Oral-History:Moshe Kam
About Moshe Kam
Moshe Kam, 2011 IEEE President, was the Robert Quinn Professor and Department Head of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Drexel University. His research interests include robotics and navigation, detection and estimation, wireless communications, and engineering education. In 2014, he became Dean of the Newark College of Engineering, a unit of the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey.
He is the recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award, US National Science Foundation, 1990. C. Holmes MacDonald Outstanding Teaching Award, Eta Kappa Nu, 1991. IEEE Third Millennium Medal, 2000. Fellow of the IEEE, 2001. Honorary Professor, South China University of Technology, 2006. Benjamin Franklin Key Award, IEEE Philadelphia Section, 2008. IEEE Haraden Pratt Award, 2016
About the Interview
MOSHE KAM: An Interview Conducted by Michael Geselowitz, IEEE History Center, May 31, 2024
Interview #914 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Copyright Statement
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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Moshe Kam, an oral history conducted in 2024 by Michael Geselowitz, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
Interview
INTERVIEWEE: Moshe Kam
INTERVIEWER: Michael Geselowitz
DATE: 31 May 2024
PLACE: NJIT, Newark, New Jersey
Geselowitz:
[0:00:00]. Okay. This is Michael Geselowitz from the IEEE History Center. I’m here at the New Jersey Institute of Technology interviewing IEEE Past President Moshe Kam who is currently Dean of Engineering here. Okay. Moshe, thanks for agreeing to an interview.
Kam:
Certainly.
Early Years and Background
Geselowitz:
Great. [0:00:20] What I like to do is start with your early years, your education, and how you got interested in engineering.
Kam:
Okay. I was born in 1955. Both my parents were born in Poland and emigrated to Israel in the late 1940s in the aftermath of the horrors of World War II. My mother was an elementary school teacher. In the 1960s my father was a technician or associate engineer [0:00:40] with the Israeli Defense Forces. He was always very interested in telling me about electrical engineering in general and about communication systems in particular. As a teenager, electronics/communications became one of the career and study paths that I considered. It was not the only area I was considering, there were several pharmacists [0:01:00] in my family, so pharmaceutical sciences was also an option.
Geselowitz:
Hmm.
Kam:
–The point of decision came when I graduated from high school. I actually finished high school a little bit early, at 16. At that time (1972) I applied and was accepted to Tel Aviv University in the physics program and to the Hebrew University School of Pharmacy. [0:01:20] I thought I’d start in the physics program and move into engineering later – in spite of the fact that there was always the pharmacy path that some in my family advocated.
Geselowitz:
So, you graduated from physics in Tel Aviv University?
Kam:
No, no, [0:01:40] What happened was I got into physics because, as I told you, I started my university studies early.
Geselowitz:
Right.
Kam:
At the time there was an internal rule that you cannot get into engineering at Tel Aviv if you’re not at least 18 years old. I was not yet 18. I chose the physics program, because it was close to engineering and they didn’t have this age restriction. When I became 18, I visited the College of Engineering [0:02:00] and there was some negotiation about their accepting me to study there. Eventually they took me into the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department. I was very enthusiastic about my studies there – I found almost all classes interesting and useful. I graduated from Tel Aviv University in 1976 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. Next, I went to the Israeli Defense Forces for a period of about seven years [0:02:20] from 1976 to 1983, serving there as a technical officer. I learned a lot there – about electronic communications but also about organizing large campaigns and administering technical operations. After being discharged from the IDF in 1983 I came to Drexel University.
Geselowitz:
In Philadelphia.
Kam:
In Philadelphia. I worked on my Master of Science for about two years and on my PhD for additional two years, graduating in 1987. My very knowledgeable and helpful advisor was Professor Paul Kalata [0:02:40]. I spent one year on a “soft money” position, research assistant professor, in the Drexel laboratory of Professor Peter Herczfeld. Then I switched to the tenure track and stayed at Drexel University as a faculty member ‘forever,’ between 1987 and 2014. During most of these years the Department Head was Professor Bruce Eisenstein (IEEE President, 2000) who was my long-time mentor, and now a friend. In 2014 [0:03:00] I moved to NJIT to become Dean of the Newark College of Engineering. This is the short version of my life from beginning to the present time. Yeah.
Geselowitz:
[Laughing]. All right. Now we have to go back and fill in a few gaps.`
Kam:
Yes, sure.
Geselowitz:
First of all, did you join IEEE as a student or after you graduated?
Kam:
Actually, it’s much more complicated than that.
Geselowitz:
Okay.
Kam:
The engineering program [0:03:20] in Tel Aviv was new. I think that in 1972-3, when I joined, it was just the second cohort of engineering students in Tel Aviv University. Our student group tried to mimic many aspects of what was done in the premier engineering school in Israel, namely the Technion. We found that at the ECE Department of the Technion they have an IEEE chapter or something like that.
Geselowitz:
Student branch. I think it’s called.
Kam:
[0:03:40] Yes, an IEEE Student Branch. We decided we’ll have one, too. It didn’t occur to us that we need to do anything but organize it locally and run it locally. Arrange meetings, have activities. We saw how the Student Branch at the Technion was set up, and whatever they did, we tried to match, and perhaps do a little more and a little better…
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
…because we were up and running, “upcoming.” [0:04:00] In this context – at one point in time, in 1973 or 1974, I was called into the Dean’s Office. This was very unusual – for a first-year student to be called to see the Dean.
The Dean of Engineering, Professor Maurice Brull, was a mechanical engineer who came to Tel Aviv from a faculty position in Philadelphia. At the time he didn’t speak much Hebrew and I didn’t speak much English. When I go to see [0:04:20] him, there is this room about, you know, a football field size. Over there on the other side, there is this bespectacled gentleman “jumping up and down.” He has something in his hand, and he’s clearly angry. He shows me a letter from one Eric Hertz of IEEE headquarters in New York City… The letter described “a [0:04:40] rogue student branch of IEEE that was created without permission,” etc. etc. As I told you, we just created the branch, it never occurred to us we need a permission from IEEE, let alone permission from America. So, we were an unauthorized entity, an IEEE branch created without any regard to any rules. I am told by the Dean to fix this thing, and I am dismissed.
Fixing the formalities meant, among other things, that I needed to join IEEE, because neither I, nor my ‘rogue’ accomplices, were yet IEEE student members. [0:05:00] It sounds simple but it was not that simple. I needed foreign currency in order to pay the student member dues. For that you had to put in [0:05:20] a formal request and get it approved by the Israeli Treasury. It was a lengthy process but we completed it. We recreated the Student Branch, this time legally. For years I had an argument with Cecilia Jankowski, managing director of the then Regional Activities (now Member and Geographic Activities, MGA): I “demanded” another year in my IEEE record [0:05:40] but she wouldn’t give it to me because this year of membership was illegal…
Geselowitz:
I may have to correct your biographical entry on our website. Because I think we go by the official list.
Kam:
Yeah, yeah, we should. I want that year --
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Activities in the Philadelphia Section and in Region 2
Kam:
However, my real IEEE volunteer participation started in Philadelphia. I was an assistant professor at Drexel in 1987. At the time artificial neural networks were making a “comeback,” and were of great interest to the community and to me personally. [0:06:40] There were two large West Coast conferences on the subject, but no similar conference activity on the East Coast. We decided that we’d try to do something about that, and so I went to a meeting [0:07:00] of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Philadelphia Section, which was a powerful institution, in order to make a proposal about an artificial neural network workshop in Philadelphia.
Geselowitz:
Right.
Geselowitz:
I mean it’s historically one of the most active and largest sections.
Kam:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a formal meeting of the Executive Committee once a month. I go there [0:07:20] and I sit in front of the committee members and I ask them to support an educational seminar on artificial neural networks and their applications, I describe my plan. They look very stern. [Laughing] The atmosphere is very formal and very thick. They listened to me. Then they dismissed me, telling me to wait outside [0:07:40]. They called me back after quite a long time. When I come back they say something to the effect that my plan is terrible. Absolutely terrible. Very poorly designed.
First I thought they are just going to stop there and send me home. But then they said that as bad as your plan is, we will help you organize the seminar... The way we would do it is by assigning this person to be [0:08:00] your treasurer, and this person to be in charge of advertising; they essentially assembled a conference committee in 20 minutes from the assembled members of the Executive Committee.
I learned a lot from the process, and most importantly the event itself was a great success. I mean it was such a great success that a gathering that we planned originally for 25-35 people had close to 150, and we needed to move it twice to larger venues in order to accommodate the participants. Many years after [0:08:20] that event, people were still telling me in various meetings that this seminar was their first encounter with artificial neural networks. We had very, very good speakers, including Professor Stephen Grossberg from Boston University and Professor Dana Ballard from the University of Rochester. Professor Joseph Bordogna of the University of Pennsylvania gave a very impressive introduction.
After the event was over [0:08:40] I realized that I want to stay with this group, the Philadelphia Section Executive Committee, because evidently they have resources and they can get things done. By the way, the seminar made some money for the Philadelphia Section, a surplus of attendance fees over expenses. Still the Executive Committee had to make a significant investment and give us a large advance.
Geselowitz:
Up front.
Kam:
It was at risk, you know?
Geselowitz:
What year was that? This conference?
Kam:
I think it was 1987.
Geselowitz:
Mm-hmm.
Kam:
[0:09:00]. What I have done next was to look for a way to become part of this Executive Committee. At one point I asked to be appointed Secretary of the Committee, which meant that in the subsequent years I would become Treasurer, Vice Chair and Chair. I became Chair of the Philadelphia Section in 1998. This was, as I told you, a hub of [0:09:40] of interesting and important work as well as a group of interesting and influential people. William Middleton, an influential and well-known volunteer, was one of them. At one point Ken Laker (IEEE President, 1999) from the University of Pennsylvania was the Section Chair. Others who served in this position include Merrill Buckley (IEEE President, 1992) [0:10:00], Charles Alexander from Temple University (IEEE President, 1997). Joseph Bordogna whom we have already mentioned (IEEE President,1998), and my long time Drexel University mentor Bruce Eisenstein (IEEE President, 2000). There were quite a few IEEE presidents around… Their advice, example, and encouragement gave me a lot of motivation.
The Philadelphia Section was relatively [0:10:20] rich in terms of its reserves. It was rich because it was very active and had its hand in organizing and sponsoring several popular conferences. The most successful conference that the Philadelphia Section co-sponsored was the International Test Conference (ITC). The Section, through the Ex-Com, built and used its networks well, organizing multiple activities for students as well as practitioners [0:10:40]. I was part of this enterprise for quite some time, it was effective and rewarding. I learned a lot from being a part of it.
Geselowitz:
Two questions. One, just stepping back. What was your own dissertation work on?
Kam:
Okay. I started as a Master of Science student. I did work [0:11:00] on target tracking using laser beams. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the very challenging topic of relationship between control theory and information theory. [0:11:20] Of the two theses, the one that I think is better is actually my master’s thesis. It provided clear, practical and computationally efficient solutions to the tracking question it investigated.
Geselowitz:
Uh-huh.
Kam:
Not that the other thesis does not have merit. But it tackled several very difficult problems that are still worked on to this day.
Geselowitz:
Was it very theoretical and mathematical [0:11:40] because your master’s thesis sounds more applied?
Kam:
I think that the question that both my advisor and I should have asked ourselves is…why there are so few results on this (PhD thesis) topic in the literature already. Once we delved into the task we started understanding why.
