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As the philanthropic partner of IEEE, the IEEE Foundation expands the organization’s charitable body of work by inspiring philanthropic engagement that ignites a donor’s innermost interests and values.

One way the Foundation does so is by partnering with IEEE units to create memorial funds, which pay tribute to members, family, friends, teachers, professors, students, and others. This type of giving honors someone special while also supporting future generations of engineers and celebrating innovation.

Below are three recently created memorial funds that not only have made an impact on their beneficiaries and perpetuated the legacy of the namesake but also have a deep meaning for those who launched them.

EPICS in IEEE Fischer Mertel Community of Projects

The EPICS in IEEE Fischer Mertel Community of Projects was established to support projects “designed to inspire multidisciplinary teams of engineering students to collaborate and engineer solutions to address local community needs.”

The fund was created by the children of Joe Fischer and Herb Mertel to honor their fathers’ passion for mentoring students. Longtime IEEE members, Fischer and Mertel were active with the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society. Fischer was the society’s 1972 president and served on its board of directors for six years. Mertel served on the society’s board from 1979 to 1983 and again from 1989 to 1993.

“The EPICS in IEEE Fischer Mertel Community of Projects was established to inspire and support outstanding engineering ideas and efforts that help communities worldwide,” says Tina Mertel, Herb’s daughter. “Joe Fischer and my father had a lifelong friendship and excelled as engineering leaders and founders of their respective companies [Fischer Custom Communications and EMACO]. I think that my father would have been proud to know that their friendship and work are being honored in this way.”

The nine projects supported thus far have the potential to impact more than 104,000 people because of the work and collaboration of 190 students worldwide. The projects funded are intended to represent at least two of the EPICS in IEEE’s focus categories: education and outreach; human services; environmental; and access and abilities.

Here are a few of the projects:

• The Engineering Outreach at San Diego K–12 Schools project aims to bridge the city’s STEM education gap by sending IEEE members to schools to teach project-based lessons in mechanical, aerospace, electrical and computer engineering, as well as computer science. The project is led by the IEEE–Eta Kappa Nu honor society’s Kappa Psi chapter at the University of California San Diego and the San Diego Unified School District.
• Students from the Sahrdaya College of Engineering and Technology student branch in Kodakara, India, are developing an exoskeleton for nurses to support their lumbar spine region.
• Volunteers from the IEEE Uganda Section and local engineering students are designing and fabricating a stationary bicycle to act as a generator, providing power to families living in underserved communities. The goal of the project is to reduce air pollution caused by generators and supply reliable, affordable power to people in need.
• The IEEE Colombian Caribbean Section’s Increasing Inclusion of Visually Impaired People with a Mobile Application for English Learning project aims to ensure visually impaired students can learn to read, write, and speak English alongside their peers. The section’s members are developing a mobile app to help accomplish their goal.

IEEE AESS Michael C. Wicks Radar Student Travel Grant

The IEEE Michael C. Wicks Radar Student Travel Grant was established by IEEE Fellow Michael Wicks prior to his death in 2022. The grant provides travel support for graduate students who are the primary authors on a paper being presented at the annual IEEE Radar Conference. Wicks was an electronics engineer and a radio industry leader who was known for developing knowledge-based space-time adaptive processing. He believed in investing in the next generation and he wanted to provide an opportunity for that to happen.Ten graduate students have been awarded the Wicks grant to date. This year two students from Region 8 (Africa, Europe, Middle East) and two students from Region 10 (Asia and Pacific) were able to travel to Denver to attend the IEEE Radar Conference and present their research. The papers they presented are “Target Shape Reconstruction From Multi-Perspective Shadows in Drone-Borne SAR Systems” and “Design of Convolutional Neural Networks for Classification of Ships from ISAR Images.”

Life Fellow Fumio Koyama and IEEE Fellow Constance J. Chang-Hasnain proudly display their IEEE Nick Holonyak, Jr. Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies at this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony. They are accompanied by IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Coughlin.Robb Cohen

IEEE Nick Holonyak Jr. Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies

The IEEE Nick Holonyak Jr. Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies was created with a memorial fund supported by some of Holonyak’s former graduate students to honor his work as a professor and mentor. Presented on behalf of the IEEE Board of Directors, the medal recognizes outstanding contributions to semiconductor optoelectronic devices and systems including high-energy-efficiency semiconductor devices and electronics.

