IEEE-USA aims to foster innovation

IEEE-USA is aiming to encourage innovation in the United States with its plans to establish an “Innovation Institute,” where the nation’s top innovators will educate the country’s handpicked students.

The association, which represents engineers, including IT professionals, has invited 20 innovators – including Nobel prize winners and proven innovators – to teach the students, said Ralph Wyndrum, president of the IEEE. A first meeting will be held in July, and the organization aims to announce the names of the instructors soon after the meeting, or in August.

The students will be technology professionals who have the potential to be innovators, said Wyndrum, and they will be nominated by their employers. IEEE-USA is aiming for up to 50 students who will learn how to improve their innovative capacity at a fall seminar in Washington D.C., Wyndrum added.

The students will study engineering disciplines including computer science, electrical, electronic and materials.

The initiative is in response to the nation’s need to maintain its competitiveness in the global economy, Wyndrum said. “We’re seeing innovation slip away. We need to have the kind of technical innovations that we saw from Bell Labs, GE and IBM,” he said.

The organization also has a number of other initiatives to improve the competitiveness of technology professionals, including Expert Now IEEE, a series of hour-long online training modules. Among the courses available for network professionals include wireless LAN radio design, introduction to fiber optics, and the soon-to-be-available introduction to wireless ad-hoc networks, and cyber security. There are also professional development modules including transitioning into management. For more information about Expert Now IEEE go here.

For more about the IEEE-USA’s overall innovation initiative, go here.