IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2023 - 4

President's Message
President's Message
The Role of Early Social Development
in Networking and " Serendipity "
Luis Kun
retired
William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric
Defense Studies
National Defense University
Washington, DC 20319 USA
 For those oF us who were lucky as children
to enjoy life and grew up with the support of loving
families, going to school, playing sports and music,
and making friends in our neighborhoods was just a
way of life. Little did we know explicitly at the time of
the importance of creating and maintaining human
connection. As grownups, opportunities occur when
we may have information that others lack. Because
of social interactions, the use of critical thinking, creativity,
and information sharing, we will encounter
ways of helping others achieve their objectives. The
unexpected ramifications that can occur when this
happens are a caress to your soul.
In November 1978, after receiving my doctorate
at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), I
started to work for the IBM Corporation in Los Angeles.
Shortly after that I visited the IBM Palo Alto Scientific
Center (PASC) and met Ralph Bernstein, at
the time manager of the Image Processing Lab at
the PASC (Ralph was an IEEE Fellow for discoveries
made in that field). I became acquainted with two
of his employees, Joe Myers and William Hanson.
Years later, I worked with Ralph and Joe in what
became the first Teleradiology system under an
IBM platform: the medical imaging display system
(MIDS). Joe was the single coder of MIDS, a medical
imaging display system. William had developed
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2023.3270484
Date of current version: 7 July 2023.
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0278-0097/23©2023 IEEE
some algorithms that helped analyze images from
space sent by the satellites.
In 1988, while working at IBM Dallas, I met Dr.
Steven Harms at Baylor School of Medicine. Dr.
Harms worked on the early detection of breast
cancer in women by analyzing magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI) images1 and he had purchased
a very powerful new technology " RISC
6000 " personal computer (PC) for which there
was no software to support his research. I remembered
the work I have seen at the PASC and was
able to speak with Bernstein and arrange with him
a memorandum of understanding describing the
broad outlines of an agreement between Baylor
and the IBM PASC where a free copy of Hanson's
image-processing software would be provided to
support Dr. Harms' research.
In 1996, while I worked as a senior IT advisor for
the Center for Information Technology at the Agency
for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR),2 my
boss Dr. Mike Fitzmaurice asked me if I would like
to go to a Health Technology Transfer Conference in
Rockville, MD, USA, and I responded positively. At
the meeting, I was happily surprised to find a paper
written by Dr. Steven Harms describing how he was
successful in doing early breast cancer detection in
1MRI studies produce many 3-D slices. Radiologists get information overload when
they try to perform tissue classification needed for diagnosis. Computers can help
produce automatic clustering methods to establish and discriminate relevant features
which will accelerate the tasks and make them more accurate.
2AHCPR changed its name, and its currently known as Agency for Health Research
and Quality (AHRQ).
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2023

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