Holonyak was a prolific inventor and longtime professor of electrical engineering and physics. In 1962, while working as a scientist at General Electric’s Advanced Semiconductor Laboratory in Syracuse, N.Y., he invented the first practical visible-spectrum LED and laser diode. His innovations are the basis of the devices now used in high-efficiency light bulbs and laser diodes. He left GE in 1963 to join the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a professor of electrical engineering and physics at the invitation of John Bardeen, his Ph.D. advisor and a two-time Nobel Prize winner in physics. Holonyak retired from UIUC in 2013 but continued research collaborations at the university with young faculty members.

“In addition to his remarkable technical contributions, he was an excellent teacher and mentor to graduate students and young electrical engineers,” says Russell Dupuis, one of his doctoral students. “The impact of his innovations has improved the lives of most people on the earth, and this impact will only increase with time. It was my great honor to be one of his students and to help create this important IEEE medal to ensure that his work will be remembered in the future.”

The award was presented for the first time at this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony, in Boston, to IEEE Fellow Constance Chang-Hasnain and Life Fellow Fumio Koyama for “pioneering contributions to vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and VCSEL-based photonics for optical communications and sensing.”

Establishing a memorial fund through the IEEE Foundation is a gratifying way to recognize someone who has touched your life while also advancing technology for humanity. If you are interested in learning more about memorial and tribute funds, reach out to the IEEE Foundation team: donate@ieee.org.

Every invention begins with a problem—and the creative act of seeing a problem where others might just see unchangeable reality. For one 5-year-old, the problem was simple: She liked to have her tummy rubbed as she fell asleep. But her mom, exhausted from working two jobs, often fell asleep herself while putting her daughter to bed. “So [the girl] invented a teddy bear that would rub her belly for her,” explains Stephanie Couch, executive director of the Lemelson MIT Program. Its mission is to nurture the next generation of inventors and entrepreneurs.

Anyone can learn to be an inventor, Couch says, given the right resources and encouragement. “Invention doesn’t come from some innate genius, it’s not something that only really special people get to do,” she says. Her program creates invention-themed curricula for U.S. classrooms, ranging from kindergarten to community college.

We’re biased, but we hope that little girl grows up to be an engineer. By the time she comes of age, the act of invention may be something entirely new—reflecting the adoption of novel tools and the guiding forces of new social structures. Engineers, with their restless curiosity and determination to optimize the world around them, are continuously in the process of reinventing invention.

In this special issue, we bring you stories of people who are in the thick of that reinvention today. IEEE Spectrum is marking 60 years of publication this year, and we’re celebrating by highlighting both the creative act and the grindingly hard engineering work required to turn an idea into something world changing. In these pages, we take you behind the scenes of some awe-inspiring projects to reveal how technology is being made—and remade—in our time.

Inventors Are Everywhere

Invention has long been a democratic process. The economist B. Zorina Khan of Bowdoin College has noted that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has always endeavored to allow essentially anyone to try their hand at invention. From the beginning, the patent examiners didn’t care who the applicants were—anyone with a novel and useful idea who could pay the filing fee was officially an inventor.

This ethos continues today. It’s still possible for an individual to launch a tech startup from a garage or go on “Shark Tank” to score investors. The Swedish inventor Simone Giertz, for example, made a name for herself with YouTube videos showing off her hilariously bizarre contraptions, like an alarm clock with an arm that slapped her awake. The MIT innovation scholar Eric von Hippel has spotlighted today’s vital ecosystem of “user innovation,” in which inventors such as Giertz are motivated by their own needs and desires rather than ambitions of mass manufacturing.

But that route to invention gets you only so far, and the limits of what an individual can achieve have become starker over time. To tackle some of the biggest problems facing humanity today, inventors need a deep-pocketed government sponsor or corporate largess to muster the equipment and collective human brainpower required.

When we think about the challenges of scaling up, it’s helpful to remember Alexander Graham Bell and his collaborator Thomas Watson. “They invent this cool thing that allows them to talk between two rooms—so it’s a neat invention, but it’s basically a gadget,” says Eric Hintz, a historian of invention at the Smithsonian Institution. “To go from that to a transcontinental long-distance telephone system, they needed a lot more innovation on top of the original invention.” To scale their invention, Hintz says, Bell and his colleagues built the infrastructure that eventually evolved into Bell Labs, which became the standard-bearer for corporate R&D.

