New IES Membership Initiatives Fostering Member Engagement and Leadership
By Ya-Jun Pan – Vice President for Membership Activities
Starting from January 2025, Ya-Jun Pan has served as the Vice President for Membership Activities (VPMA) in IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES). Thanks to our past Vice President (MA) Dr. Antonio Luque who passed the torch with rich experience sharing. In the past two years, Dr. Luque has formed a new structure of the MA team consisting of Chapters and Joint Chapters, Students and Young Professionals (SYP), New Initiatives, IES Day and other sub-committees. The first IES Day was launched in November 2024 and the first SYP Congress was successfully held in June 2024 in India. By the end of February 2025, we have reached 11,512 IES members and there are 108 Chapters and 78 Student Branch Chapters in total.
For the Membership Activities (MA) team this year, we have almost doubled the number of committee members with the goal to keep current members engaged, provide our members with a community where they can network, interact and collaborate with others who share their technical or professional interests. Our vision is that students, young professionals, senior employees or entrepreneurs, academics, and all other members can find what they need in IES. IES becomes a more member-focused society with the new membership initiatives and activities as currently planned. With these efforts, IES will be able to grow steadily with a healthy volunteer pipeline with more and more people involved including SYPs.
In all MA programs, IES invests significantly over the years to promote our members in all activities. The Chapters and Joint Chapters Committee, now led by Hani Vahedi, will help our Chapters to fulfill the local needs of our members everywhere. There are support for Chapters local activity grants (SCLA), Best Chapter Awards, support for Chapter Chairs meetings at IES flagship conferences, increased new Chapters seed funds. Furthermore, new initiatives with funds are in place now to support the formation of new sections and chapters in underrepresented IES regions and support larger regional leadership engagement events.
The Students Activities Committee (SAC), continued to be led by Ala Chalghaf, has created a network of student ambassadors that are able to help students all over the world to make the most of their IES membership. The Young Professionals is now coordinated by Chathurika Wickramasinghe.
There are support for Student Branch Chapters local activity grants (SBCLA), Best Student Chapter Awards, Student Ambassadors Program, Webinars, support for SYP forums at IES flagship conferences through student travel assistance program with increased budget this year, as well as increased Student Branch Chapters seed fund. IES provides strong support for SYPs to travel to conferences to present their work, and by supporting events such as forums, organized for and by YPs to boost their careers.
Besides above supports, with the new initiative and new budget this year, IES current and future volunteer leaders are supported to actively participate in IES Conferences, IES AdCom, Standing Committee, and other IES Leadership Meetings. Volunteer leaders are supported to organize sessions and events at IES conferences such as leadership and volunteering experience sharing and mentoring sessions etc. Of course, Chapter and SBC leaders are supported to organize special events at IES conferences under this new initiative. We will see more IES members, volunteers and leaders to connect and gain experiences through participating IES conferences.
IES invests more on young people with the strong support for the SYP congress, which was planned biannually and now it is changed to be an annual congress. Students and young professionals who are IES members from worldwide have the excellent opportunity to organize, travel and talk to their peers which help them gain professional experience and broaden the vision of their career development.
This year, our very own IES Day chaired by Chandan Kumar will be on 13 November 2025. Many events will be planned for the month of November. Events worldwide, 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. IES Day was one of the new activities proposed by the New Initiatives Committee, chaired by Marina Indri. The team will continue in looking for opportunities and proposing novel programs to support our members and showcase the opportunities that IES provides to potential members, as IES is a Society open to changes and to adapt to new environments.
I would like to sincerely express my gratitude to all wonderful volunteers in the MA team for their contributions and dedications to IES. We are looking forward to a wonderful year ahead with the new initiatives for our IES members. The IEEE Industrial Electronics Society can be your professional home and be even more beneficial for your professional career, continuous education, learning needs, and for your technical communities. Please do not hesitate to contact us at vp-membership@ieee-ies.org.