Geselowitz:
Who was your supervisor?
Kam:
[0:12:00] Professor Paul Kalata, a graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Geselowitz:
Oh.
Kam:
He was a great supervisor. First of all, he was available any time you needed him. He was involved. It took me a while to understand how difficult it was, but… any [0:12:20] conference I wanted to go to, he funded my trip. I’m not able, today, as an advisor to doctoral students, to be as generous towards my students the way Paul Kalata was toward me. I went to the Control and Decision Conference every year. [0:12:40] I went to the American Control Conference every year. We went religiously to the Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS). These experiences were crucial to my development and to developing a network of colleagues and collaborators. Sometimes the benefit was direct –what I learned in the meetings. At other times I was [0:13:00] “intimidated” by not being able to understand what was going on in a conference session, so I went back to Drexel and studied the subjects I was not able to follow. In addition, Professor Kalata made sure to introduce me to the individuals who are important in the field. In [0:13:20] March 1984, a couple of months after I’ve arrived at Drexel actually, we wrote a paper for the CISS which took place in Johns Hopkins University. We drove to Baltimore to present the paper. During a break in the conference Paul Kalata introduces me to an unknown man and says [0:13:40] “this is Vincent Poor…
Geselowitz:
Ah.
Kam:
… and this is my student Moshe Kam. He’ll now tell you what he’s working on.” At the time it was very shocking to me to be introduced like that… with no early warning. Professor Poor was (and is) such an important person in our field, and I was such an unimportant person in our field… I was a student studying for the Master of Science degree with two-moths graduate studies experience… But at that point I had no choice. I had to speak to Professor Poor… This short meeting went very well, and I continued to communicate with Professor Poor for decades afterwards. What I learned from Paul Kalata in this [0:14:20] respect was that when I went to conferences afterwards, I identified ahead of time who are the individuals in my field who will be present there, and I asked in advance to meet them. Of course, people are different. Some people were very receptive and very nice, I sat with them, described my work and gave them copies of my papers. Other people wouldn’t [0:14:40] respond – but it didn’t matter. I had an opportunity to meet the leaders of my field and to talk to student colleagues and I used it. I spoke to everybody. It turns out very well, because I worked with these individuals and their students later for years, wrote and received letters of recommendation and engaged with them in conference organizing and editorial tasks. In time I taught my students to follow this mode of operation. [0:15:00] Consider a trip to a conference as contact sport.
Geselowitz:
Mm-hmm. Your papers presumably [0:15:20] were published in the conference proceedings and also in IEEE journals?
Kam:
My papers were certainly published in the proceedings of the conferences I attended. Based on them, after we published three or four of them on a topic, we wrote a full article for a journal, which was more comprehensive. Yeah, I started publishing [0:15:40] in journals. My first paper, my master’s thesis paper, was published by the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. After I published one paper in this prestigious journal I thought that I can now die a happy man.
Geselowitz:
[Laughing]
Kam:
Because [Laughing] I always thought that this is, and I mean I still think this is, an amazing [0:16:00] publication. I was very glad that they accepted one of my papers. But most of my work was actually published elsewhere, including IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems and the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.
Geselowitz:
Mm-hmm. At this point you’re moving up through the professoriate? [0:16:20].
Kam:
Not yet.
Geselowitz:
Not yet.
Kam:
I’m graduating.
Geselowitz:
You’re graduating.
Kam:
Okay.
Geselowitz:
Drexel offers you a job. [Laughing].
Kam:
Well, I’m starting looking for jobs. When I have two offers from other places, Professor Bruce Eisenstein from Drexel, the ECE Department Head at the time, called me in and said, why don’t you consider staying here, we have a tenure-track line for you. [0:16:40] I was very happy to stay at Drexel. For one year I was on soft money, a research assistant professor. Professor Peter Herczfeld from Drexel took me under his wing at the time and funded me as well as Amit Goffer and Jeff Wilcox, my first graduate students. [0:17:00] Amit went on to found the bionic walking assistance company ReWalk, and Jeff became in time Vice President for Digital Transformation at Lockheed Martin. At the time, we did work on optimization of large phased arrays using optical phase shifters.
In 1987 I was transferred to tenure track at Drexel. I started building my research group. For some time, I was working on artificial neural networks but I very quickly shifted. This shift was related to a meeting that [0:17:20] I had at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWC) in Virginia. In addition to all other activities, my student Ari Naim and I created a small company. We wrote a few proposals under the Small Business Innovative Research program (SBIR). [0:17:40]. One of them was selected by NSWC for funding, though when we met the Program Manager, he had a slightly different idea about what we should do compared to what we have proposed. [0:18:00]. I remember it the meeting was on a Thursday. There is a reason for mentioning that. The Program Manager presented the revised problem and said this is what we should be trying to solve. In general terms [0:18:20] it was about collecting many readings from several radars that are looking roughly at the same volume of surveillance. These measurements are collected; they are of different qualities and technical parameters; they may be inconsistent and sometimes contradictory; and they need to be integrated intelligently. I was arrogant and overconfident and said, well, it’s Thursday, [0:18:40] let me see what we can do about this problem by next Monday. I think that 30-some years after that, I’m still working on that problem…
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
But I mean it’s not that we did not provide an answer. We provided a plan and solved the problem under various constraints and sensory environments. This NSWC challenge led me to work on data fusion and decision fusion which became [0:19:00] the topics that, for all the things that I have done over the years, are the most frequently-cited part of my work. Many of my efforts in data and decision fusion emanate from the pioneering work of Professor Pramod Varshney from Syracuse University who is the “father” of the field. We at Drexel (and later at NJIT) were able to identify and address a significant sub field of related problems that we [0:19:20] have contributed to over the years.
Geselowitz:
You became section chair, I think, in 1998?
Kam:
Yes, that’s correct.
Geselowitz:
Correct? Where were you in your Drexel trajectory at that point?
Kam:
I was already a Full Professor.
Geselowitz:
Still an assistant professor.
Kam:
Yeah, and [0:19:40] there was a time that I started thinking about what to do within IEEE Region 2. I became a GOLD Chair of the Region – GOLD stood for Graduates of the Last Decade. I became a member of Region 2 Executive Committee. [0:20:00]
Geselowitz:
At the regional level now?
Kam:
-- at the regional level --
Geselowitz:
-- now you’re getting attention at the regional level --
Kam:
-- Yes, I was at the regional level. I looked around and studied what the R2 Committee does. I thought: I can run this and contribute to its operations. This thought was probably a little bit too pretentious [0:20:20] and the Committee didn’t put me on the ballot to become the next Director-elect of the Region. One of the members of the Committee took me aside and said “people at your age are not yet ripe for a Director position. You need to be here for at least 20 years before we would nominate you. [0:20:40] I was in my 40s, I didn’t have 20 years…
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
to wait. So, I decided I’ll run a petition and try to get on the ballot this way. It was actually very educational, because later I used the experience from the petition affair to work on changing petition rules across IEEE. It was a bit bizarre. [0:21:00] There was a menu of signatures you needed to submit, of IEEE eligible voters from the Region who support putting your name on the ballot. There was a series of rules as to where these signatures must come from, and what percentages of eligible voters must sign your petition in each individual Section of the Region and in the whole Region. It was pretty [0:21:20] Byzantine. On top of it, you did not really have any access to any list of eligible voters… In other words, nobody gave you or allowed you to have access to any region/section membership lists. You needed to find the eligible voters yourself. What we did have at that time, and I don’t know if you remember that, there was a [0:21:40] global member directory.
Geselowitz:
Yes. We have all the old issues.
Kam:
Fantastic.
Geselowitz:
Yeah.
Kam:
What I’ve done with this: I started scanning it. Looking for individuals in the right zip code. It was very laborious. I started writing to voters in the right zip codes, and requesting [0:22:00] signatures by return mail. I also tried to go to meetings of section executive committees which were within driving distance of Philadelphia, in order to get signatures there. These attempts were not always the most pleasant. In some sections they were welcoming and [0:22:20] whether they wanted me or didn’t want me as the next Director, they would sign my petition to be a candidate--
Geselowitz:
They figured you have a right to be on the ballot I think.
Kam:
Yeah, so they signed my petition. But there was at least one section where I remember I drove for four hours to get to their meeting. They knew I’m coming. I wrote ahead of time. When they started the meeting, they told me that it’s open to the public and I can sit there but that’s all. Then they [0:22:40] declared an executive session and asked me to wait outside. At the end of the executive session they just packed their belonging and went away. They left in a hurry and I didn’t get a single signature from them. It was a little bit [Laughing] too much. By the way, I used this experience to offer a reform to the petition regulations several years later, and the Board approved it.
In any case, I was able to get on the ballot in spite of all the obstacles. However, in the actual election I was not elected, Marc Apter was. I lost, but not by much. Two years later, I’m continuing to work [0:23:00] for the region, and they actually did put me in the ballot. The second time, I did win. I became Region 2 director-elect in 2001 and future member (2003-2004) of the IEEE Board of Directors. [0:23:20]
At that time, it was important to me, first of all, to understand what is happening in this vast region. I wanted to be present as much as I could in local meetings and events. If a section had [0:23:40] a large student event or an award ceremony or whatever, I made it my business to be there, talk to the members and volunteers, understand what Region 2 can do for them. The reality was that the Region couldn’t do that much because its resources were quite limited; there was not even a regional assessment to fund activities. What we could do with our resources we did, and in some cases [0:24:00] we were able to leverage regional and sectional funds to get a few sections together for an event. There was certainly a large regional student event once a year which was our most important activity.
My years as a volunteer for the Region were a good school to understand how IEEE works at the local level. What the gaps are. [0:24:20] Students were very interested in the sections because student branches got a lot from the interaction. There was less interest among members in other classes of membership, especially members who were not academics. [0:24:40]. There were sections like Philadelphia that did very well, and had these all-day seminars and workshops. Not everybody could afford that.
Geselowitz:
Was the issue with some of the members, [0:25:00] particularly the members in industry, that they were society based. They were very focused on the technology and not interested?
Kam:
No. It was that most sections and the region didn’t have much to offer them.
Geselowitz:
Mm-hmm.
Kam:
Now there was the shining example of the Boston Section from Region 1 that offered its members [0:25:40] short courses and workshops and seminars on a regular basis. We tried to emulate what they do in Boston in Region 2.
Geselowitz:
I see. Like you started as a student copying the Technion, then when you’re in Region 2 you’re going up and copying the Boston section
Kam:
-- yeah, and shamelessly I mean --
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
-- I mean we told the Boston colleagues that we are visiting them [0:26:00] in order to see what they are doing and try to do the same thing. Yeah. Sure.
Geselowitz:
As Region 2 director, you also joined the IEEE Board of Directors.
Service on the Board of Directors as a Regional Director
Kam:
Absolutely [Laughing].
Geselowitz:
Was that eye-opening compared, as active section person what you realized once you got at the board level?
Kam:
I knew that it’s going to be different. Actually [0:26:20] I always thought in retrospect and over the years that one of the problems of the Board of Directors of IEEE is that most individuals who land on it do not have much experience sitting on similar boards of other organizations [0:26:40]. Board members need a lot of education, and even some handholding at the beginning. One major issue is to explain to Board members their role and responsibility for the IEEE as a whole, in contrast with the tendency of some to act as representatives of their section, region, or technical society. When I became President, I made sure we do more director education; there’s also a lot of reading and learning that you needed to do on your own. [0:27:00].
