IES Growing Steadily in 2025 with Increasing Membership Promotion and Global Engagement
By Ya-Jun Pan, VP for Membership Activities
The IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES) is growing steadily in 2025. As of 6 Aug, IES members are reaching the milestone of 12,000 in the history. By 13 Sept, it is reaching 12,370 in total. Note that there are 50% increase of the students’ membership grades including graduate students and students and 15% of total membership increase from August 2024 to August 2025. By the end of August, there were four new Chapters and 23 new Student Branch Chapters (SBCs) established in 2025. In total, currently IES has 111 Chapters and 100 SBCs worldwide.
The steady growth of IES memberships won’t be possible without the leadership team including the IES President Prof. Milos Manic, the Vice-President for Membership Activities, Prof. Ya-Jun Pan, all IES ExCom and AdCom members, and especially the whole Membership Activities Team with around 75 active volunteers in the two standing committees and 10 subcommittees (Fig.1). The investment of IES for members, the dedication and tremendous time and effort of our volunteer team who put in promoting IES membership and global engagement are the key components that IES achieves the retention and growth in 2025. IES membership is such a valuable IEEE society to join with lots of opportunities for professional and career development. Students, young professionals, senior employees or entrepreneurs, academics, and all other members can find what they need in IES. IES is a community where our members can network, interact and collaborate with others who share their technical or professional interests. In all MA programs, IES invests significantly to promote our members in all activities.
Chapters Program Update
The Chapters and Joint Chapters Committee, led by Prof. Hani Vahedi, has the first IEEE IES Chapter Chairs Meeting of 2025, in a hybrid format, successfully held during ISIE in Toronto, Canada, marking an important milestone in our global chapter engagement strategy (Fig.2). The session featured impactful presentations by IES leaders, including VP-Membership Activities Prof. Ya-Jun Pan, VP-Conference Activities Prof. Luis Gomes, and VP-Industrial Activities Dr. Stamatis Karnouskos. Each highlighted key developments, current challenges, and strategic opportunities for chapters to enhance their presence and impact. IES President Prof. Milos Manic addressed the importance of membership growth, emphasizing the need for clear communication channels and accessible support mechanisms that empower members to actively contribute to and benefit from the society. A constructive and engaging discussion followed with active participation from AdCom members and chapter chairs, focused on the strategies in energizing our global chapters.
In addition to the traditional Chapter Chairs Meetings held twice annually during IES flagship conferences ISIE and IECON, IES has launched a powerful initiative to further support its Chapters: regional events. These regionally focused meetings aim to provide more consistent interaction with chapters and address local challenges through tailored, collaborative solutions. The first meeting has taken place in Africa during the SYP Congress, aligned with the Region 8 Chapter Meeting, on 16 August 2025, in Tunisia. Another one will be the IEEE IES R10 Chapter Chairs Meeting, to be held on 14 December 2025, in Bhubaneswar, India, in conjunction with the IES-sponsored ICPEE conference. Chapter chairs from across Region 10, along with senior representatives from countries without established chapters, will gather for a one-day workshop. There are two more regional events planned in November (Region 9 – Chapter Officers’ Meeting at SEPOC25, Balneário Camboriú, Brazil) and December (Region 8 – African Chapters meeting, Cairo, Egypt) in 2025.
In 2025, around 25 IES Chapters and joint Chapters are financially supported up to US$4,000 each as their local activities support grants. Around 22 IES Student Branch Chapters and joint Chapters are funded up to US$1,000 each for their SBC local activities. New Chapters and SBCs are granted with US$500 seed fund for their kickoff event. The best Chapters award this year is awarded to IEEE Beijing Section – IES Tianjin Chapter in Region 10, and the best Student Branch Chapter award is granted to the IEEE IES RVR & JC College of Engineering Student Branch Chapter in Region 10. Congratulations on the excellent work!
Students and Young Professionals Update
The Students Activities Committee (SAC), led by Ala Chalghaf, has created a network of 104 student ambassadors that are able to help students all over the world to make the most of their IES membership.