In this issue, we see engineers grappling with challenges of scale in modern problems. Consider the semiconductor technology supported by the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, a policy initiative aimed at bolstering domestic chip production. Beyond funding manufacturing, it also provides US $11 billion for R&D, including three national centers where companies can test and pilot new technologies. As one startup tells the tale, this infrastructure will drastically speed up the lab-to-fab process.

And then there are atomic clocks, the epitome of precision timekeeping. When researchers decided to build a commercial version, they had to shift their perspective, taking a sprawling laboratory setup and reimagining it as a portable unit fit for mass production and the rigors of the real world. They had to stop optimizing for precision and instead choose the most robust laser, and the atom that would go along with it.

These technology efforts benefit from infrastructure, brainpower, and cutting-edge new tools. One tool that may become ubiquitous across industries is artificial intelligence—and it’s a tool that could further expand access to the invention arena.

What if you had a team of indefatigable assistants at your disposal, ready to scour the world’s technical literature for material that could spark an idea, or to iterate on a concept 100 times before breakfast? That’s the promise of today’s generative AI. The Swiss company Iprova is exploring whether its AI tools can automate “eureka” moments for its clients, corporations that are looking to beat their competitors to the next big idea. The serial entrepreneur Steve Blank similarly advises young startup founders to embrace AI’s potential to accelerate product development; he even imagines testing product ideas on digital twins of customers. Although it’s still early days, generative AI offers inventors tools that have never been available before.

Measuring an Invention’s Impact

If AI accelerates the discovery process, and many more patentable ideas come to light as a result, then what? As it is, more than a million patents are granted every year, and we struggle to identify the ones that will make a lasting impact. Bryan Kelly, an economist at the Yale School of Management, and his collaborators made an attempt to quantify the impact of patents by doing a technology-assisted deep dive into U.S. patent records dating back to 1840. Using natural language processing, they identified patents that introduced novel phrasing that was then repeated in subsequent patents—an indicator of radical breakthroughs. For example, Elias Howe Jr.’s 1846 patent for a sewing machine wasn’t closely related to anything that came before but quickly became the basis of future sewing-machine patents.

Another foundational patent was the one awarded to an English bricklayer in 1824 for the invention of Portland cement, which is still the key ingredient in most of the world’s concrete. As Ted C. Fishman describes in his fascinating inquiry into the state of concrete today, this seemingly stable industry is in upheaval because of its heavy carbon emissions. The AI boom is fueling a construction boom in data centers, and all those buildings require billions of tons of concrete. Fishman takes readers into labs and startups where researchers are experimenting with climate-friendly formulations of cement and concrete. Who knows which of those experiments will result in a patent that echoes down the ages?

Some engineers start their invention process by thinking about the impact they want to make on the world. The eminent Indian technologist Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, who has popularized the idea of “Gandhian engineering”, advises inventors to work backward from “what we want to achieve for the betterment of humanity,” and to create problem-solving technologies that are affordable, durable, and not only for the elite.

Durability matters: Invention isn’t just about creating something brand new. It’s also about coming up with clever ways to keep an existing thing going. Such is the case with the Hubble Space Telescope. Originally designed to last 15 years, it’s been in orbit for twice that long and has actually gotten better with age, because engineers designed the satellite to be fixable and upgradable in space.

For all the invention activity around the globe—the World Intellectual Property Organization says that 3.5 million applications for patents were filed in 2022—it may be harder to invent something useful than it used to be. Not because “everything that can be invented has been invented,” as in the apocryphal quote attributed to the unfortunate head of the U.S. patent office in 1889. Rather, because so much education and experience are required before an inventor can even understand all the dimensions of the door they’re trying to crack open, much less come up with a strategy for doing so. Ben Jones, an economist at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, has shown that the average age of great technological innovators rose by about six years over the course of the 20th century. “Great innovation is less and less the provenance of the young,” Jones concluded.

Consider designing something as complex as a nuclear fusion reactor, as Tom Clynes describes in “An Off-the-Shelf Stellarator.” Fusion researchers have spent decades trying to crack the code of commercially viable fusion—it’s more akin to a calling than a career. If they succeed, they will unlock essentially limitless clean energy with no greenhouse gas emissions or meltdown danger. That’s the dream that the physicists in a lab in Princeton, N.J., are chasing. But before they even started, they first had to gain an intimate understanding of all the wrong ways to build a fusion reactor. Once the team was ready to proceed, what they created was an experimental reactor that accelerates the design-build-test cycle. With new AI tools and unprecedented computational power, they’re now searching for the best ways to create the magnetic fields that will confine the plasma within the reactor. Already, two startups have spun out of the Princeton lab, both seeking a path to commercial fusion.