When I became R2 Director I discovered quickly that there are several members of the IEEE staff who could give me good advice and who were interested in helping me learn the ropes. I will mention in particular Julie Cozin, who was Director of Corporate Governance; Cecelia Jankowski, Managing Director of IEEE Regional Activities (later Member and Geographic Activities); and Matt Loeb who was Staff Executive. They were very generous with their time and allowed me to get up to speed in becoming a productive member of the Board of Directors.
Another opportunity to learn how to become a productive member of the BoD was to use the two years when you serve as Director-elect before you actually become a Director. I thought this was a great opportunity. I could come to Board meetings in 2001 and 2002, sit in the [0:27:20] back, listen and take notes. This plan did not turn out that well, though, due to the excessive use of executive sessions by the Board. These sessions often excluded Directors-elect. The first meeting I’ve gone to as Director-elect was held in Mexico City in November 2001; Joel Snyder was IEEE President. The Board had an endless number of executive sessions [0:27:40] and they always kicked us Directors-elect out. After about an hour of the Board meeting on the first day, at 9AM, Directors-elect are kicked out and the executive session extends to lunchtime. Then the second day starts the same way, an executive session is declared at about 9AM and I am in the corridor again. I left my cell phone number with one of the staff members, and took a cab to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. After about an hour or two I started feeling very bad; maybe the executive session is over and here I am at the museum... Still, I received no call. I remained at the museum for almost six hours, and when I returned to the hotel in the afternoon the Board was still in executive session... This session extended to 7:00PM that day! They only broke for lunch. Needless to say, I didn’t learn that much in Mexico City, except for what I leaned at the National Museum of Anthropology… Still, I did learn that if I become a President one day, I will be careful not to overuse executive sessions myself…
[0:28:40]
A couple of trends were evident already in that first meeting which actually was in Joel Snyder’s term (2001) and during the presidential terms of Ray Findlay (2002) and Michael Adler (2003). [0:29:00] First of all, I remember that in the Mexico City meeting, Wallace Read (IEEE President, 1996) came to speak to the Board. He was the chair of a “Blue-Ribbon Committee.”
Geselowitz:
As they were called in those days, right.
Kam:
[0:29:40] Yeah. He came and said “we (members of the Blue-Ribbon Committee) are returning our mandate.” The committee was charged with reforming the Board of Directors. It was focused on IEEE governance. This was one of, I don’t know, maybe 15 different attempts over the years to change the composition and structure of the IEEE Board of Directors. At one point I summed all these efforts up in a very sad long presentation which I made at one of the IEEE Meeting Series. Past-president Read said, on behalf of his committee members, well, we [0:30:00] cannot get anywhere. We are giving up. Everybody reminded him that his committee was an ad hoc committee, it dissolves anyway at the end of the year. But I registered that he and his peers worked on Board of Directors reform all year long with no progress. [0:30:20].
There were other themes as well. This was the post-9/11 period. There were economical changes resulting from the tragic events of 9/11 and other global developments. These affected the budget of IEEE significantly. Roughly speaking (and I’m not the best expert to discuss this) [0:30:40], my understanding was that the Board had been using significant portion of gains from investments from IEEE’s reserves to support operations. This practice worked as long as the investments showed gains, which was the situation for several consecutive years. When the investments started drying up, the Board [0:31:00] imagined for a while that things will come back to “normal” pretty soon, and investment gains will return. They did not. The ensuing unexpected funding gaps and imbalances had to be addressed. We had financial problems of this kind throughout the presidencies of Drs. Findlay and Adler, and these problems were a major issue for the [0:31:20] Board to address. I think also, with these financial pressures, other strains came to the fore. The atmosphere in meetings was a little bit [Laughing] [0:31:40] tense. There was a growing tension between directors from RAB (the Regional Activities Board) and directors from TAB (the Technical Activities Board), and other fissures of this nature. There were quite a few attempts to address these disagreements and regain unity. [0:32:00] The severity of the problem was exemplified by the fact that the Board has established a “Committee on Trust and Communication.” I had the feeling that if we [0:32:20] needed a Committee on Trust and Communication [Laughing], then there was a serious lack of both trust and communication. Some individuals worked hard to try to pull the Board together again. For example, I remember positively the activities of Virginia [0:32:40] Sulzberger who was very active in “making peace.”
Another issue that the Board had to deal with was US export control. Changes in US Law required that we re-examine, and possibly change, our relationship to certain IEEE sections. For example, we were not able to send rebates to certain sections or support their activities financially. We also faced the following question: can we review scholarly papers for IEEE publications sent from countries against which export restrictions were issued? Is reviewing a paper submitted for publication from a sanctioned country provides the authors of the paper with added [0:33:20] value that the sanctions proscribe? I know that Cecilia Jankowski (Managing Director, Member and Geographic Activities) and Arthur Winston (IEEE President, 2004) worked pretty hard on communication with the relevant offices of the US government. Eventually we reached a compromise with these offices, but only after a long period of confusion and instability.
Geselowitz:
Right.
Kam:
The other area that personally [0:34:00] I started looking at was IEEE educational activities. I was thrust into this area on my first Board meeting as a Director (February 2003). I promised myself in advance that I would wait six months and do nothing in Board meetings but listen, ask clarification questions, and learn. However… in preparing myself for the first [0:34:20] meeting, I saw an item about participation of IEEE in accreditation of biomedical engineering academic programs. [0:34:40] It was actually too late to do much about this item – it has to do with IEEE acceding its role in biomedical engineering accreditation by the accreditation agency ABET to another organization, the Biomedical Engineering Societies (BMES). This matter was on the February 2003 meeting’s consent agenda, meaning that unless one of the members of the Board objects, the resolution to accede our role to BMES would be voted on at the beginning of the meeting, among other matters, with no discussion. [0:35:00] I was very unhappy about this.
About five minutes after the meeting started Board members were asked what items they want to take off the consent agenda…
Geselowitz:
And you…?
Kam:
-- I see my hand raising requesting that the ABET/BMES matter be taken off the consent agenda. Needless to say the self-imposed six-month period of [0:35:20] silence went away right then and there, not lasting even six minutes. Unfortunately, this action got me instantly into a conflict with supporters of the motion I took off consent, but I felt this was the right thing to do.
Geselowitz:
It seemed so important it should be discussed, not just slipped by.
Kam:
Exactly. There may have been fantastic reasons to gibe biomedical engineering accreditation up, but it should not have been done without deliberation. [0:36:00] This incident sensitized me to the state of educational and accreditation activities in IEEE and I started tracking them more closely.
Geselowitz:
Interesting.
Kam:
Yeah.
Geselowitz:
What happens now in the two years when you’re actually region director voting member? Was it a continuation of the same issue or did other stuff come up?
Kam:
Well, I basically described the main issues to you already, but here are some additional developments. Among other obligations, I found myself as Chair [0:36:20] of the IEEE Audit Committee in 2004. This was just after the enacting of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Though we at IEEE were not bound by most rules established by the Act [0:36:40], I noticed that we have employed the same auditor forever (the Act required mandatory rotation of the lead audit engagement partner every five years.) I did not know the exact number of years of us engaging the same audit firm and the same lead audit engagement partner, but it was certainly more than five. I worked to change that. This was a little bit of an [0:37:00] effort as you can imagine, yet we have indeed replaced the audit firm during that year.
The other issue that I was working on at the time was redefining IEEE membership. Already in 2004, I have convened a meeting in Newark, [0:37:20] to discuss trends and direction of the membership. More than 50 individuals came from all over the world, and we discussed IEEE membership for three days. Not everything that was discussed there, or in the subsequent membership project of 2007, was implemented, and some gaps remain to this day. However, over time several important changes were adopted:
(1) The grade Graduate Student Member was created. It was meant to recognize the fact that most graduate students who joined IEEE are already professionals holding a baccalaureate degree, not different in their educational credentials than most Members. A group of volunteers including me believed that graduate students in IEEE’s fields of interest should be treated as Members (who can vote in the Annual IEEE Election, run for and assume leadership positions), not as Student Members (who can’t vote, nor assume membership positions outside student branches). This step proved itself over time to make IEEE much more hospitable to graduate students.
(2) We abolished the complicated and intricate process of approving academic programs and requiring that any candidate for IEEE membership must be a graduate of one of the approved programs (or go through a rather elaborate alternative process). Approval of programs turned out to be very inefficient and time-consuming. We sent a large number of applicants who did not come from approved programs to undergo alternative procedures that would prove their ‘worthiness’ to become members; not surprisingly, many of these candidates for membership abandoned their membership applications altogether.
One specific case that motivated me to seek a reform was a rejection of the IEEE membership application of a Vice Chancellor of one of the oldest and most respected universities in Europe. Somehow we did not have the particular program he graduated from in our database. The rejection of this candidate for membership caused us major embarrassment. It helped me and several like-minded volunteers to do away with the whole program-approval process.
In retrospect, this step simplified the membership application process, increased IEEE membership, and had no known negative side effects.
(3) We simplified greatly the transition from Associate Member to Member grade. Many Associate Members became Members.
Many volunteers worked on these three subjects, I will mention in particular the help I received from Maurice Papo and Marc Apter. Subsequent membership reform efforts were carried out by Mike Lightner (President, 2006), Joseph Lillie, and many others.
Geselowitz:
Were you involved when the IEEE fields of interest were expanded? Or was that later?
Kam:
No, I was not involved, but I supported the new definition of IEEE’s areas of interest. [0:43:00] It reflected reality. We have already expanded our fields of activity, conferences and publications into new areas, and we needed to recognize this expansion formally -- in particular, our expansion into the life sciences [0:43:20]. The redefinition of fields of interest was an enabling step, because now you could actually say, yeah, of course “we own it,” we are not just limited to electrical engineering. Among other matters, the new definition helped us launch the IEEE Life Sciences Initiative later in 2011 and accelerate our entry into the intersection of engineering, computing and the life sciences. [0:43:40] --
Kam:
The other effort that I joined was strategic planning. Arthur Winston (IEEE President, 2004) started an effort of strategic planning. This effort really bloomed later when [0:44:40] Leah Jamieson (IEEE President, 2007) took the helm – this was really “her thing,” She was interested in marching us towards systematic long-range planning and I did my best to help.
The Educational Activities Board
My two years as Region 2 Director were 2003 and 2004. [0:45:00] Then I was elected to be Vice President, Educational Activities, and Chair of the Educational Activities Board (EAB). This position is still not voted on by the members. It’s voted on by the [0:45:20] IEEE Assembly which is another interesting body in the hierarchy of governance of IEEE. There was some politicking [0:45:38] around the voting session of the Assembly in November 2004, suggestions to move candidates from one nomination category to another, etc. However, it ended well – I was elected. At the same Assembly meeting Leah Jamieson (IEEE President, 2007) was elected Vice president, Publication Services and Products. Her election has provided me with a very effective and collaborative ally.
I really wanted to do the EAB assignment [0:46:00] but also had a little bit of trepidation. Due to the way that meetings were organized by RAB (which I had to attend as a Region Director) I could never observe an EAB meeting. The first meeting of EAB that I would attend will be the one I chair.
Geselowitz:
Hmm.
