The Bridge - Issue 3, 2021 - 38

Professional Profile
Jim Conrad
IEEE-HKN President 2022,
Beta Eta Chapter
ECE Professor, UNC at Charlotte
James M. Conrad received
his bachelor's degree in
computer science from
the University of Illinois,
Urbana, and his master's and
doctorate degrees in computer
engineering from North
Carolina State University. He
is currently a professor at the
University of North Carolina
at Charlotte. He has served as
an assistant professor at the
University of Arkansas and as an instructor at North
Carolina State University. He has also worked at IBM,
Ericsson/Sony Ericsson, and BPM Technology. Dr.
Conrad is a Professional Engineer, a Senior Member
of the IEEE and a Certified Project Management
Professional (PMP). He served on the IEEE Board of
Directors as Region 3 director for 2016-2017, and
again as a director in 2020, when he also served as
IEEE-USA President. He is the author of numerous
books, book chapters, journal articles, and conference
papers in the areas of embedded systems, robotics,
parallel processing, and engineering education.
Why did you choose to study the
engineering field (or the field you studied)?
I started in Computer Science since I enjoyed
programming that I learning in a high school class
(unusual for 1976!). I gravitated to computer
engineering after I started working at IBM and
enjoyed controlling hardware with software.
THE BRIDGE
What do you love about engineering?
In computer engineering you can see immediate results
of your (correct) programming and hardware work. If
you did it well, things move/blink/measure. If you did
not do it well, then some parts of the hardware (which
you can look at) may not operate well . . . or at all! This
is especially evident if you control robot devices, which is
where I currently work.
Who do you admire and why?
I admire some of the early pioneers in computer
processor and chip technology: Andy Groves, Gordon
Moore. They realized the full potential of the heart of
many (most?) devices we use every day, and saw how
microprocessors and microcontrollers would be so
prevalent today.
How has the engineering field changed
since you entered it?
Everything is smaller, faster, cheaper, but more
complex. I often tell the story of my first PC purchase in
1985-I bought a $6000 IBM PC-AT (at the employee
price of $3000) that had 640k bytes of RAM, a 20
Megabyte hard drive, and ran at 6 MHz. I'm sure all of
the readers will realize how big, slow, and expensive
that computer was compared to today's laptops, or
even tablets.
In what direction do you think that the
engineering and other IEEE fields of interest
are headed in the next 10 years?
Our products and systems will need a more broadlyknowledgeable
team to better meet the functional
goals. That means the team will need more diversity
(gender, experiences, educational disciplines). The
past silos of computer engineers work in this team
over here and mechanical engineers work in that team
waaaay over there will be gone, and each
team member will have skills from two or more
different disciplines.
What is the most important lesson you have
learned during your time in the field?
People do the work, so
you need to know how to
communicate well. You must
write clearly, present often,
and work in a team to be
successful. This is becoming
more important every year,
despite that crazy COVID
sequestration we went through.
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The Bridge - Issue 3, 2021

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