Director’s Message
It is indeed a pleasure and honour for me to be elected to serve as the Director of IEEE Region 10, the largest region in IEEE. My term in office will be from 2009 to 2010.
First of all, I would like to commend Professor Janina Mazierska for her leadership and achievements as the Region 10 Director of 2007- 08. Secondly I wish to congratulate Professor Lawrence Wong for being elected as the Region 10 Director-elect for 2009 – 2010.
The IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional association with a membership of 382,400 and annual budget of $330 million. It employs approximately 1,100 staff and supported by around 200,000 volunteers. IEEE is divided into ten regions, Region 1 – Region 10. The Region 10, also known as the Asia-Pacific Region, is the largest region in IEEE with a membership of 73,662 at the end of 2008, which corresponds to 19% of the whole membership. It achieved a growth rate of 9.7% as compared with 2007. Currently we have 66 Sections and Subsections and there are 535 Student Branches and 329 Chapters. As the incoming Director of this largest region, I would like to emphasize the followings as my priorities during my term:
- Providing more benefit to members:
Region 10 will actively work on professional activities because our members do not have benefits in comparison with US members such as insurance and credit cards. Fortunately, IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Board set up this initiative. At the same time, the Humanitarian Technology Challenge Initiative was created in IEEE HQ to seek a systematic approach for applying technology to solve disasters and health problems. Region 10 will be proactive to this, also.
- Focusing more on Fellow and Senior Grade Membership growth in Region 10 because our ratio of the number of Senior and Fellow members to regular members is below the world average.
- Taking more care of our large number of Sections and Chapters
- Making R10 Homepage more informative and
- Enhancing Technical Activities, which will hold more technical seminars and distinguished lecture programs in our region.
I would like to mention here our participation rate in IEEE elections of last year. For the first time ever Region 10 voting percentage of 15.89% was higher than all region average of 15.43%. To continue to encourage our members to vote in the IEEE elections I have decided to again offer bonuses to Sections with the highest voting percentage in 2009. I hope Section Chairs will make special efforts to win these bonuses by encouraging members in their Sections to cast vote.
IEEE is celebrating its 125th Anniversary this year. It is indeed very heartening to see that out of eight Sections selected to hold celebrations sponsored by IEEE HQ, three are from our region. They are Bangalore Section in India, Beijing Section in China and the Tokyo Section in Japan. As part of these celebrations Region 10 will be holding 125th Anniversary Region 10 Student Congress on July 16-19 in Singapore. This will be an international event and we expect students from all over the world to participate in it.
I wish that I could receive comments from the members to improve our activities.
March 2009
Region 10 Director