Kam:
Still, I had time [0:46:20]. I had two months (November and December 2004) to prepare. I drove to Piscataway to meet the EA staff one week after I was elected, and kept going there every Thursday. [0:46:40] I started meeting with the staff – Barbara Stoler (Managing Director), Douglas Gorham, Raffaella Toscano, Carolyn Solomine, Karen Kleinschmidt, several others. Taking notes. Talking to other volunteers who knew EAB better. I created a road-map document. Every year that I served as VP-EA I published “The EAB Manifesto.” I’ll send you a copy. The EAB [0:47:00] Manifesto was the story and plan of what we are going to do in the next year, and a bit beyond. I don’t want to claim that EAB has accomplished every task that was declared in the manifesto. But it was a very good thing to have this road map because it guided our activities. [0:47:20]
I was Vice President, Educational Activities for three years which was very nice, the Assembly elected me for the role three years in a row. [0:47:40]
I think that the most important accomplishment of EAB during these years was TryEngineering. TryEngineering was (and is still in a slightly different form) [0:48:00] a portal about engineering education. In time, we added to it TryComputing and TryNano. I heard the proposed name for the portal, TryEngineering, from IEEE staff member Peter Wiesner, though I do not know if it was Peter’s original idea.
TryEngineering was really suited to the times. There was a dearth [0:48:20] of reliable and well-organized information on-line about educational opportunities in engineering. If you were a parent, not necessarily an engineer, and you wanted to look at what your child can do in engineering, there were very few places that spoke to you in everyday language, allowing you to understand what’s going on. If you were a student and wanted to understand what does it mean to have a career path [0:48:40] as an engineer, there was again not that much you could find. Some of the available offerings were actually quite depressing. There was in particular a web portal of the College Board. [0:49:00] It covered different academic programs and different professions. If you wanted to become a physician, the portal told you that you’re helping humanity and you’re assisting people and you’re doing great things. If you wanted to become a nurse, you are like Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War or Walt Whitman during the Civil War. Fantastic. However… if you want to be an engineer, then you will sit in a cold cubical [0:49:20] on your own. You will face difficult problems and you will toil on them by yourself. If you fail, you should “try, try and try again.” Oh, and by the way, to become an engineer, you need to be a genius in mathematics and physics... The description of engineers was truly repelling.
We decided to create an inviting portal which will be very informational but also attractive. It was far from a straightforward task. [0:49:40] First of all, at the time, and I don’t know why, but at the time IEEE did not have the means to host such a portal. Second, we needed a lot of help on content, where to find it (or author it) and how to refresh it.
This was to be an educational portal. It would describe how engineering works. What each discipline of engineering focuses on. What would you do at work if you become an aerospace engineer or computer engineer. The portal would have games about engineering for student visitors. It would offer class plans for pre-university teachers to bring engineering into their classrooms. It will have a search capability that would allow users to find all programs in a certain technical area (e.g., Chemical Engineering) and in any country or state or province (e.g., British Columbia in Canada). It will provide links to the websites of each one of the programs of interest.
We started by joining forces with the New York Hall of Science. They had relevant experience and a lot of relevant material. Then we decided to approach IBM, with whom IEEE had long-term connections. [0:50:00] Our principal collaborator on IEEE staff was Matt Loeb (IEEE Staff Executive) who had the contacts with IBM.
I remember us going to IBM. We had the plan, timeline and budget. We hoped that IBM would agree to host our portal and to support its development financially, at least in part. In the car, it was a long drive, there was a discussion of the details and a ‘rehearsal.’
Geselowitz:
This was north of New York, in the Hudson Valley?
Kam:
Yes
Geselowitz:
[0:50:20] the Watson Lab in Westchester County.
Kam:
Yeah, that was it.
Geselowitz:
Hmm.
Kam:
One of the questions we debated was what to ask IBM to do exactly. First in terms of contributing to the content and the hosting. Second, to as to the financial support as fraction of the cost of launching the portal [0:50:40] 20%? 25%?
I was the spokesperson, it started very well. The IBM folk were friendly and receptive. They liked to be part of TryEngineering. They would host the portal. Not surprisingly, the IBM group leader wanted to know what percentage of this development budget we expect IBM to cover. My answer, unlike the planned answer in the ‘rehearsal’ was… all of it. 100%.
I watched my colleagues from IEEE after hearing my answer, and they looked like they wanted to die on the spot... The IBM people were [0:51:00] also quite surprised. Yet I was not startled. I thought about it in advance. My answer was not that spontaneous.
Geselowitz:
Right.
Kam:
The IBM colleagues asked why us, IBM. Why do you want us to cover all the costs of launching this portal, rather than creating a coalition of companies that would support this important project? My answer was, look, if you don’t cover the cost of this initiative in full, then I will need to take a car drive like the one I took today to 5-7 other companies. [0:51:20] Assuming some will agree to join you and IEEE, we still would have to stitch a multi-corporation agreement together. Our lawyers would talk to each corporate’s lawyers and update all other potential partners. Letters, non-disclosure agreements and drafts would fly back and forth. Getting this project started will take years... What we are asking in terms of absolute sum is not huge; you will get the credit as the principal sponsor; with your help, we will get the portal right away, meaning we will be ready in four months; please consider our request. [0:51:40]
During the ride back there was no discussion. I felt clearly that my colleagues think that we “blew it.” Everybody was silent.
However…in a couple of days the colleagues from IBM came back and let us know that that they would cover the full costs of launching the portal. 100%. They indeed hosted the portal, and supported it in the most professional and effective manner. IBM treated the portal like it belonged to an IBM operational unit – complying with standards, keeping the portal operating 24/7, announcing maintenance outages ahead of time, etc. They were really very, very good partners, attentive and generous.
In parallel we contacted Ms. Joanne Van Voorhees, who worked with IEEE before on educational portals and e-newsletter production. We asked her to be our principal content manager. She was experienced and resourceful with very good connections, including working with the Sloan Foundation. She started building the content right away and indeed in four months the portal was operational and online.
[0:52:40] TryEngineering became very popular overnight. It attracted many visitors (first tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands a year). The technical literature about this topic, Entry into Education in Engineering, started quoting our site as a resource, which was very rewarding. [0:53:00]. TryEngineering made a difference and demonstrated the capabilities and commitments of IEEE to engineering education.
In parallel with TryEngineering we started the planned expansion of other EAB program and the addition of new ones. Among the existing programs was the Teacher in Service [0:53:20] Program (TISP). One of the key individuals behind TISP was Doug Gorham, a staff member who later became Managing Director of IEEE Educational Activities. TISP was about teaching teachers, mostly teachers of mathematics and science, how to bring engineering to their classrooms. The basis was [0:53:40] a series of simple experiments which the teacher could conduct with students following our lesson plans. For example, students would build a simple robot from cardboards, wires, rubber bands, and pins and needles. They would take measurements, and answer questions about their designs. They would compare their design to the designs of other students in the same class. Working with Ms. Van Voorhees, we assembled groups of teachers and engineers to create new experiments and new lesson plans. We put the lesson plans in the TryEngineering portal and used them to organize live TISP sessions with teachers in various IEEE sections worldwide. The idea was that teachers who came to a TISP session will learn how to import the experiments into their programs, and get financial support from IEEE to purchase supplies for TISP experiments in their classes [0:54:00].
Before we reinvigorated the program, most TISP sessions were in IEEE Regions 1-6 (United States). We started taking TISP to many other places in the world. We had a growing group of volunteers interested in organizing and conducting these activities, and in some cases I ran TISP workshops myself. I remember in particular the one we ran in [0:54:20] Pretoria, South Africa. Dr. Saurabh Sinha was a very strong volunteer in the South Africa Section who helped us there. We went to Montevideo Uruguay, we were helped there by Mr. Marcel Keschner, a very strong volunteer. [0:54:40]. Marcel estimated that almost all the science teachers of Uruguay attended our full-day TISP session in Montevideo. We conducted a TISP session in Hyderabad, India, helped by Dr. Prasad Kodali. We have repeated these sessions in many places, helping the local communities and increasing the reputation of IEEE. The growth of this program was just awesome. We [0:55:00] expanded it greatly.
Another program we developed was EPICS in IEEE. EPICS was not born in IEEE. It was born in Purdue University.
Geselowitz:
By, I think, by Leah Jamieson you mentioned earlier.
Kam:
Yeah, by Leah Jamieson (IEEE President, 2007), Edward J. Coyle, William Oaks and other colleagues in Purdue University. [0:55:20] They have received the Gordon Prize, largely for the original EPICS effort, in 2005. The EPICS acronym stands for Engineering Projects in Community Service. It is a well-known service learning program which directs engineering projects, implemented by engineering students as part of their education, but taking place in the local communities and for the benefit of the local communities.
The story of EPICS in IEEE starts with the transition to the presidency of Louis Terman (IEEE President, 2008). In November 2007 Lew Terman suggested in a well-attended speech during the IEEE Meeting Series that we need to increase attention to students in IEEE fields of interest worldwide. He sketched out a very ambitious plan [0:55:40] which involved sending students from one country to another country and helping communities that suffered from low availability of useful technology. It was a very attractive plan but also very large and certainly very expensive. This was especially so because we had to start from scratch. IEEE did not have the infrastructure for such an endeavor.
I was sitting there listening to this speech and thinking [0:56:00] about EPICS in Purdue. EPICS already existed. It was very successful (mostly in the United States and Canada). Why don’t we try to adopt it in IEEE to support President Terman’s vision, rather than starting new expensive exchange programs from scratch? I spoke to Leah Jamieson and she was of course [0:56:20] happy to assist. So we started working on this, and called it EPICS in IEEE.
At the beginning not everybody was supportive. I took the idea to the Board of MGA (Member and Geographic Activities) but this Board was not interested at all at the time. (This attitude changed in a couple of years – EPICS in IEEE activities became very popular in IEEE sections, and were supported strongly by the MGA Board). [0:56:40].
Having failed with the MGA Board, we took the EPICS in IEEE idea to the Education Activities Board (EAB). EAB was enthusiastic and adopted the idea right away.
So developed EPICS in IEEE in EAB, and…it caught fire. EPICS projects mushroomed all over the world. In Canada, in South Africa, [0:57:00] Columbia, Mexico, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Kenya… It was really effective and really fun. In fact, about a year ago, in 2022, a group of students from here, from my university NJIT, applied to EAB to get help to implement a project under EPICS in IEEE. They felt that [0:57:20] they need to let me know about it and they came and spoke about this excellent program. I was sitting here quietly; listening to an introduction to EPICS on IEEE… I did not tell my students I already knew something about it…
Geselowitz:
That you started it [Laughing].
Kam:
They told me about this great program and they filled me in the details. They got the funding they requested, and completed the project, which was on Virtual Reality Vision Therapy. [0:57:40] They built a training device for low-vision children that is in use by a hospital in Philadelphia.
Continuing with EAB initiatives, we have also organized a series of workshops on engineering education topics, around the world. Some of the workshops were about learning technical English. Some of them were [0:58:00] about engineering education pedagogy. [0:58:20] A little bit later we have also done work on helping science museums – we will get back to that.
The other issue that we have worked on extensively [0:58:40] was accreditation of engineering programs, especially accreditation outside the United States.
The EAB participated in accreditation efforts for many years, representing IEEE on accrediting bodies. Most of this effort was focused on ABET programs. ABET, “formerly known as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc.,” is a US-based non-governmental accreditation organization for post-secondary programs in engineering, engineering technology, computing, and applied and natural sciences. IEEE was one of the founding societies of ABET. We had representation on ABET’s Board of Directors and participated in accreditation activities within IEEE’s fields of interests (such as Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering).
