Message from IEEE on Coronavirus COVID-19
The World Health Organization officially declared the novel coronavirus COVID-19 a pandemic. This global health crisis is a unique challenge that has impacted many members of the IEEE family. We would like to express our concern and support for all the members of the IEEE community, our staff, our families and all others affected by this outbreak.
We request that all members avoid conducting in-person activities in areas impacted by the coronavirus threat and instead maximize the use of our online and virtual alternatives. IEEE provides many tools to support our membership with virtual engagement, including our online collaboration space IEEE Collabratec (https://ieee-collabratec.ieee.org/).
Following the advice of local authorities, most IEEE conferences and meetings have already been postponed or replaced with virtual meetings.
IEEE publications continue to accept submissions and publish impactful cutting-edge research. Our online publications remain available to researchers and students around the world.
IEEE standards development also continues, using online collaboration to replace in-person working groups.
IEEE educational activities continue to offer online instruction and IEEE’s pre-university educational resources (https://tryengineering.org/) may be of assistance to families of students whose classroom activities have been disrupted.
All IEEE operations are continuing. At many of our global offices, IEEE staff will support IEEE’s mission while teleworking from their homes to minimize risk. As of this time, on the advice of local authorities, IEEE offices in China remain open.
Please stay safe and well.
Toshio Fukuda, President, IEEE
Stephen Welby, IEEE Executive Director
IEEE Programs Benefit from Donations to IEEE Foundation COVID-19 Fund
The global COVID-19 pandemic presents unique challenges and IEEE members and IEEE programs have adapted to address them. As the world works to find its way through this crisis, the members of the IEEE community have stepped up – as you always do.
To support the IEEE response, the IEEE Foundation COVID-19 Response Fund was established. Through your philanthropic investments, the Fund will ensure that support is available for programs and initiatives affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of 17 June, the Fund has received US$27,106 from generous donors throughout the world who want to help. The IEEE Foundation has turned your generosity into action by supporting the following initiatives:
IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee and IEEE SIGHT (Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology) will receive $5,000 in support of IEEE volunteer led projects selected for funding through the IEEE SIGHT #COVID19 Special Project Funding initiative. This award will help support one project, with the opportunity to support an additional project should the COVID Fund donations reach $30,000.
IEEE Spectrum will receive $10,000 to support their work in sharing updates about IEEE members developing technologies to fight the virus, the resources available to you from across IEEE, coping strategies from engineers around the world, and opportunities for involvement in the fight through the IEEE COVID-19 News & Resource Hub. The Hub is helping drive COVID-19 innovation through collaboration and sharing of knowledge by serving as a centralized location for IEEE stories and resources that focus on the pandemic.
IEEE Technical Activities will receive $5,000 to support IEEE DataPort, which established a new data category entitled COVID-19. This enables individuals in the global technical community to store, share and access COVID-19 datasets. This project will establish a COVID-19 Data Competition to analyze the data with the goal of providing insights into COVID that could be used in real world applications. This award will be used to support the first-place prize of the competition.
IEEE Educational Activities (EA) and the IEEE Education Society (EdSoc) will receive $5,000 to support the next installment of their remote instruction online event for global university faculty members. EA and EdSoc will partner to produce a free, multi-day online event to equip engineering faculty with research-driven information that will help them provide effective online engineering education to their students now and for the foreseeable future.
The IEEE Foundation Staff Running Team made up of cross-IEEE OU staff will receive $1,939 to support IEEE donor supported programs. The team, scheduled to participate in the Rutgers Unite Half Marathon and 8K on 19 April, quickly transitioned to a virtual event due to COVID. They had set an $8,000 fundraising goal with most of the proceeds going to IEEE Smart Village. The pandemic caused the team to lose fundraising momentum, falling short of their goal by $1,939. The approved award makes their efforts whole, provides support for Smart Village and boosts team morale for 2021.
This is just the beginning of IEEE’s response to COVID-19, and with your help, we will expand our resources, as well as ensure a solid base of support for IEEE strategic goals impacted by the pandemic.
