Speech by Saifur Rahman, the 2022 IEEE President-elect

Hello, this is Prof. Saifur Rahman, the 2022 IEEE President-elect. I am the Joseph R. Loring Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic USA. It is my great privilege to join you today on the celebration for the 90th anniversary of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University.

First of all, on behalf of IEEE I would like to express my heartfelt congratulations on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University. I visited Tsinghua many times and I know over 10 professors in the Department of Electrical Engineering at this university. I have always been impressed by the outstanding faculty members and the talented graduate students, the high level education programs, the well established labs and the key research laboratories and projects in this department.

When I was President of IEEE PES in 2018 and 2019, I observed that interactions between PES and the department are very deep. The founder of this department, Prof. Yu Hsiu Ku, was an international motor expert and a pioneer of modern automatic control theory. He was a life-fellow of the IEEE, and was awarded the Lamme Medal and Third Millennium Medal some years back. The IEEE/CSEE Yu-Hsiu Ku Electrical Engineering Award is also named in his honor.

As one of the world’s leading electrical engineering education and research centers, this department has taken a critical role in promoting internationalization of the scientific research in electrical engineering.

But we are still faced with many critical challenges including climate change and energy crisis. The key to solving these problems is the development of innovative technologies, which requires the cooperation between universities and technical professionals all over the world.

IEEE hopes to work with our professional colleagues in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University. I hope everybody will enjoy the celebration of the 90th anniversary here in the Department of Electrical Engineering, at Tsinghua University. Thank you, Xie xie!