President’s Message/Message du Président 24 Spring / Printemps 2018 relationship between the TA Committee and WIE Committee — that’s already started,” said Desmond. That relationship could become more formalized. “If you look at the WIE group as a whole, they have been running leadership conferences, and those confer- ences have been extremely suc- cessful,” said Desmond. “People who are Society members have been helping, it just wasn’t struc- tured. But those conferences are attracting a lot of attention and viewed very positively and giving good information to women.” The Societies have stepped up their support for WIE — most, if not all, have a WIE rep. But Des- mond says they’re still defining what those reps should do, along- side Region WIE reps. “They don’t have strong guidelines yet,” she said. “We’re at the beginning of pulling all the wheels together and getting them aligned in the same direction.” That involves developing best practices that are available to all Societies. Still, women have plenty of chal- lenges within engineering and other STEM fields, and that’s what the relationship between TAB and WIE is hoping to address. “Why is it that we aren’t seeing women get the awards and why can’t they get ahead in the C-suite? We’re not there yet,” said Desmond. However, she believes the word is getting out, and the time is right to get more women active in IEEE. “We need to get them to go into engineering in the first place,” she said, pointing to research that shows when girls are five to eight, they do at least as well in math and science as boys, but when they turn 14 they decide they don’t like math and science. “Why do they go away? We’re also losing them in business: There are good numbers coming in at the lower levels, then they dwindle down as they move up. Women leave engineering and don’t come back; women feel they’re not being heard.” That’s where TAB and WIE are stepping in — to listen to those voices, to recognize and reward achievements, and to provide role models and mentorship — in hopes of encouraging more women to pursue life-long engin- eering careers. ■ IEEE Members Assembly Chapters Board of Directors Publications, Services and Products Board Educational Activities Board Standards Association IEEE-USA Technical Activities 39 Societies & 7 Tech. Councils Member & Geo Activities 10 Regions & 334 Sections ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE Vawn Himmelsbach is a freelance writer who has written about business and technology for close to 20 years. WIRELESS BIOELECTRONICS Miniaturized electronics, when placed inside the body, can wirelessly monitor and modulate internal activity. Such devices can serve as targeted bioelectronic medicines, acting locally at their implant site – an advantage over drugs, which take effect globally throughout the body. Power can be provided by a new method for electromagnetic energy transfer that exploits near-field interactions with biological tissue. Engineering and experimental challenges to realizing such interfaces will be discussed. Applica- tions include a pacemaker that is smaller than a grain of rice and a fully internalized neuromodulation platform. THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE TRENDS OF QI Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) is the only commercially successful standardization organization for wireless power. Standardizing the prototype and engin- eering the prototype into a mass market product are difficult – the question why WPC is successful from a technology point of view is answered. To ease new product introductions, WPC’s Qi Specification for transmitter design is migrat- ing towards general constraints rather than interoperability testing. A proposed initial methodology uses a novel way of visualizing the design space that can be derived from a simple first-harmonic approach based model. WIRELESS CHARGING 2.0 Coil-based wireless charging has been on the market for many years, but application of that technology has been primarily only in smartphones. RF-based charging allows charging at-a-distance, while retaining the option for more rapid near-field charging. Multiple devices can be charged at the same time, e.g., smart watch, tablet, smart phone, fitness band, hearing aids, etc. Similar to WiFi, the system offers easier interoperability between receivers and transmitters, regardless of manufacturer. WIRELESS POWER WEEK Wireless Power Week (WPW) brings together three major wireless power events: IEEE MTT-S Wireless Power Transfer Conference (WPTC); IEEE PELS Workshop on Emerging Technologies: Wireless Power (WoW); and Wireless Power Congress of the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC). Please join us for this unparalleled week in the field of wireless power in our beautiful and exciting city of Montreal. Dr Ada Poon, Stanford University Dr Toine Staring, Philips Research and Dr Xun Liu, ConvenientPower Systems Gordon Bell, Daniel Lawless and Neeraj Sahejpal, Energous Corporation June 2-7, Montreal K E Y N O T E S K E Y N O T E S