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We wish you a happy new year! 2022 was an incredibly special and eventful year for us at IEEE Foundation; thank you for being a part of it! We are delighted to share highlights of how your donations were used to improve and sustain excellent IEEE Programs that provide measurable impacts where philanthropy and technology intersect.

The year began with the election of Ralph Ford to serve as our 23rd President. He shared his goals and vision during a Fireside Chat with our Executive Director, Karen Galuchie. Through his leadership, we added twelve new donor designated funds to support new educational opportunities and peer recognition awards. Additionally, six recognition levels were added to enhance the IEEE Heritage Circle. The new levels honor a more diverse set of innovators throughout our history.

We proudly joined in the celebration of the inaugural IEEE Education Week highlighting the wide array of IEEE educational programs, many of which are supported by the Foundation and its dedicated donors. Three donors featured in our IEEE Education Donor Panel discussed how the IEEE Foundation and education intersect, sharing their personal philanthropic giving stories.

The importance of planned giving continued to grow as generous bequests from the IEEE community, including the Estate of Jon C. Taenzer, reinvigorated the IEEE Foundation’s ability to invest in innovative initiatives. To help the IEEE community discover how they too can include the IEEE Foundation in their estate plans, we hosted our 2nd annual estate planning webinar during Estate Planning Week. The webinar -”‘Engineering Your Future” – featured David Sandhu, a former SpaceX Engineer turned Financial Planner who discussed how to “engineer” your future through the benefits and importance of estate planning. 

Throughout 2022, IEEE programs had significant achievements to note. Our four pillar model — Illuminate, Educate, Engage, Energize — highlights the impacts where philanthropy and technology intersect. Herein we share some highlights from IEEE programs supported by your philanthropy.

1. Illuminate

We illuminate the possibilities of technology by using it to address global challenges. Technology allows us to ask previously unimaginable questions and find viable solutions. Together we achieved the following:

• Improved the health, education and well-being of eleven communities in six different countries (Zambia, Kenya, Cameroon, Tanzania, India, Nigeria and the Galapagos) through newly established IEEE Smart Village projects. Each project meets the unique needs of the local community and is designed to close the energy-gap for the world’s most energy impoverished citizens through the three pillars – electrification, education and enterprise development.
• Empowered ten US based student teams to implement innovative solutions that are tackling environmental sustainable challenges that will improve the quality of life for an estimated 540K+ people once the projects through the EPICS in IEEE Environmental Competition, funded by the United Engineering Foundation, are fully deployed.
• Dedicated IEEE MOVE volunteers donated nearly 15,000 combined hours in the wake of wildfires, hurricanes, flooding and more providing short-term communications, computer, and power solutions for victims in California, Florida, Kentucky and Puerto Rico as well as facilitating STEM learning opportunities.
• Selected 24 teams from 16 countries to receive seed funding to test their scalable solutions for energy access ahead of participating in the Empower Billion Lives 2.0 (EBL II) Global Finals set for March 2023 at the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference in Orlando, FL, USA. EBL II is a global competition aimed at fostering innovation to develop solutions to electricity access.

2. Educate

We educate the next generation of innovators and engineers. The future of technology depends upon the nourishment of brilliant minds, the creation of opportunities to dream, and the cultivation of a generation of socially responsible technology professionals. Together we achieved the following:

• Fostered the next generation of innovators by providing 30 need-based, pre-university students with the opportunity to attend one of the four IEEE TryEngineering Summer Institute (TESI) 2022 camps where they discovered the wonders of engineering during an immersive two-week summer camp and launching the TryEngineering Fund to provide educators and students with resources, lesson plans, and activities that engage and inspire.

• Selected seventy-five high-achieving undergraduate electrical engineering students from 52 universities across USA and Canada interested in pursuing a career in power & energy as the 2022-23 IEEE PES Scholars. Fifty-one of these scholarships were made possible thanks to the Hoveida Family Foundation. This year’s group of PES Scholars brings the total number of scholarships awarded by IEEE Power & Energy Society Scholarship Initiative since its inception to 1,956.
• Helped female engineering students pursue their dream careers through the awarding of the inaugural IEEE WIE International Scholarship to Runxi Wang, Electrical and Computer Engineering student at University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute, Shanghai,China and the IEEE Frances B. Hugle Scholarships to Kimberly Betty, Mechanical Engineering student at Kettering University, Flint, MI,USA and Krista Marrocco, Electrical Engineering student at University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
• Provided students and young professionals with valuable access and networking opportunities through travel grants to attend IEEE conferences such as the inaugural Michael C. Wicks Radar Student Travel Grants, which enabled three worthy recipients to attend the 2022 IEEE Radar Conference, and the IEEE AP-S C. J. Reddy Travel Grant for Graduate Students, which afforded six students the chance to attend the 2022 IEEE AP-S International Symposium.
• Invested in the advancement of young investigators by awarding grants and internships such as the 2022 Edward J. Hoffman Early Career Development Grant to Elena Zannoni for her research with spectral SPECT imaging system for diagnosis and therapy of cardiovascular diseases and cancer and 2022 IEEE-USA Washington Internships for Students of Engineering (WISE) to Kevin Guan and McKenzy Heavlin so they could spend nine-weeks in Washington, DC learning how engineers and scientists can contribute to the legislative process and regulatory decision-making.

