2026-07-09 18:00:03
An examination of how satellite vulnerabilities, modern wideband waveforms, and automatic link establishment are driving renewed military and government investment in HF communications.
What Attendees will Learn
2026-07-09 02:00:01
Working in isolation, especially for leaders, is rapidly becoming an outmoded idea. The modern era is defined by rapid technological advancements and increasingly complex, collaborative global challenges. In this environment, leadership can no longer be approached as an individual pursuit.
Instead, leadership must be a collaborative effort in which knowledge, responsibility, and innovation are continuously exchanged across teams, roles, and areas of expertise. Success depends on the ability to foster connection, leverage diverse perspectives, and work collectively toward shared outcomes.
The shift is especially important in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.
IEEE is bringing together emerging professionals and established experts and leaders at the inaugural IEEE International Leadership Conference to address the need for cross-generational knowledge-sharing and to equip professionals with tools for collaborative leadership. Honoring Expertise, Accelerating Potential is the theme of the ILC, scheduled for 3 and 4 October in Budapest.
The conference is expected to focus on how leaders can share information across roles, adapt to rapid technological advancements, and build stronger, more connected professional communities. Through discussions, panels, and interactive sessions, attendees can examine how collaboration across experience levels and disciplines can strengthen decision-making and foment innovation.
“There are several factors driving this shift [in leadership], including accelerating technological development cycles, the need to build public trust, and the large percentage of the STEM workforce approaching retirement,” says Vickie Ozburn, conference cochair. “Progress in STEM now depends less on individual brilliance and more on the ability to transfer knowledge, adapt, and make decisions that integrate technical expertise with ethical and social considerations.”
Instead of traditional corporate models rooted in hierarchy and individual advancement, a more dynamic framework is taking shape, one that views leadership as a shared ecosystem built on mentorship, continuous learning, and intentional knowledge transfer.
It means recognizing that professional development is no longer a one-directional flow of experience from senior professionals to newcomers. Instead, it thrives as a multidirectional exchange. When emerging professionals, mid-career managers, and seasoned experts including retirees are brought together, the result is not only richer dialogue but also more resilient and well-informed decision-making. A cross-generational dialogue enables organizations to honor what has worked, critically assess what has failed, and thoughtfully shape what needs to evolve.
Howard Wolfman, cochair of the IEEE ILC, underscores the importance of historical perspective in leadership development, invoking George Santayana’s enduring insight: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
“In STEM especially, this principle carries significant weight,” says Wolfman, an IEEE life senior member and the founder and principal of Lumispec Consulting, in Northbrook, Ill. “Technological innovation doesn’t happen all of a sudden; it builds on decades of research, lessons learned, and accumulated knowledge. When leaders actively connect insights from across experience levels, they gain a more complete understanding of both opportunity and risk.”
That perspective reinforces the need for greater collaboration across roles and experience levels, ensuring that knowledge is not lost and is continuously built upon and applied in new ways. In this way, leadership development becomes a continuous, interconnected process rather than a series of isolated stages.
STEM careers are no longer defined by linear progression but by evolving contributions, in which each phase adds value to the field’s broader advancement.
Adopting a new leadership paradigm requires a shift in mindset across all levels. For senior leaders, success is defined not only by what they have built but also by the people they mentor and the knowledge they pass forward. Their legacy lies in enabling future leaders to succeed.
For emerging young professionals, innovation becomes more informed and impactful when it is grounded in historical context and informed by those who have already navigated similar challenges.
“Technological innovation doesn’t happen all of a sudden; it builds on decades of research, lessons learned, and accumulated knowledge. When leaders actively connect insights from across experience levels, they gain a more complete understanding of both opportunity and risk.”—Howard Wolfman, cochair of the IEEE International Leadership Conference
For organizations, cross-generational collaboration should be recognized as a strategic advantage, not merely an aspiration. Creating environments where knowledge flows freely and diverse perspectives are actively integrated is essential for long-term success.
The evolution reframes the distinction between management and leadership.
“A leader does the right thing, and a manager does things right,” Wolfman says. As the environment continues to shift, doing the right thing increasingly depends on drawing insights from across generations and experiences.
To build leadership pipelines capable of sustaining innovation and trust, organizations must begin asking more intentional questions:
Ultimately, leadership cannot be tied solely to titles or tenure. It is about contributing to a continuum in which each generation strengthens the next.
The IEEE ILC attendees are likely to leave the event with new insights and with a transformed perspective: Leadership is not about waiting for advancement or recognition; it is about engaging in an exchange of knowledge, responsibility, and vision, where the strength of the whole depends on the contributions of every generation.
Registration for the conference opens soon.
