The Bridge - Issue 3, 2023 - 6

IEEE-HKN President Letter
Greetings!
Dear HKN Members,
Sampathkumar
Veeraraghavan
Global President, 2023
IEEE Eta Kappa Nu
I'm excited to connect with you all through this message. First, I'm really
proud of the IEEE-HKN THE BRIDGE editorial team's effort for this issue on
Humanitarian Technologies (HT). This is such an important global topic of
interest. Engineers through their technological innovations and solutions, play a
critical role in solving universal sustainable development challenges. Personally,
my journey with IEEE started as a student involved in developing assistive
technologies to help children with disabilities in developing nations. The social
impact of those projects inspired me to work on a portfolio of global programs
in the humanitarian engineering space, serving millions of marginalized
populations over the last two decades. HKN played a vital role in shaping my
leadership skills and nurtured my interest and passion to serve humanity at
large. As a HKN member, I find the humanitarian engineering and technology
programs strongly align with HKN's founding principles of scholarship, attitude,
and character. For HKN student members, the HT programs provide key
opportunities to apply their skills for social good.
For this issue, we closely partnered with leading global programs to feature
their original articles. I express my sincere appreciation to the authors and
our partnering organizations including the National Academy of Engineering,
People-Centered Internet, IEEE Humanitarian Technologies Board, EPICS, and
IEEE Antenna Propagation Society, for their support and contributions. I'm
confident the featured articles will inspire, connect, and engage HKN members
to carry out grassroots efforts to address universal challenges faced in their
local communities.
Next, I'm thrilled to share with you a few key highlights of HKN's global activities
and their impact to date. We started the year with a focus on delivering valuedriven
global programs to enrich the HKN membership experience. To achieve
that goal, we scaled up our global partnership efforts across and beyond IEEE.
We partnered closely with all 10 IEEE Regions, key IEEE technical societies, IEEE
Technical Activities Board, IEEE Member and Geographic Activities Board, and the
IEEE Humanitarian Technologies Board. We have established joint efforts with
these organizational units to increase the visibility of HKN across IEEE and deliver
key opportunities to benefit our chapters and members at the grassroots level.
You can choose to directly
support IEEE-HKN via the
IEEE Foundation to one of
the IEEE-HKN Funds: Chapter
Support Initiative, including
Chapter Support Grants and
the " Passing the Gavel " officer
training, and Student Leadership
Conference. Invest in the next
generation of HKN leaders!
Under our global expansion efforts, we successfully organized several workshops
on HKN and conducted six professional induction ceremonies of the Eta
Chapter at major IEEE regional meetings and Board series to welcome new
HKN professional members. We inducted 24 international leaders into HKN at
IEEE Sections Congress in Ottawa, Canada which, is one of the largest induction
ceremonies in recent times.
One of our top priorities is to deliver an exceptional membership experience
and address the key challenges faced by chapter leaders. Our chapter support
grant program is growing impressively and has approved grant support for 13
chapters through August 2023. Also, we have successfully coached close to 27
chapters. We have organized a number of podcast sessions on professional skill
development. We also approved three new chapters from India, Hungary, and
the U.S. Welcome Obuda University, Sri Sairam Engineering College,
THE BRIDGE
https://www.ieeefoundation.org/impact/illuminate/ieee-eta-kappa-nu-hkn/
The Bridge - Issue 3, 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Bridge - Issue 3, 2023
