Dr Mona Ghassemian

Since the World Health Organisation official declaration of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in March 2020, we would like to express our concern and support for all the members of the IEEE community, our families and all others affected by this outbreak.

The health and safety of the IEEE community is our first priority and IEEE is supporting these efforts. Following the advice of local authorities, most IEEE conferences and meetings have already been postponed or replaced with virtual meetings. We would also request that all our section members avoid conducting in-person activities in areas impacted by the COVID-19 threat and instead maximise the use of our online and virtual alternatives.

All IEEE operations are continuing and have adapted its resources to better enable IEEE volunteers to contribute to the fight against COVID-19 during the pandemic outbreak by:

Online tools: IEEE provides many tools to support our membership with virtual engagement, including our online collaboration space IEEE Collabratec. UK and Ireland Section has also upgraded its Zoom account licence to facilitate IEEE meetings and webinars upon section officers’ requests sent to secretary@ieee-ukandireland.org.

Publications: IEEE publications continue to accept submissions and publish impactful cutting-edge research. A number of relevant publications are free to access online.

Datasets: Members engaged in the fight against this disease by data analysis, modelling and dataset collection can communicate their findings over the dataport platform.

Standards: IEEE standards development also continues, using online collaboration to replace in-person working groups. IEEE is providing no-cost public access to important IEEE Standards, used by technologists, engineers, scientists, manufacturers, as they respond to the global COVID-19 public health emergency.

IEEE educational activities: continue to offer online instruction and IEEE’s pre-university educational resources which can be of assistance to families of students whose classroom activities have been disrupted. UK and Ireland has also a number of Continuing Professional Development courses available free to access online.

HAC and SIGHT (Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology) prioritise project proposals that have a strong potential for immediate impact in the fight against COVID-19. For more information on how to submit a proposal, see the IEEE HAC & SIGHT Projects 2020 Special Call for Proposals related to COVID-19.

We know that many of you are supporting biomedical research and applications, modelling and analysing data, maintaining critical communications and power infrastructure and caring for each other. We are grateful for your work.

We extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to all of our IEEE members for your understanding and support. These are difficult times, but we will get through them by working together. In the current pandemic crisis, do share any initiatives, plans, research and activities related to detection, prevention, protection or response and recovery aspects of COVID-19. We would endeavour to promote and support our members’ ideas and technological innovations in this critical context. Thank you for your support of our shared mission to advance technology for humanity.

Please stay safe and well.

Dr Mona Ghassemian
Chair, IEEE UK and Ireland Section