IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2021 - 5

PRESIDENT'S CORNER
Kenneth O
Accomplishments During a Challenging Time
T
Two of the best duties of the president
of our Society are thanking our members,
volunteers, and staff for their
efforts and recognizing and helping
to celebrate their success. I would
like to take this opportunity to thank
all the volunteers and staff for working
together during this challenging
time to serve our members, all while
continuing to ensure the excellence
our Society is known for and not
compromising the health and safety
of our members, volunteers, and
staff. Despite the challenges, there
have been many great moments and
accomplishments for our Society during
this time. In this column, I would
like to recognize two.
It is my pleasure to recognize
the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits
Conference 2020 team, which organized
our Society's first virtual conference.
The event had less than a
month to virtualize during chaos and
uncertainties. It is an equal pleasure
to recognize the 2020 Symposia on
VLSI Technology and Circuits team
for innovation to enrich the experiences
of virtual conferences. The
team reimagined the symposia and
implemented a program that took
advantage of the virtual format to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2021.3088830
Date of current version: 25 August 2021
enhance the attendee experience
while enabling participants from all
around the world to come together
for a meaningful live technical interchange.
All our conferences have been
working to further improve their
effectiveness and attendee
experience. I would like to
thank all the volunteers
who have been contributing
toward this effort.
On another note, the
possible to scale the program by partnering
with others.
This initiative has the potential to
I would like
to take this
IEEE Solid-State Circuits
Society Administrative
Committee has approved
a pilot program that
provides for the fabrication
of ICs designed
by groups of students
coached by our volunteers. Participants
will design ICs using a webbased
open source hardware design
platform supported by our Society
through Efabless. The goal is to
increase opportunities to experience
the design, fabrication, and testing
of ICs for undergraduate and precollege
students, especially from underserved
regions and underrepresented
groups. This initiative will provide
new ways for our Society, volunteers,
and Chapters to engage groups of students
locally and globally as coaches
and advisors as well as to create new
programs for outreach. It should be
opportunity to
thank all the
together during
this challenging
time to serve our
members.
volunteers and
staff for working
eventually establish a platform for
our Society that helps thousands of
students per year from all across the
world to experience IC
design and, ultimately,
help many of them
to become part of our
community. I would like
to encourage you to find
out more about the initiative
and how you can
participate. I would like
to thank the IEEE Solid-State
Circuits Directions Committee
and Boris Murmann, the
committee chair, for conceiving
and leading this initiative. You
can stay up to date on this initiative
and read more about it here: https://
sscs.ieee.org/about/solid-state-circuits
-directions/sscs-access-program.
Because the COVID-19 pandemic
is ongoing, I would like to once
again reiterate that the health and
safety of our members, volunteers,
and IEEE staff are the most important
requirements for any activities
we organize and sponsor. Please
share your thoughts and suggestions
by emailing me at k.k.o@ieee
.org. I wish you all health and safety.
IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE
SUMMER 2021
5

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IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2021

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