relatively than conventional cellphone traces. Her work enabled audio and video conferencing. She additionally developed text-to-donate know-how to lift cash for these affected by Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. The know-how permits prospects to donate cash to a charity through their cellular service supplier, which then payments them.
“Empathy has all the time been a driving pressure within the engineering that I’ve achieved,” she mentioned.
She shared recommendation on how one can keep inventive: “Get out of the workplace. Go to an artwork museum, train, or play with youngsters.” Croak mentioned her grandchildren encourage her.
The daytime program additionally spotlighted AI’s use within the visible arts. Kathleen Kramer, the 2025 IEEE president, interviewed artist Refik Anadol, who’s scheduled to open an AI art museum on 20 June in Los Angeles. Dataland’s reveals are powered by an open-access mannequin developed by Anadol’s studio.
For the museum’s first exhibition, “Machine Desires: Rainforest,” the mannequin collected visible knowledge concerning the pure world from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, London’s Natural History Museum, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, with their permission. The data, together with as much as a half billion photographs, will type the premise for a wide range of AI-produced artwork, Anadol mentioned.
Anadol mentioned he was impressed to combine AI with artwork by the film Blade Runner. He mentioned he believes “machines can grow to be collaborators,” as “knowledge is a type of pigment.”
Information additionally performs an necessary position within the work of artist and writer Giorgia Lupi. The artist is a associate at design agency Pentagram.
Lupi mentioned she makes use of knowledge to inform tales, together with chronicling her struggles with a persistent sickness.
“Information is an abstraction of our actuality,” she mentioned.
Certainly one of her latest tasks, “A Data Love Letter to the Subway,” was proven final 12 months within the Dey Street Passageway in New York Metropolis. The video was made utilizing knowledge from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about every prepare line, together with timetables, ridership, and folks’s journey habits. Based mostly on the knowledge Lupi gathered, she documented how commuters touring on totally different subway traces encountered each other with out realizing it.
By exploring knowledge on this 12 months’s IEEE award recipients, she collaborated with IEEE to create an animated video illustrating the shared pathways and collaborations among the honorees. It debuted on the Honors Ceremony.
Honoring engineering giants
The Honors Ceremony, held at Cipriani 42nd Street, acknowledged greater than 20 laureates and innovators.
Greater than 92 million selfies are taken worldwide daily, PhotoAiD estimates. A selfie wouldn’t be attainable with out Eric Fossum’s invention of the CMOS image sensor. Developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., the “digicam on a chip” was meant to be used in area, however it’s now present in smartphones, medical devices, and automobiles. Fossum, an IEEE Life Fellow, obtained the IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal, which acknowledges excellent contributions to supplies and gadget science and know-how.
“Engineering is a pursuit of what have to be attainable. [IEEE is] the spirit, the conscience, of our career.” —Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia
The medal, he mentioned, “is on the prime of the IEEE staircase of being acknowledged by your friends.”
The IEEE Holonyak Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies went to Steven P. DenBaars, a professor of supplies and electrical and computer engineering on the University of California, Santa Barbara. DenBaars was honored for his work in semiconductors, which laid the inspiration for high-resolution LED and laser shows, trendy solid-state lighting, and extra.
“This work has all the time been a workforce effort…I’m excited and curious concerning the position gallium nitride micro LEDs will play in optical communications,” he mentioned in his acceptance speech.
The ceremony ended with the Medal of Honor presentation to Huang, who obtained a standing ovation. He was acknowledged for his “management within the growth of graphics processing items and their software to scientific computing and synthetic intelligence.”
The IEEE honorary member donated his money prize to IEEE TryEngineering, which gives lecturers with a library of lesson plans and gives academic summer season camps. The Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation matched his present, and the extra donation is destined to fund scholarships for brand spanking new graduates.
“Engineering is a pursuit of what have to be attainable. [IEEE is] the spirit, the conscience, of our career,” Huang mentioned.
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