The stellarator story and many other articles in this issue showcase how one innovation leads to the next, and how one invention can enable many more. The legendary Dean Kamen, best known for mechanical devices like the Segway and the prosthetic “Luke” arm, is now trying to push forward the squishy world of biological manufacturing. In an interview, Kamen explains how his nonprofit is working on the infrastructure—bioreactors, sensors, and controls—that will enable companies to explore the possibilities of growing replacement organs. You could say that he’s inventing the launchpad so others can invent the rockets.

Sometimes everyone in a research field knows where the breakthrough is needed, but that doesn’t make it any easier to achieve. Case in point: the quest for a household humanoid robot that can perform domestic chores, switching effortlessly from frying an egg to folding laundry. Roboticists need better learning software that will enable their bots to navigate the uncertainties of the real world, and they also need cheaper and lighter actuators. Major advances in these two areas would unleash a torrent of creativity and may finally bring robot butlers into our homes.

And maybe the future roboticists who make those breakthroughs will have cause to thank Marina Umaschi Bers, a technologist at Boston College who cocreated the ScratchJr programming language and the KIBO robotics kit to teach kids the basics of coding and robotics in entertaining ways. She sees engineering as a playground, a place for children to explore and create, to be goofy or grandiose. If today’s kindergartners learn to think of themselves as inventors, who knows what they’ll create tomorrow?

Like many innovators, Hagit Messer-Yaron had a life-changing idea while doing something mundane: Talking with a colleague over a cup of coffee. The IEEE Life Fellow, who in 2006 was head of Tel Aviv University’s Porter School of Environmental Studies, was at the school’s cafeteria with a meteorological researcher. He shared his struggles with finding high-resolution weather data for his climate models, which are used to forecast and track flash floods.

Predicting floods is crucial for quickly evacuating residents in affected areas and protecting homes and businesses against damage.

Hagit Messer-Yaron

Employer Tel Aviv University

Title Professor emerita

Member grade Life Fellow

Her colleague “said researchers in the field had limited measurements because the equipment meteorologists used to collect weather data—including radar satellites—is expensive to purchase and maintain, especially in developing countries,” Messer-Yaron says.

Because of that, she says, high-resolution data about temperature, air quality, wind speed, and precipitation levels is often inconsistent—which is a problem when trying to produce accurate models and predictions.

An expert in signal processing and cellular communication, Messer-Yaron came up with the idea of using existing wireless communication signals to collect weather data, as communication networks are spread across the globe.

In 2006 she and her research team developed algorithms that process and analyze data collected by communication networks to monitor rainfall. They measure the difference in amplitude of the signals transmitted and received by the systems to extract data needed to predict flash floods.

The method was first demonstrated in Israel. Messer-Yaron is working to integrate it into communication networks worldwide.

For her work, she received this year’s IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies for “contributions to sensing of the environment using wireless communication networks.” The award is sponsored by Toyota.

“Receiving an IEEE medal, which is the highest-level award you can get within the organization, was really a surprise, and I was extremely happy to [receive] it,” she says. “I was proud that IEEE was able to evaluate and see the potential in our technology for public good and to reward it.”

A passion for teaching

Growing up in Israel, Messer-Yaron was interested in art, literature, and science. When it came time to choose a career, she found it difficult to decide, she says. Ultimately, she chose electrical engineering, figuring it would be easier to enjoy art and literature as hobbies.

After completing her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces in 1973, she began her undergraduate studies at Tel Aviv University, where she found her passion: Signal processing.

“Electrical engineering is a very broad topic,” she says. “As an undergrad, you learn all the parts that make up electrical engineering, including applied physics and applied mathematics. I really enjoyed applied mathematics and soon discovered signal processing. I found it quite amazing how, by using algorithms, you can direct signals to extract information.”

She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in EE in 1977 and continued her education there, earning master’s and doctoral degrees in 1979 and 1984. She moved to the United States for a postdoctoral position at Yale. There she worked with IEEE Life Fellow Peter Schultheiss, who was known for his research in using sensor array systems in underwater acoustics.

Inspired by Schultheiss’s passion for teaching, Messer-Yaron decided to pursue a career in academia. She was hired by Tel Aviv University as an electrical engineering professor in 1986. She was the first woman in Israel to become a full professor in the subject.