When I just started in EAB, and even before [0:59:00] my first EAB meeting, I went to one of the EAB accreditation workshops outside the USA. It was held in Lima, Peru, the attendees were academics and academic administrators from Central America and South America. You could label the meeting “100% ABET.” All the documents were about ABET or from ABET presentations. The philosophy was ABET’s and it was also advocated that you guys from Central/South America arrange for ABET to come to your schools [0:59:20] and accredit your programs.
I thought then, and I still think now (and I thought so later, when I was a member of the ABET Board of Directors), that it is unrealistic and undesirable to expect ABET to accredit all engineering programs in the whole world. Even if we focus on capacity alone, it is unrealistic that ABET will have the number of evaluators and logistic infrastructure to accredit all programs everywhere. The question for EAB [0:59:40] was how we can help local accreditation bodies. Some local bodies were already in existence and we wanted to helped them. Some local bodies were in the process of formation and we wanted to participate and assist in making them operational. The most important accrediting agency we supported was ICACIT in Peru. It is fully operational now, accrediting programs in Peru. Peru is a member [1:00:00] of the Washington Accord represented by ICACIT (the Washington Accord is an international accreditation agreement for undergraduate professional engineering academic degrees and postgraduate professional engineering academic degrees between the bodies responsible for accreditation in its signatory countries). Then there was an agency in the Caribbean [1:00:20] called CACET. There was a group of educators trying to create a multi-national accreditation body in the Middle East. The idea was to empower groups to do accreditation locally or regionally [1:00:40], to grow and take control of accreditation in their own areas.
We also participated in the development of activities within ABET. The one that I think was most important was our recommendation [1:01:00] about engineering standards. We suggested that acquaintance with engineering and technical standards and use of such standards in design projects become part of the formal criteria for accreditation in engineering. [1:01:20]. [1:01:40]
Let’s also discuss Eta Kappa Nu. I’d like to discuss Eta Kappa Nu, first of all, because it happened, we merged Eta Kappa Nu into IEEE. Second, because of the recent Digest of IEEE History, which describes the merger in a very partial and unsatisfactory manner. The Digest is simply wrong. The story starts in --
Geselowitz:
That’s what an oral history is for by the way.
Kam:
Yes, that’s fine.
Geselowitz:
To set the record straight [1:02:20]
Kam:
Yeah, because what I read there in the Digest made the rest of the little hair that I have left stands.
Geselowitz:
[Laughing]
Kam:
The possible merger of Eta Kappa Nu with IEEE was discussed in earnest for the first time in a meeting that took place in February 2004 in Phoenix Arizona during the IEEE Meeting Series. Eta Kappa Nu was defined at the time as an honor society in the fields of electrical and computer engineering. The Phoenix meeting included staff members and volunteers with knowledge of both Eta Kappa Nu and IEEE’s structure. The individuals who pushed the [1:02:40] hardest for immediate action were Eric Hertz and Bruce Eisenstein (IEEE President, 2000). Their view was that Eta Kappa Nu is an important part of our profession and heritage, and that it is in financial danger. If we do not save it now [1:03:00] it will collapse and either we’ll have to reinvent it or it will just be gone. I agreed to champion the effort to merge Eta Kappa Nu into IEEE. [1:03:20].
As a first step, in 2006 IEEE signed a collaboration memorandum of understanding with Eta Kappa Nu. Still the path to a merger was long and quite tortuous. Once the plans for a merger were revealed there were objections everywhere. There were specifically objections from inside Eta Kappa Nu, [1:03:40] its alumni chapters and its most important university chapters, the one in Purdue and the one in Illinois. Certain websites and discussion groups have emerged, spreading hair-raising conspiracy theories about the IEEE motivations for a merger. My favorite conspiracy theory was that IEEE is motivated by money… that we covet the funds of Eta Kappa Nu… I actually knew how little money was there in Eta Kappa Nu’s coffers (barely enough to run the organization for the subsequent 6 months…) Some of the online published stuff was more personal and even poisonous. [1:05:00] As all this was raging, I decided to go to the heart of the resistance… I went to Purdue University, to meet the well organized and very successful Eta Kappa Nu university chapter there. I met with the leadership of the chapter, and while we did not agree on the desirability of the merger or on the main details, I believe I was at least able to alley the fear that there were some sinister motives behind IEEE’s stance on the merger.
In 2004, when I volunteered to champion this effort, I thought it’s going to be done in 4 months. It was not over until 2010. There were so many strange episodes in the course of the project. For example, the legal authorities in New York State (where Eta Kappa Nu was registered) [1:05:40] required a copy of all the publications of IEEE as part of the documentation we had to submit.... We explained to them that IEEE is a major publisher and this requirement (a copy of all our publications since 1963) is impossible to meet. At the end they agreed that we submit all of IEEE’s publications only from the last 10 years... I remember [1:06:00] a truck at Drexel, where we are [Laughing] loading photocopies of reams of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and such. This was stuff that nobody at the legal offices of New York state was going to read or even archive… We were loading the truck on Friday, [1:06:20] because on Monday the truck would go to New York City [Laughing]. In the middle of the loading, one of the students whom we have hired to help, ran to me and said, oh, we are missing the March 1988 issue, you know, of one of the journals… I said, okay, if they find that we are missing the March 1988 issue then they’ll disqualify [1:06:40] us... Let’s continue anyway… Of course nothing was done with this shipment in New York. They inspected the truck for 20 minutes, “approved” the shipment, and sent the whole collection back to us on the same day.
There was also a lot of agitation inside IEEE about this merger. There was a (very emotional) disagreement about where in the organizational chart of IEEE Eta Kappa Nu will be placed; a disagreement about the structure of individual memberships in IEEE and in Eta Kappa Nu. A very large number of issues and reservations and objections and discussions… It is a miracle that we got the merger done.
Yet, we got it done. Usually I try not to pay attention to legacy. I try not to check what happened with my IEEE projects years later, because philosophically I don’t believe that in IEEE you can operate successfully to preserve a legacy. You do your part when you are in charge, and your successors will shape what you have done later as they see fit. However, the Eta Kappa Nu merger is an effort that I’m glad to know has been successful. [1:07:00] At the end, the merger was really seamless. I don’t think that anybody, even the people who were afraid of loss of authority or loss of autonomy within Eta Kappa Nu, I don’t think that anybody feels in any way that the merger has deprived them of anything substantial. I think Eta Kappa Nu was really saved. It is [1:07:20] now functioning very well and it is operationally and financially stable. Its membership is growing. The scope of its activities is growing. As a critical “bonus,” it is now operating all over the world. When we merged, Eta Kappa Nu was present almost exclusively in the United States. Today it is in Canada and India, Italy, Spain, Egypt, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Ecuador. It works and it’s there and the merger is a [1:07:40] story of a great success.
Another project was Accreditation.org which eventually we transferred to NJIT, and we are administering it from NJIT now. [1:08:00] Accreditation.org is the premier portal about academic accreditation of engineering, engineering technology and computing programs. There are [1:08:20] other portals about this subject but they are not as complete and comprehensive as ours.
Geselowitz:
It’s like TryEngineering, it’s just to be a neutral portal about accreditation.
Kam:
Right. Yes. We are covering the German accreditation and the Israeli accreditation and ABET and everybody else with no bias and no preferences. [1:08:40] Okay. That was it for EAB (more or less). [1:09:00]
Geselowitz:
Before you move on, I want to raise one thing, a person. Do you remember your interaction with the History Committee?
Kam:
I remember.
Geselowitz:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kam:
I remember it. Look, there were several things that I failed to accomplish. In fact, the list of things that I have failed to accomplish is very long. I failed to accomplish the plans about the History Center. There [1:09:20] are a few other objectives that I had failed to accomplish. I wanted IEEE Women in Engineering to join EAB and they decided to join MGA. There was an attempt, very intensive on my part, to make the History Center part of EAB. [1:09:40]. I believed at the time that the right place for the History Center was in EAB. Moreover, I believed, [1:10:00] that the IEEE History Center should not be focusing on IEEE history but have a much wider spectrum of interests -- I wanted, for example, to fund a few projects on key trends in the history of engineering, on the ‘anatomy’ of engineering inventions, and on the impacts of engineering on society. In any case, there was [1:10:20] bitter resistance to my plan, including fierce debates that bordered on the embarrassing. [1:10:40] I am unable to tell you today if placing the History Center in EAB at the time would have been better in the long run. From my viewpoint, you lose some, you win some.
Geselowitz:
Right.
Kam:
It’s not like EAB was crippled because of the fact that it did not happen. Fine, we did other things. [1:11:00]
Geselowitz:
Right. But there was actually one legacy which I’m trying to remember exactly the sequence of events but sort of on the way out the door when you were rebuffed, you came to the Committee and we were struggling, we had this program called the IEEE Virtual Museum
Kam:
[1:11:20] Yes, yes, I remember --
Geselowitz:
And you said that we should do a wiki. You mentioned before and I kind of smiled when you said for some reason IEEE couldn’t handle TryEngineering.
Kam:
Yes, so we had to go to IBM. IEEE staff colleagues said [1:11:40] “there’s no way we can handle this.”
Geselowitz:
So, for our Wiki we actually got a grant from the New Initiatives Committee. I think with your help.
Kam:
Yes, yes, yes, I remember that, yeah.
Geselowitz:
We built a Wiki site. It’s still going strong. It’s a great site. IEEE still won’t support it, which is why we’re hosted outside with an outside developer. We’ve talking to IT within the past couple of years about maybe, oh, maybe we should move it inside [1:12:20] for security, whatever. They said no…, after 15 years we’re still not doing wikis.
Kam:
But now it’s being shared, right?
Geselowitz:
Yes, with other associations.
Kam:
Yes, and how does that work
Geselowitz:
It’s working really well.
Kam:
I’m glad to hear that because I visit it from time to time. But I did not sit down to investigate it in detail.
Geselowitz:
You may be interested to know, based on some of the other things you said about, like our relationship with Eta Kappa Nu and some of these organizations [1:12:40] and ABET and so forth. So ASME came to us and said we have a very tiny history operation. You have this really good Wiki site. Could we come on your site because we can’t afford to do all the things? We said, well, if you’re interested, maybe others are interested.
Kam:
Yes.
Geselowitz:
We went to the United Engineering [1:13:00] Foundation (UEF).
Kam:
Yes, yes, I remember that.
Geselowitz:
They gave us a grant for a workshop.
Kam:
I remember that, yeah.
Geselowitz:
I think you might have been involved.
Kam:
Yes. I was on the UEF Board at the time.
Geselowitz:
We brought them all in and you’ve seen my little history space, I was shocked at how much suspicion there was of what is IEEE’s ulterior motive.
Kam:
Yes.
Geselowitz:
Why are they inviting us on this site? Maybe this history is a toe [1:13:20] in the door to take us over. Actually, it was --
Kam:
Yes, this is, by the way, the same thing with TryEngineering.
Geselowitz:
We convinced them that we said look, no one cares about history.
Kam:
Yes.
Geselowitz:
No one’s paying attention in the board of your engineering organization. This is just something we can all do together to get some synergy and they agreed and then we got a follow-up grant to actually implement it.