The Young Professionals (YP) is led by Chathurika Wickramasinghe.
In 2025, IES YP committee is committed to expanding its global reach, strengthening community engagement and membership growth, and enhancing professional development opportunities for young engineers. The 2025 action plan includes organizing student and YP focused activities at major IES-sponsored conferences through SYP Assistant Program (SYPA) such as CPE-POWERENG’2025 (Turkey, Fig.3), ISIE’2025 (Canada, Fig.4), INDIN’2025 (China, Fig.5), PESGRE’2025 (India), and IECON’2025 (Spain). There is US$200k/year support for SYP forums at IES flagship conferences through student and young professional assistance (SYPA) program which can support around 100 SYPA grants to attend IES flagship conferences.
In 2025, IES invested and supported 74 SYPA grants for IROS 2025 in Hangzhou, China. At least 10 keynote and invited sessions are planned, and the successful webinar series will continue, featuring IEEE Fellows, industry experts, and past award recipients sharing their experiences. Additional initiatives started by launching an email campaign, a member survey, and a feedback forum to inform long-term planning. The committee also enhanced visibility through active social media outreach and a dedicated team of supporting volunteers. With a strong and diverse leadership team in place, 2025 is in the path in strategic growth, global collaboration, and deeper engagement within the IES SYP community.
By 9 Sep. 2025, Membership Leaders Support fund, led by Prof. Jie Sheng, has supported 25 IES volunteer leaders and four regional events in Regions 8, 9 and 10.
More information of IES SYP activities can be found in https://iten.ieee-ies.org/featured-news/2025/students-and-young-professionals-at-the-heart-of-ies/
Annual IES SYP Congress and IES Day
Starting from 2025, the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Students and Young Professionals (IES SYP) Congress becomes an annual event with the society’s commitment and strong support for SYPs for global reach and long-term growth. On 15-17 August, the IEEE IES SYP Congress 2025 was successfully held in Tunis, Tunisia (Fig. 6).
Thanks to the excellent organizing team led by Ala Chalghaf and Aziz Ben Kbaier. There are 371 applications from 50 sections across six regions, and 250+ participants at the congress (Fig. 7).
The congress served as a global platform for experts, researchers, and young innovators to exchange knowledge on industrial electronics, technology, and entrepreneurship. It featured keynote talks, panel discussions, interactive workshops, industrial visits, poster presentations, social activities, and round table sessions led by distinguished international and national speakers. The annual SYP congress plays an important role in strengthening geographic diversity, supporting growth in the global membership development, and building a pipeline of engaged future leaders for IES. The next IES SYP Congress will be held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, in the summer of 2026.
Please stay tuned for more detailed information on IES SYP Congress.
Besides the SYP congress, IES Day, led by Chandan Kumar, is another annual event that IES sponsors. IES Day will be on 13 Nov 2025 and the events will be organized in the month of November to celebrate the IES Day globally. Many events worldwide, funded by IES Membership Activities, local or virtual will be held to celebrate the achievements, showcase the success of our IES members and the opportunities there are in IES in many ways.
More information can be found on the IES Day website: https://iesday.ieee-ies.org
More Membership Activities at IES Conferences
Our membership development team members organize many events at our IES sponsored conferences. As in Fig.8, we have our new IES booth for ISIE in June 2025, Toronto, Canada. We plan to have the IES booth at IECON 2025 in Madrid, Spain and IROS 2025 in Hangzhou, China both in October. The booth provided a channel for IES to conference attendees who would like to know more about our society and potentially becoming our future members.