3. Engage

We engage a wider audience in appreciating the value and importance of technology. Driving a greater understanding of how science and technology impacts society enables us to value the past, meet the needs of today, and create the world of tomorrow. Together we achieved the following:

• Dedicated ten IEEE Milestones honoring technological achievements in seven countries and four IEEE Regions including the first Handheld Digital Camera in Rochester, NY, USA, Quick Response (QR) Code in Nagoya, Japan and Manchester University “Baby” Computer and its Derivatives in Manchester, United Kingdom.
• Enhanced and expanded the source material and resources available on the Engineering & Technology History Wiki  (ethw.org) for historians and the public to explore through the addition of 30 oral histories with technology icons including B. Jayant Baliga 2014 IEEE Medal of Honor recipient, 113 topic articles and 28 first-hand histories.
• Recognized Geniuses at War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age by David A. Price as the eighth recipient of the IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award. The Middleton Award recognizes a non-fiction history of technology book that both exemplifies exceptional scholarship and reaches beyond academic communities toward a broad public audience and is made possible thanks to a bequest from the Estate William W. & Joyce F. Middleton.
• Encouraged students with a passion for the history of technology through initiatives like the IEEE Elizabeth & Emerson Pugh Scholar in Residence at the IEEE History Center awarded to Konstantinos Konstantis, a doctoral candidate in the History of Technology at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and IEEE Life Member History Fellowship, supported by the IEEE Life Members Fund since 1978, awarded in 2022 to David E. Dunning a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Oxford.
• Provided opportunities for IEEE Life Members to remain active, involved and vital through the establishment and activities of IEEE Life Member Affinity Groups (LMAGs) from around the world like the tour 15 members of the IEEE Phoenix Section’s LMAG took of the Arizona Valley Metro Lite Rail Facility. Twelve new LMAGs were added during 2022 bringing the total to 135.

4. Energize

We energize innovation by celebrating technological excellence and innovation that pushes the boundaries of thinking, breaks new ground and improves lives. Together we achieved the following:

• Honored the twenty-five 2022 IEEE Medal and Recognition recipients whose groundbreaking technological advances shape our lives and the future of the profession during the IEEE Vision, Innovation, and Challenges Summit and Honors Ceremony held in San Diego, CA, USA.
• Teamed up with Walmart Labs and IEEE Women in Engineering to create a new award titled the IEEE Women in Technology and Leadership Award. This important new peer recognition will honor an individual woman technologist for outstanding contributions to engineering and technology and empowerment of diverse populations beginning in 2023.

• Nurtured 245 IEEE-HKN student members representing 54 HKN Chapters during the three day, in-person IEEE-HKN Student Leadership Conference held from 28-30 October at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, which included more than 23 professional development and chapter strengthening sessions and workshops plus a Recruitment Fair. The SLC was made possible in part by a generous grant from the Samueli Foundation.
• Fueled the innovation and ingenuity of IEEE-HKN Chapters by awarding the first round of IEEE-HKN Chapter Support Grants to support initiatives such as chapter-building and visibility activities, a mentoring event, and an event that engaged alumni. We are grateful to John McDonald, Beta Chapter, and his wife, JoAnn, for seeding the Fund that provided the mechanism to launch this important new Grant program. 

The future is bright, and we acknowledge that during our 50^th Anniversary Celebration in 2023, with the addition of a fifth pillar simply called, ”Future.”  This newly added pillar looks beyond our lifetime to shape the destiny of future generations, ensuring they have sufficient and appropriate educational and inspirational programs and services to lay the foundation now, establishing the future we envision and desire.

The IEEE Foundation believes in collaboration, stewardship, excellence and impactful results. Together, we make the greatest impact! We look forward to sharing more details on program support from your donations and the impacts you enabled in the 2022 Annual Report which we will share in a future news item on our new website.

Note: The statistics included in this article are preliminary and may change as our program partners complete their year-end reporting.