Kam:
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, at the end, [1:13:40] going back to Eta Kappa Nu, when the thing was signed in a meeting in Puerto Rico, I made it my business to sit in the audience in the last row. You don’t see me in any of the pictures. All of a sudden everybody endorsed it and everybody took credit for it. I was just happy we got it done. [1:14:00] Okay. No problem.
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
As long as it’s being done.
Geselowitz:
I’d like to ask you one more thing. You used the word Byzantine a couple of times to describe IEEE.
Kam:
Yes.
Geselowitz:
Which many people do.
Kam:
Yes.
Geselowitz:
In fact, the History Center episode, in part was the fact that the staff director chose to put the History Center in the educational activities staff, but the History [1:14:20] Committee had nothing to do with EAB.
Kam:
Yes.
Geselowitz:
That made no sense. Besides the philosophical issues that didn’t make sense Okay. Another area of complexity is that EAB has its own board.
Kam:
Yes, right.
Geselowitz:
On the board side. But IEEE on the TAB side has a separate IEEE Education Society. Now when you were [1:14:40] VP of EAB what was the relationship with the Education Society.
Kam:
Okay. I’ll answer the question in a minute, but let me start elsewhere. The VP of Educational Activities is elected by the 23-member IEEE Assembly (not the whole IEEE voting membership). The VP is subject every year to being kicked [1:15:00] out of the position... It makes the position a little bit unstable. Moreover, when you come to the Board, when you need something for, say, helping with an engineering education initiative somewhere, you are “on your own.” If you are a member of the MGA Board or TAB, you have a number of colleagues who serve with you on the same organizational-unit board and with whom you can discuss your objectives informally on many occasions. There is a little bit of a family environment there that as Vice president for Educational Activities you do not have. [1:15:20]
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
You need to build the whole coalition on your own from scratch.
Regarding the Education Society. It is a very productive and active organization. At EAB we have cooperated with the Education Society [1:16:00] to the extent that the Society wanted to cooperate. In some areas they participated. I remember, for example, how we gave a workshop on engineering education in Russia and they sent a representative to help. However, by and large the Education Society, at least at the time, [1:16:20] gave us the vibe that they’re focused on scientific study of pedagogical activities. They will study trends in education and measure them and do statistical analysis to find out if they are meaningful or not. They organize scientific conferences for experts and publish papers, [1:16:40] whereas we were going to high schools to talk to teachers on how to cut cardboards and make simple robots out of them using rubber bands [Laughing]. There was a little bit of a difference in focus.
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Geselowitz:
Okay. Great. Thank you for answering that question. All right. You finished your three years of VP of Educational Activities with many successes and a few not successes.
Kam:
Let me tell you about one clear lack of success [1:17:40]. The IEEE Standards Association is a great body. In fact, to some people this is the most important part of IEEE; the part that actually affects our daily life more perhaps than everybody else at IEEE. [1:18:00] It’s a very honorable and important organization. We tried to [1:18:20] become the publisher of guides to standards for practicing engineers and students. When new standards come out we hoped that someone, perhaps someone from EAB, will create [1:18:40] “a guide to the perplexed” that will help with understanding and implementing the new standard. When we at IEEE advocated that ABET make standards part of the engineering accreditation criteria, I don’t think we realized… that opening an IEEE standard (or someone else’s standard) for a 21-year old engineering student is so confusing. [1:19:20] The student often can’t make heads or tails in this thing. It’s too complicated. We thought, in retrospect, that we need to do additional work to make standards more accessible, and we thought that this was a proper task for EAB. We were not able to get it done, nor was it done eventually by any other group. When we discussed this matter with [1:19:40] the Standards Association, they were primarily interested in getting more people to help write standards. I understand that – standards are their main product. Every time we spoke to the Standards Association about education, the reaction is “yes, let’s educate people how to write standards within the Standards Association.” This was not our target; we wanted more people to be able to read the latest power system standards or wireless communication standards that the SA publish. [1:20:00] There was (and largely still is) scarcity of gentle introductions to some of the most important standards. That is what we were trying to work on, and we got nowhere there. That was like the biggest missed opportunity I can think of. [1:20:20]
Between EAB and the IEEE Presidency
Now let’s talk about the years that came after that. I just went off the Board at the end of 2007. Then the suggestion was made by some, and it was already in my general thinking, [1:20:40] that I may be interested in becoming President of IEEE. This was a combination of trying to do some good based on what I learned as a volunteer up to that point, and also some personal ambition to be able to hold these reins and control them. To some extent, of course. [1:21:00] We know that the span of control of the IEEE president is not unlimited...
I started working on this task. I presented myself to the Board of Directors to become a candidate in late 2007 and I ran in 2008. This was very problematic for me, because the other candidate in 2008 was Pedro Ray. I’d absolutely no objection to Pedro Ray and no major disagreements with him. He didn’t have any objection to me and no major disagreements with me. We respected each other and I found it difficult to “compete” with him… There is one episode which I don’t know if Pedro remembers. [1:21:40] We were both invited to the Philadelphia Section which usually conducted a debate between the candidates for IEEE President every year. The night before or two nights before, Pedro sent me his slides so that I can send all the slides to the Section in one message. I looked at his slides and I didn’t like them (font, size, colors). [1:22:00] So… I improved them and I sent them back to him for approval.
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
I said you, [Laughing] you’ll like it better this way. He did. There was no animosity. It was like – you can be president, I can be president, it is fine. We didn’t clash on anything. In the event Pedro won and became the 2009 President-elect and later the 2010 President.
By the way, things were different the next time I ran, in 2009. [1:22:20] There was real disagreement on fundamentals between the three candidates in 2009.
Back to 2008. Of course I wanted to win and I was sad that I did not win. I put a lot of effort in trying to get elected. I had a campaign which was pretty extensive, [1:22:40] especially outside the United States. I launched a campaign of postcards which I sent from India to certain blocks of voting members. There was a lot of work involved in that. I learned a lot from the process, and I learned a lot from the results. [1:23:00] It was important to understand what groups of IEEE voters actually voted, at what numbers, and for whom. A major mistake that I have made in 2008 was to assume that the graduate student members, a group of members I helped create and give them voting rights, will vote for me. They may have been voting for me [1:23:20] but in general they voted in very, very, small numbers. I spent a lot of effort finding them, writing to them, campaigning with them and for them. My conclusion from the 2008 election was that I prefer 60-year olds Senior Members and [1:23:40] IEEE Fellows. These groups vote in relatively large numbers. In any case, the 2008 campaign was unsuccessful.
In November 2008I I presented myself to the Board again [1:24:00] There were two additional candidates, Joe Lillie and Roberto De Marca. All three were candidates for 2010 President-Elect.
There were several public debates between the three candidates. These debates were a little bit different than those of the previous year. The candidates expressed different views on the major issues, there were real disagreements. There were differences on direction, emphases, intensity of activities, and budgets. [1:25:00]
In October 2009 I found that I was elected. I was very glad of course. I did not have a vast majority, but I had sufficient margins, especially among the voters I focused on. There started an additional very interesting period of three years.
Serving as IEEE President
Both while serving in EAB and in the [1:25:20] the presidency I had an opportunity to go places. Usually I went places because IEEE was offering a program and I wanted to present part of it and “energize the troops.” I never traveled just to watch. [1:25:40] One common reason to go was to participate in unveiling new IEEE milestones. There was this very interesting milestone, the Marconi Milestone in Villa Griffone in North Italy, and there was one in Switzerland celebrating [1:26:00] distribution of electric power between three nations. There was a milestone unveiling in Baltimore about Mainline Electrification of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. I learned a whole lot from meeting members and volunteers at these events. Another important lesson was [1:26:20] about educational systems around the world. I participated in the delivery of IEEE workshops and programs in different places, and on the way I was able to experience the differences between organizations, universities and national educational systems. When we went to St. Petersburg I learned a lot about [1:26:40] the Russian academic educational system. Similarly, I got acquainted with the Chinese system during visits to Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing and other venues. This experience was amazingly enriching. To this day it still drives me. [1:27:00] Without being in these IEEE positions, I would function differently than I’m functioning today. IEEE service changed my professional life.
Geselowitz:
Now, when did you become ECE Department Head at Drexel during this?
Kam:
That was the most inconvenient thing… Because I became Department Head, more or less, the first time I ran. [1:27:20]
Geselowitz:
Mm-hmm.
Kam:
I was told that’s not the right time to run. My answer was that there will never be a right time to do it. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. The window is open now. If I try to run in five or six years, I won’t have the recognition and connections that would facilitate a successful campaign.
So I needed to operate my department and the IEEE presidency [1:27:40] in parallel. Not trivial. Luckily, there was already in my own department a Department Head who served simultaneously as President of IEEE, Bruce Eisenstein (IEEE President, 2000). Luckily, I was able to discuss my plans with the Dean of Engineering at the time, and he encouraged me to go ahead. During part of this period, the Dean was Dr. Eisenstein himself. Basically [1:28:00] the idea was that to the extent that I had teaching commitments, and I did, there was a colleague who would kind-of shadow me and stand in for me when needed. To the extent that I had research obligations, there was the Internet. I would have my weekly video meetings with the graduate students no matter where I am and no matter what the time is. Same with important meetings and conversations with colleagues and students. [1:28:20] In retrospect I’m very surprised it worked. I don’t think I would be able to do it in the Dean job that I have today.
Before we go into what was done or not done during my year as IEEE President, let us speak about the year before (2010) when I was President-Elect. [1:28:40]
In December 2009 I travelled to Hyderabad for a workshop. One of the benefits was an opportunity to meet Professor [1:29:00] Mathukumalli Vidyasagar, a well-known researcher in Control Theory who was an idol of mine since I studied from his books as a student. He was part of this workshop and I wanted to interest him in some of my initiatives. After the workshop and after meeting the volunteers of the Hyderabad Section, I decided [1:29:20] to stay in the area on my own for a couple of additional days. On New Year’s Eve (31 December 2009) I visited Hyderabad. On my list of sites to see was the Birla Science Museum. I go in – it has very nice exhibits about rockets and high tech [1:30:00] Indian contributions. There is also a whole floor of the museum meant for children. I’m sitting there, looking at the scene. [1:30:20] Most if not all exhibits are mechanical. A few are optical, not many electricity-based exhibits on that floor. A good fraction of the exhibits is not working right; some stations are broken. There are [1:30:40] parents with children everywhere; the place is pretty crowded. Visitors are walking between these exhibits and in some cases a father is trying, hope against hope, to operate one of them and show his child, “yeah, yeah, it’s doing it.” The problem is that it’s not doing it. It does not work. I sit there and I feel a bit miserable. I [1:31:00] decided to call my colleague Dr. Prasad Kodali from the Hyderabad Section to whom I said goodbye already. I asked to meet at the museum.
Geselowitz:
Right.
Kam:
I called Prasad; we meet on New Year’s Eve. We decided [1:31:20] to take action. The IEEE Hyderabad Section already has collaborations with the museum. Prasad has connections with the Director. On New Year’s Day, 1 January 2010, at noon we meet with the Director. Earlier in the day [1:31:40] I call Matt Loeb in New Jersey, he is IEEE’s Staff Executive and one of my closest staff contacts. I explain the plan, I would need $25,000 now, may be more later, for investment in the Hyderabad Section. Let us identify where to draw these funds from. Matt understands, says we will manage it. [1:32:00] Prasad and I go to see the Director, an impressive person and most importantly, flexible and willing to listen to us. He agrees to give the Section some administrative space in the museum. We promise to bring volunteers from the Section to the museum. We will redesign and redo the floor [1:32:20] with exhibits that make sense (and work). As a sign of good will, we are putting on the table $25,000 to pay for the project.