“Being a faculty member at a public university is the best job you can do. I didn’t make a lot of money, but at the end of each day, I looked back at what I did [with pride].”

For the next 14 years, she conducted research in statistical signal processing, time-delay estimation, and sensor array processing.

Her passion for teaching took her around the world as a visiting professor at Yale, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, and other schools. She collaborated with colleagues from the universities on research projects.

In 1999 she was promoted to director of Tel Aviv University’s undergraduate electrical engineering program.

A year later, she was offered an opportunity she couldn’t refuse: Serving as chief scientist for the Israeli Ministry of Science, Culture, and Sports. She took a sabbatical from teaching and for the next three years oversaw the country’s science policy.

“I believe [working in the public sector] is part of our duty as faculty members, especially in public universities, because that makes you a public intellectual,” she says. “Working for the government gave me a broad view of many things that you don’t see as a professor, even in a large university.”

When she returned to the university in 2004, Messer-Yaron was appointed as the director of the new school of environmental studies. She oversaw the allocation of research funding and spoke with researchers individually to better understand their needs. After having coffee with one researcher, she realized there was a need to develop better weather-monitoring technology.

Hagit Messer-Yaron proudly displays her IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies at this year’s IEEE Honors Ceremony. She is accompanied by IEEE President-Elect Kathleen Kramer and IEEE President Tom Couglin.Robb Cohen

Using signal processing to monitor weather

Because the planet is warming, the risk of flash floods is steadily increasing. Warmer air holds more water—which leads to heavier-than-usual rainfall and results in more flooding, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Data about rainfall is typically collected by satellite radar and ground-based rain gauges. However, radar images don’t provide researchers with precise readings of what’s happening on the ground, according to an Ensia article. Rain gauges are accurate but provide data from small areas only.

So Messer-Yaron set her sights on developing technology that connects to cellular networks close to the ground to provide more accurate measurements, she says. Using existing infrastructure eliminates the need to build new weather radars and weather stations.

Communication systems automatically record the transmitted signal level and the received signal level, but rain can alter otherwise smooth wave patterns. By measuring the difference in the amplitude, meteorologists could extract the data necessary to track rainfall using the signal processing algorithms.

In 2005 Messer-Yaron and her group successfully tested the technology. The following year, their “Environmental Monitoring by Wireless Communication Networks” paper was published in Science.

The algorithm is being used in Israel in partnership with all three of the country’s major cellular service providers. Messer-Yaron acknowledges, however, that negotiating deals with cellular service companies in other countries has been difficult.

To expand the technology’s use worldwide, Messer-Yaron launched a research network through the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), called an opportunistic precipitation sensing network known as OPENSENSE. The group connects researchers, meteorologists, and other experts around the world to collaborate on integrating the technology in members’ communities.

Monitoring the effects of climate change

Since developing the technology, Messer-Yaron has held a number of jobs including president of the Open University of Israel and vice chair of the country’s Council for Higher Education, which accredits academic institutions.

She is maintaining her link with Tel Aviv University today as a professor emerita.

“Being a faculty member at a public university is the best job you can do,” she says. “I didn’t make a lot of money, but at the end of each day, I looked back at what I did [with pride]. Because of the academic freedom and the autonomy I had, I was able to do many things in addition to teaching, including research.”

To continue her work in developing technology to monitor weather events, in 2016, she helped found ClimaCell, now Tomorrow.io, based in Boston. The startup aims to use wireless communication infrastructure and IoT devices to collect real-time weather data. Messer-Yaron served as its chief scientist until 2017.

She continues to update the original algorithms with her students, most recently with machine learning capabilities to extract data from physical measurements of the signal level in communication networks.

A global engineering community

When Messer-Yaron was an undergraduate student, she joined IEEE at the suggestion of one of her professors.

“I didn’t think much about the benefits of being a member until I became a graduate student,” she says. “I started attending conferences and publishing papers in IEEE journals, and the organization became my professional community.”

She is an active volunteer and a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. From 1994 to 2010 she served on the society’s Signal Processing Theory and Methods technical committee. She was associate editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. She is a member of the editorial boards of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing and IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

In the past 10 years, she’s been involved with other IEEE committees including the conduct review, ethics and member conduct, and global public policy bodies.

“I don’t see my career or my professional life without the IEEE,” she says