Besides Chapters meeting and SYP forums, Women in IES (WiIES) committee, led by Prof. Jing Zhou, has regular events such as luncheons, forum and workshops for our flagship conferences besides their regular WIE Webinars, e.g., Women Forum at ISIE 2025 featured three technical talks from three researchers in Canada followed by a Q&A session. There was a women forum with three speakers hosted at INDIN, Kunming, Yunnan, China in July 2025 (Fig.10). Our Collaboration and Engagement committee, led by Prof. Lucia Lo Bello, organized an open session, particularly meant for first time ETFA participants, on 10 Sept. at the IEEE Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation Conference (ETFA 2025), in Porto, Portugal. The event aimed at welcoming newcomers and engaging them with IES by providing them with technical exposure, understanding IES governance, and enabling first-time participants to mingle and network with experts and leadership team.
Read more info about the Open Session on Collaboration and Engagement at ETFA 2025: https://iten.ieee-ies.org/featured-news/2025/an-open-session-on-collaboration-and-engagement-at-etfa-2025-in-porto-portugal
Our Brazilian Activities committee, led by Prof. Leandro Becker, successfully organized the 1st IEEE IES Brazilian Members workshop, held on 27–28 July 2025, at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte (Fig.11). This is a significant milestone in the effort to strengthen ties between academia, industry, and the scientific community in Brazil supported by the IEEE IES. The workshop was conceived to provide a collaborative forum where academic researchers, industry professionals, and IES leadership could dialogue and collectively define the directions for IES growth in the coming years in Brazil.
Stay tuned and read more about the Brazilian Workshop really soon!
As in Fig. 12, our Chapters and Joint Chapters Program Chair, Prof. Hani Vahedi, together with our African Activities committee, led by Prof. Hady Habib, have organized a meeting for African Chapter and volunteer leaders at the IES SYP congress in Tunis, Tunisia on 16 August. It is such a good opportunity to see the active volunteers in Africa and the meeting set a tone for the solid growth plan in Africa for our IES membership development.
Additionally, with the leadership and support by IES president Prof. Milos Manic, there were two events in early August in India which brought together industry and researchers together to discuss the frontier in Industrial Electronics. As in Fig.13, the IES Hyderabad Chapter, led by Dr. Tripura Pidikiti hosted the IEEE IES Industrial Innovation Conclave (I4C) 2025, on 6-7 Aug. 2025 at Vivanta by Taj, Hyderabad, India, with the theme on “AI Frontiers: Pioneering Intelligent solutions in Industry”. The conclave brought together industry leaders, researchers, academia, and students to explore AI’s transformative impact across domains – from Smart Cities & Sustainability to Energy, Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Hardware Engineering.
As shown in Fig. 14, the IEEE Industry Conclave on Emerging Technologies and Industry Automation (ETIA 2025) was organized 8-10 Aug. by the IEEE Bhubaneswar Section Industrial Electronics Society (IES) Chapter, led by Prof. Ranjeeta Patel. This is a premier platform for exchanging ideas and exploring future trends in industrial automation and emerging technologies. Distinguished professionals, innovators, and researchers from around the world were gathered for this landmark event.
What does the IES MA team plan for IECON 2025?
At the coming flagship conference – IECON 2025, IES MA team is planning for many events for our members.
On 15 Oct., there will be a “Meet the IES Technical Committees” event organized by the New Initiatives committee together with VP for Technical Activities – Prof. Valeriy Vyatkin, a “Newcomers Welcome” event organized by the Collaboration and Engagement committee, a “Women in IES Luncheon” organized by the WiIES committee.
On 16 Oct., a half-day global “Chapters Chairs Meeting” organized by Chapters and Joint Chapters Program committee, and a one-day “SYP Forum” organized by our Student Activities Committee and Young Professional Committee.
Finally I would like to sincerely express my gratitude to all wonderful volunteers in the MA team for their significant contributions and dedications to IES in 2025. All the achievement above won’t be possible without the team’s support and effort, as well as our IES leadership team’s strong support and coordination. The IEEE Industrial Electronics Society is the professional home for our IES members for their professional career development, continuous education, learning needs, networking, leadership training, and technical communities. Look forward to more exciting news in the near future from IES Membership Activities Team. Please do not hesitate to contact us at vp-membership@ieee-ies.org.