Long story short – we did it. It’s there today [1:32:40]. The volunteers of the Hyderabad Section reinvigorated this part of the museum. I understand our area in the museum is still maintained because my name is on one of the placards in the museum, and friends of mine tell me that they were there and they saw it recently.
Geselowitz:
Take a picture [Laughing].
Kam:
This was great, 2010 started on a high note. We learned a lot from the experience. However, we also learned that we have [1:33:00] underestimated the effort. We conducted a workshop in Hyderabad later in the year, focused on low cost museum exhibits – to review what we have learned and plan better for future projects such as this one. In parallel, we took one of the EAB [1:33:20] most successful museum projects, E-Scientia, an exhibit designed and developed by the Uruguay Section, and duplicated it in Hyderabad. In time we installed E-Scientia exhibits in several other museums in India.
We are still in 2010. Pedro Ray is President and I am President-Elect. In 2010 there was a major attempt to have a sweeping constitutional amendment that would change the structure of the IEEE Board of Directors. This amendment was planned to be presented to the IEEE membership in late 2010, for implementation in 2011 and 2012. Already in late 2009 Pedro Ray spoke separately to each one of the three candidates who tried to become 2011 President and asked each one to agree to carry the reform in 2011 if he wins the election. It turns out I was the winner, so the onus was on me to implement the amendment if it was presented and approved by the IEEE membership in 2010.
Given that the Board of Directors of IEEE in 2010 was still organized essentially as it was in 1963, when IEEE was created from the merger of the AIEE and IRE, it stood to reason (at least my reason) that the board structure needed a reform. However, the amendment faced many objectors, especially among those whose positions or their representation of certain groups of members were to be changed or even eliminated under the new regime. As more and more negotiations on the amendment [1:34:20] took place [Laughing], the volume of the changes kept shrinking. At the end, the emerging “reform” was so watered down that I was debating if it was worth the effort (though I still voted for it). Yet, after all this effort, and all these negotiations, the amendment was not recommended by the Board, and the effort to introduce an amendment to the membership has failed.
So this effort didn’t work. Not only did it not work, the way that it failed was quite ugly. I found the language that was used [1:35:20] in the main website of the amendment’s opponents to be extreme and divisive. Moreover, by dealing with this matter all year long [1:35:40] we kind of “let life pass us by.” We wasted 2010 on fighting each other and had very little to show for it. I was determined that 2011 would be more productive. We are going to look outside rather than inside. We are not going to continue any of the internal squabbles.
The Board met in January 2011. With the input of the attendees we declared five priorities for the year.
- Ensure sustainable progress toward establishing IEEE’s leadership in important new technical areas (including the Smart Grid and selected areas within Life Sciences).
- Develop and approve a plan to ensure that IEEE is at the forefront of digital publishing technology.
- Develop and approve an IEEE Conference strategy – including protection of quality of IEEE publications.
- Develop collaborative strategic alliances with other associations and publishers (including exploration of new joint membership agreements and incorporation of new publications in Xplore.)
- To ensure all members are engaged and find a professional home in IEEE; create a global strategic member development plan, particularly emphasizing practicing engineers/technologists and young professionals, especially where IEEE membership is declining
[1:36:00] Let’s see what we have done with this list.
We wanted to ensure sustainable progress towards establishing IEEE’s leadership in important new technical areas including the Smart Grid and selected areas within the Life Sciences. [1:36:40] We have done that. We have launched the Smart Grid initiative which was phenomenally successful. It is now an integral part of what we do.
We have also launched the Life Sciences initiative. (I’m partial. I helped running it personally with the very substantial help of Bichlien Hoang.) I think it was successful, and, regardless of the initiative, the life sciences [1:37:00] are now very well embedded in our structure, conferences and publications. We are running some of the best publications in the world that reside at the intersection of Life Science, Computing and Engineering.
We developed and approved [1:37:20] a plan to ensure that IEEE is at the forefront of digital publishing technology. This was also somewhat controversial because of the substantial cost. I’m very glad we approved the investment. This [1:37:40] was one of the less sexy accomplishments of 2011 but it was possibly the most important one, because in spite of the numerous challenges, our publication operation is still running and attracting both record numbers of users and contributors. [1:38:00].
We planned to develop and approve an IEEE conference strategy, including protection of quality of IEEE publications. That’s a mixed bag. Our relationship with the organizers of conferences is complex. Some of our conferences are sponsored. Some of [1:38:20] them are co-sponsored. We are yet to reach the ideal mix and the most favorable business infrastructure for conferences. Protecting our archives from “trash” of all kinds continues to be a challenge, from “simple” plagiarism through fake papers to deliberate insertions of malicious material. I myself was a victim… I have a paper [1:38:40] that I published in an IEEE journal, which was published in the technical literature, in an identical manner, so far three times. Only one of them, the original in the IEEE journal, was under my name…
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
[Laughing]. We wanted to develop collaborative strategic alliances with other associations and publishers, including [1:39:00] the exploration of new joint membership agreement and incorporation of a few publications in IEEE Xplore. The joint membership part did not work. The Xplore expansion part did work, and worked very well. Many non-IEEE publications found a home in XPLORE.
The global strategic member development plan, the fifth objective, continues to be a challenge.
Geselowitz:
Well. The main thing is you identified it’s still an ongoing focus.
Kam:
Yes, yes.
Geselowitz:
Just how they’re succeeding on that I’m not qualified to say [1:39:40] but it’s clearly recognition that that’s still an area that needs focus.
Kam:
Here are a few initiatives and directions that I did not yet discuss.
Operation of the Board and the 3 P's
One of the 2011 accomplishments was that we have changed the atmosphere of Board of Directors meetings [1:40:40]. In the aftermath of the contentious 2010, the BoD was very tense and many members appeared very intense in events and meetings. We made an effort to move toward having a more productive working Board, operating in ambience that is much more [1:41:00] collegial. I explained at the beginning of the year, in the first Board meeting, that I do not demand in our meetings the civility and decorum of the British Parliament, but we shouldn’t stray too far away from that... [1:41:20] I thought the meetings felt more respectable and the level of discourse, I believe, went up by a notch.
One of the phenomena that helped IEEE and myself as President during the three years of Pedro Ray (IEEE President, 2010), myself (IEEE President, 2011 President), and Gordon Day (IEEE President, 2012) was that [1:45:40] the three of us were in almost perfect tune. I think that this is critical. When the 3Ps move in three different directions, there is no way to make progress [1:46:00]. All the energy is wasted on debates, negotiations and compromises. The nice thing about our 3P experience was that we could always get together and get things done together and come to an agreement together [1:46:20]. If we faced an activity that we didn’t like and we wanted to counter it or challenge it, we did it together as well. We were in an ongoing conversation, and not in a reactive mode to the president’s actions. For example, this is how I found myself in 2012 supporting strongly activities in Europe that Gordon Day was championing, though it was an area that was not my focus of attention earlier. [1:47:00]
Additional Efforts
We have [1:40:00] tightened our relationship with the Royal Society of Edinburgh with whom we recently, again, are giving the Maxwell Medal. I think there was a hiatus there for a while.
We developed TryComputing.org, a companion to TryEngineering. We developed TryNano.org, focusing on nanotechnology. We spent money on cloud computing which I think was absolutely necessary and very timely. It helped us continue to maintain our technical presence in this area. [1:42:00]
Another initiative that kind of sprung into being was the humanitarian new initiative. The humanitarian [1:42:20] effort developed as a grassroots movement. Unlike most new developments in IEEE, it was not devised by us ‘sages’ in the established boards. Groups of members, especially [1:42:40] young members, came forward and declared that they want to do this, namely establish a mechanism for engaging in humanitarian efforts by IEEE volunteers. At the beginning there was a sense that this effort “does not belong here,” it did not follow past precedents. But the member persisted. Dr. Amarnath Raja and other leaders, many coming from the IEEE sections [1:43:00], arrived with details plans on where to go and how to do meaningful humanitarian work. The most important caveat was to make sure that we are not engaged in “humanitarian tourism;” that this is a real effort with measurable and tangible outcomes, and that it provides assistance that persist for extended periods of time. [1:43:20]. Over the years this humanitarian volunteer group was able to go places, provide meaningful technical services, and be especially effective in the aftermath of natural disasters. [1:43:40] The humanitarian efforts also reminded us of the potential strength of the Regions and Sections, which were at the forefront of these activities. [1:44:00] I thought that this was an accomplishment. Not of mine. But of the organization. [1:44:20]
Another issue that was addressed during the presidential year 2011 [1:44:40] was a policy on social networks. It sounds trivial now, but we needed a Social Networks Policy, and the one we developed was very good. We also established a permanent Committee on Public Visibility. 1:45:00] and we intensified IEEE’s activities in Africa. [1:45:20].
The IEEE Election Oversight Committee
Geselowitz:
Now what were your IEEE activities when you finally rotated off the Board?
Kam:
Some of these activities are just routine. I found myself writing [1:47:20] a lot of fellow nominations and award narratives.
The main activity that I engaged with, which actually alienated me a little bit from further involvement, was my work with the Election Oversight Committee. This is something that I’ve been doing for quite some time. The problem was, and I don’t know how things [1:47:40] are now, the problem was that we had certain rules about how to run elections. Some candidates tend to ignore them or violate them; not everybody, not to a large extent, but some candidates violated the rules and some of them did this “big time.” The result was [1:48:00] that other candidates that played by the rules did not get a fair chance.
Volunteers who had already landed a position in IEEE are sometimes able to use this position very effectively to distribute campaign literature or just campaign in person while traveling for other IEEE reasons [1:48:20]. I remember just how I felt in 2009 when there was a big event in Region 2, a regional activity [1:48:40] with many eligible voters present. During the closing session I, a candidate for President-Elect, was sitting in the audience in row 34. One of the other candidates for President-Elect, let’s call him George, happened to be invited to address the crowd on account of his then-position in IEEE. George gave a fiery speech [1:49:00] and everybody mentioned, before the speech and after the speech, that George is our candidate in the upcoming election…
Geselowitz:
Mm-hmm.
Kam:
Like it was a love fest of George. I’m sitting there, an equally qualified candidate, far away from the limelight… hey, what about me?
Geselowitz:
[Laughing].
Kam:
There were other issues [1:49:20] with publications that operated outside of the electioneering norms of what IEEE allowed, or with endorsements that were issued which our rules did not allow.
Then there was another constitutional amendment in preparation. A sensitive question was presented as to [1:50:00] whether an IEEE society can announce a position about the constitutional amendment which is different than that of the Board of Directors. This question became very highly controversial, the rhetoric surrounding it was unbelievably intense, and the language used in social networks was again outside the norms that you would expect from members of a learned society.
Geselowitz:
Mm-hmm. When you said that the earlier time, it was bad, it had become worse? That’s why when you were president you looked externally, to cool tempers down?
Kam:
This time it [1:52:40] it was very bad. I’m sorry to say that there are some individuals that I completely separated myself from during this affair. This was the first time it happened to me in IEEE.
