A Message from our New IES President, Milos Manic
It is my great honor and pleasure to wish Happy New Year 2024 to the readers of our popular ITeN publication as the President of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, and reflect on my priorities for our great Society in 2024.
The first priority will be to build a synergistic society, as I like to call it ONE IES. Approaching Society growth holistically is the key here, capitalizing on “interdepartmental” synergies (for ex., how membership affects conferences, or technical activities affect publications). Our January 2024 officers meeting marked the new era here – strategic discussions tackling common goals to multiple leading areas. And the agenda of AdCom (Administrative Committee) in Kyoto, held 1 March 2024, will evidence this further by introducing strategic discussions in addition to traditional committee reporting.
My next top priority will be the introduction of new opportunities for young professionals and future leaders from around the world to get involved and find a home for professional growth in IES. Examples will include virtual town halls offered to all 11,000 IES volunteers, featuring various aspects of society like “How to get involved in Technical Activities”, “Demystifying conference organization” or “Ask the IES leadership”, as well as onboarding of new class of volunteers. Year 2024 will also observe increased investments in student travel awards to our flagship conferences and opening our AdCom meetings to IES membership as a whole via Zoom.
My third top priority will be extending Society’s bold and decisive focus on strategic development. The IES strategic workshop VISION 2030 in April 2023 was the first strategic workshop in the rich 70-year history of the IES, that assembled IES volunteers in one place to take a more strategic approach to the Society’s future, set goals, and lay out a plan to achieve them.
My fourth top priority will be continuing finance as an enabler. As a past treasurer of society, I am honored to be in position to speak to the ever-growing financial stability of our society, a result of decades of selfless volunteer work. Not only ranking in the top of financially stable societies, IES will continue with forward thinking. Examples include expansion of internal calls for proposals towards innovation, streamlining of operations, education, industry involvement, and many others.
Other priorities include introduction of student competitions on contemporary research areas such as Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity in industry, reinforcing quality of conferences, continuous reshaping of our 24 technical committees, growing industry involvement, introducing analytics tools for data driven decisions towards growth of society, and many more.
Finally, I encourage you to participate in IES. Whether you decide to join one of the 24 technical committees, attend IES conferences that rotate around the world, become author or reviewer of our publications, or participate in Society activities, in IES you will always find an inclusive and welcoming environment for professional growth, extending professional circles, and a second family.