I was relieved when my tenure at the EOC came to an end
Beyond that, nowadays I do what I’m asked to do… I represent IEEE on certain external committees and contribute an opinion when someone asks. But I keep myself at a certain distance. Part of it is because of the EOC unpleasant experience, but there is also a more fundamental reason. [1:53:20] When I was President of IEEE, there were six or seven past presidents “running around,” participating actively in IEEE projects, sometimes running for office in various organizational units. Some of these past presidents were in my opinion, very productive and useful. Some of them were not. Some of them were trying to accomplish after their [1:53:40] presidency was over, objectives that they have not been able to accomplish when they were still in office. Some of them continued to have the same conviction and use the same tone and attitude of having presidential authority which they no longer had. This was a problem for me when I was IEEE President [1:54:00]. Some of the past presidents were trying to manage activities and units without any authority. I learned that to have [1:54:20] a strong past president running around and “helping” you is not always good.
I decided not to become one of these past presidents…I believe that I contributed to IEEE to the extent that I could. There are a few good years left for me to do other useful things for the profession. Hence, I’m here today, in NJIT, serving students, faculty and the profession as Dean of Engineering.
Serving as Dean of Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology
Geselowitz:
When did you come to NJIT.
Kam:
Okay. I was [1:57:00] at Drexel until 2014. I came to NJIT in 2014 so I’m about to finish 10 years as Dean. I’m very happy I did, because unfortunately the longevity, [Laughing] the expected length of a dean’s tenure, [1:57:20] is not that long. 10 years is kind of on the positive outliers. I’m glad that I managed. Yeah.
Geselowitz:
What are some of the things that are happening in NJIT that are you’re particularly proud of? You mentioned the Makerspace.
Kam:
Yeah, well, let’s talk about the Makerspace. It’s a [1:57:40] large facility (20,000 sq. ft.) meant to provide students and faculty access to state-of-the-art manufacturing machinery on an industrial scale. Our Makerspace has two major parts. One of them is the ‘heavier’ manufacturing [1:58:00] part which replicates what you will see as an engineer in plants that engage in intense production. These are the same CNC machines, Routers, Lathes, Mills, Grinders and Sanders, with the same manufacturers and the same power and efficacy. [1:58:20] You can use a variety of processing methods here and work with different materials. You can cut (we even have an industrial grade 5-Axis waterjet). You can shape. You can do 3D printing with a variety of materials and in several scopes. If you are interested in wood, you can build models in wood. We provide a wide variety of materials and machines in order to do these [1:58:40] things, including a suite of machinery for metrology, calibration and quality control. We have equipment for electronics and communications-related work and a variety of related measurement devices. In addition to the main floor, the big floor that houses these machines, we also erected a second building nearby which offers [1:59:00] less aggressive machinery. It can be made available 24/7 and students can operate it on their own without supervision. In addition, we offer meeting rooms. You can schedule a meeting room for your design group for joint efforts and discussion. [1:59:20]
We supplemented the Makerspace with a new Industrial Engineering facility, contributed by our alumnus Dieter Weissenrieder. It features a small manufacturing plant which makes several types of widgets. [1:59:40] This plant can be used to study, design and test the manufacturing process. It is automated but controllable; as a student you can program this system and measure its operations and efficiency under different conditions. [2:00:00]
During the pandemic we have added a Life Sciences Motion Capture Lab to NJIT. This is a lab where you can measure and quantify human and machine motion. One use, in collaboration with a local hospital, is to measure the variables that define walking on a treadmill. Patients who suffered a stroke or were in an accident are characterized in this lab before and after treatment [2:00:40]. [2:01:00]. The last facility I will mention is our new Advanced Air Mobility Laboratory. We have converted the space of a former high-school swimming pool into a drone research lab. The walls and high ceilings are instrumented with cameras and other sensors, allowing detailed studies of drone capabilities, as well as related tracking and control algorithms.
Of course I did not design or build these facilities on my own… among the individuals who run and enable these projects are my colleagues Dan Brateris, Saikat Pal, Pramod Abichandani, Todd Miller, Alexandra Carreras, and Andrew Christ.
I believe that since I came to NJIT I’ve probably been involved in the hiring of about 70 new faculty members. Out of these 70 faculty members, at least 65 are still here. When you have such [2:01:40] number of people coming in, it translates in a steep increase in research activity and research expenditures. This was one of the factors that improved our standing in different university ranking scales, including the all-important U.S. News and World Report. It is also important to us [2:02:40] that we have been declared recently a minority serving institute. This designation gives us an opportunity to add to existing programs and to provide students from underrepresented groups with new opportunities. NJIT serves many students who are first in the family to go to college – like I was in my own family. This is [2:03:00] a population that is very close to my heart. I feel very fortunate that I’m serving them. I see in them a lot that I saw in myself many years ago. In general, NJIT serves a very diverse population. [2:03:20] The last few years were very good for our students as we were able to increase our offerings and upgrade our facilities while keeping tuition affordable. I personally feel very fortunate that I had an opportunity to be a part of NJIT during these years.
Geselowitz:
Great.
Kam:
Let me [2:03:40] say a word about my own teaching and research.
Geselowitz:
Sure.
Kam:
When I served as Department Head and as Dean now, I always taught in formal scheduled courses. There are some deans and other academic administrators who are too busy to teach. [2:04:00] In my humble opinion if you have a faculty appointment you should teach. I teach every term. Also, I always supported a group of students who worked on research projects with me. The areas that we have been dealing with most recently had to do [2:04:20] with sensing loss of consciousness of humans operating under extreme conditions such as high acceleration. This work was done for the US Navy in collaboration with Leon Hrebien from Drexel University and others, as part of larger efforts meant to check that pilots won’t lose consciousness while doing [2:04:40] flight maneuvers. Also, with my colleague Leonardo Urbano and others I have developed a body of work on automated analysis of human sperm in semen images. I find the approach we used a bit amusing because we were able to import techniques that have been [2:05:00] developed originally for target tracking and missile defense in military contexts. We translate them for tracking very different objects.
Geselowitz:
On the microscopic level.
Kam:
-- yes, of the sperm cells. The only problem is that reviewers of our work sometimes fail to understand the different requirements stemming from our kind of images [2:05:20]. We once had a paper questioned by a reviewer because we used an ‘antiquated’ tracking algorithm (he considered the 1990s to be antiquity). The ‘antiquated’ algorithm worked very well with our images, mind you, but the reviewer suggested we use a recently-published algorithm that excels in following targets that try actively to evade the tracker. [2:05:40] [2:06:00]
Geselowitz:
Right.
Kam:
Well, I spoke to these sperm cells and none of them ever tried to evade a tracker… [2:06:20] [Laughing]. There was absolutely no reason to use the “better” algorithm, especially since it had significant computational overhead…The antiquated model worked perfectly fine for our application…
Geselowitz:
[Laughing] You use the basic one.
Kam:
Moving to another matter – I just graduated my 37th PhD student the day before [2:06:40] yesterday.
Geselowitz:
Oh, congratulations.
Kam:
So, yeah.
Geselowitz:
Now when you teach, what do you tend to teach as a dean?
Kam:
Okay, since I came here I taught three courses multiple times and I teach at least one of them every term.
Geselowitz:
Oh.
Kam:
Two of the courses I teach are for students in electrical and computer engineering, in the department where I have my [2:07:00] faculty appointment. Most terms I teach Digital Data Communication.
Geselowitz:
An undergraduate survey?
Kam:
Yes, for undergraduates. Well digital communication is today so vast --
Geselowitz:
Yeah.
Kam:
-- that you have to make a selection of topics from a large menu.
Geselowitz:
Right.
Kam:
If you come to my class this term and you come again three years later, the class may be quite different [2:07:20] because I changed the selection of topics. Then I also taught, from time to time, a 3rd year course in Probability and Random Variables. [2:07:40] This was a topic that I loved as an undergraduate in Tel Aviv. I always have the classical Athanasios Papoulis textbook we used in this undergraduate class not far away, no more than 10 feet away, because I still consult it for my current research work.
In addition to these two courses I’m also [2:08:00] involving myself from time to time in Engineering Design courses for first year engineering students. Recently, I developed a module on global warming and a module [2:08:20] on the spreading of contagious diseases for this class. The latter module included the mathematics of pandemics, which is a fascinating subject. In terms of reception by my first-year students, [2:08:40] the module on global warming was much better received than the one on the pandemics. I don’t know why. To me they were equally interesting.
Geselowitz:
Oh, all I can sense is that they’re concerned about global warming but it’s an ongoing long-term process and the pandemic [2:09:00] impacted their lives.
Kam:
That’s right.
Geselowitz:
I mean.
Kam:
Maybe.
Geselowitz:
I mean if you had a senior now, they were a first year student during the pandemic.
Kam:
That’s right.
Geselowitz:
So.
Kam:
Yeah. Anyway. That’s what I do. As I said, I always have a couple of graduate students working with me. Not as many as I used to support [2:09:20] but several research questions still excite me and deserve resolution. Also, you don’t want to lose touch with your profession. I didn’t want to become exclusively a manager and administrator and bureaucrat, focusing only on logistics, procedures and [2:09:40] budgets.
Geselowitz:
Right. Though you must have to do a lot of that.
Kam:
Sure, it is important, I do it gladly, and it allows us to grow and thrive. One of the surprises of becoming dean is how different the dean job is from the job of the department head or department chair (I was department head for 7 years). [2:10:00] Being a department chair or department head is very useful as preparation to becoming dean, but as dean I have a large number of responsibilities and interactions that I did not have as department head. [2:10:20] These include negotiations and close cooperation with external bodies; matters that involve money, budgeting, and funding of research and philanthropy; much more intense collaboration with alumni; much more longer-term planning.
Geselowitz:
Okay. You covered everything [2:10:40] I was thinking about. Is there anything else you want to say?
Kam:
I’m sure that when you go out of the door I say, oh, and I forgot to tell you --
Geselowitz:
[Crosstalk] I forgot to ask you this or that.
Kam:
-- about this or that.
Geselowitz:
Well, again, when I say if you think of something we can add it.
Kam:
I think that I gave you the general picture, and I am grateful for the opportunity. I hope that during the years I have volunteered for the IEEE [2:11:00] I was useful to the membership and to the mission of the organization. I can tell you decidedly that IEEE made an immense positive difference in my professional and even personal life. Form my early days in [2:11:20] the Philadelphia Section I learned organizational and administrative techniques from IEEE practices, and I absorbed the techniques and planning that my colleagues presented. There were some very specific areas of learning and growth – sitting on the Audit Committee of IEEE was an extremely educational exercise, an eye opener [2:11:40] which helps me to this day. There are many skills that I learned during my time at IEEE, quite a few of them from the IEEE staff. There are many IEEE colleagues and mentors who became part of my network and collaborated with me over the years. The one aspect that I didn’t like was too much politicking [2:12:00]. Sometimes, as I indicated during this interview, it got out of bounds. But that’s life, it is part of the cost of operating in a large complex organization populated by many strong-minded and ambitious individuals. .
Geselowitz:
Mm-hmm. Any last words or…?
Kam:
No, I mean I just [2:12:20] gave you my last words. I am very grateful for the opportunity to volunteer for IEEE and for all I learned and was able to accomplish in the process. I hope I was useful – to the membership and to the mission of IEEE.
Geselowitz:
Yeah, I think that was terrific. Thank you so much.
Geselowitz:
That was terrific. Now, how do I stop this? Here we go. [2:13:00]