2026-07-09 01:58:34
A semitrailer that helps propel itself entered commercial road testing in late May, when a power-train kit developed by Nivalis Energy Europe, headquartered in Luxembourg with engineering operations in Germany, was fitted to a trailer supplied by the Amsterdam-based TIP Group. The self-powered trailer was handed over to the German transport operator Sommer for use in its working fleet.
The Nivalis Powered Trailer Kit centers on an electric axle codeveloped with the running-gear specialist BPW, based in Wiehl, Germany. The axle, rated at 50 kilowatts-peak, is capable of both propulsion assistance and regenerative braking. It draws on a 60-kilowatt-hour, 400-volt lithium-ion battery pack charged from three sources: the axle itself during braking and deceleration, a full-rooftop array of photovoltaic panels generating up to 3.7 kilowatts-peak, and a 32-ampere, three-phase AC grid connection available during parking stops. The driver’s only window into the system is a small display readable from the cab’s side mirror that shows the system status and battery charge level. Nothing about the trailer’s handling or licensing requirements changes.
The partners project savings of up to 7,000 liters of diesel per trailer per year, which is enough to keep about 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air. These figures are based on a trailer running 100,000 kilometers annually at payloads between 20 and 24 tonnes, on a mix of long-haul and hub-to-hub routes.
Pavel Gilman, vice president of sales and marketing at Nivalis, breaks down where those savings come from: roughly 30 to 35 percent from the electric axle during braking and deceleration, 11 to 15 percent from the rooftop solar panels, and the remainder (roughly half) from grid charging during parking stops. The pilot is planned to run for more than a year, spanning multiple seasons. The retrofit cost has not been disclosed, and the pilot is running on a single trailer. But the underlying assumptions are now on the table and they represent a specific, high-utilization use case (meaning a truck that’s almost always on the move, filled to capacity with freight) not a universal one.
Across Europe and North America, a growing number of companies have concluded that electrifying the trailer, rather than replacing the tractor unit, may be the fastest and most cost-effective path to decarbonizing long-haul freight. A new battery-electric heavy truck carries a high upfront cost and demands charging infrastructure that most freight corridors do not yet reliably provide. A retrofit kit fitted to an existing trailer is meant to sidestep both problems.
The question the industry has been working to answer is whether the energy harvested from regenerative braking, rooftop solar, and grid charging in short bursts when the vehicle is parked for loading and unloading is enough to produce savings that recover the kit’s cost in a reasonable time frame. Several companies now believe the answer is yes, and they are accumulating field data to prove it—though not all of them are going about it the same way.
The competitive landscape has taken shape most visibly in Germany. Trailer Dynamics, an Aachen-based company, has conducted field tests with BMW Logistics, DB Schenker, Duvenbeck, and Volkswagen Konzernlogistik, reporting average fuel savings of around 40 percent for diesel tractor combinations, substantially higher than the up to 18 percent reduction implied by the Nivalis projection. The difference traces directly to battery size, but Trailer Dynamics frames the choice as an economic question rather than an architectural one.
“The discussion should not start with battery size, but with the economics of the transport operation,” the company said in response to written questions. “There is no single battery capacity that is universally right for every fleet.”
Trailer Dynamics’s modular system offers three configurations ranging from 187 to 551 kWh, sized to match route profile, annual mileage, payload, and charging access. The M300 version, whose designation reflects the capacity of its 300-kWh lithium iron phosphate battery supplied by the Chinese battery manufacturer CATL, adds approximately 4 tonnes to the trailer, roughly three times the one to 1.4 tonnes added to a trailer by the Nivalis system.
Both companies’ systems would extend the range of a battery-electric tractor by reducing the energy demand on the tractor’s motor. But Trailer Dynamics explicitly targets that use case, claiming its self-propelled trailer yields combined ranges of up to 850 km—enough to eliminate intermediate charging stops on many long-haul routes. Nivalis has not published range extension figures for electric tractor combinations, and its smaller battery and peak lower output suggest the effect would be more modest.
That higher energy-storage capability widens the addressable market for Trailer Dynamics considerably and helps explain the investment flowing into the self-propelled trailer space. In November 2025, the European Investment Bank extended a €25 million loan to the company, backed by the European Union’s InvestEU program, to support commercialization. Trailer Dynamics says it plans to begin industrial-scale production in 2028, with adoption expected to accelerate as European carbon-dioxide reduction requirements tighten toward 2030.
ZF, the German automotive supplier, entered the space with its TrailTrax system, using an electric axle rated at up to 210 kW continuous power. ZF claims that between onboard battery storage and energy recovered via regenerative braking, the self-propelled trailer system yields up to 16 percent in energy and carbon-dioxide savings when combined with a truck powered by an internal combustion engine. The company also says TrailTrax can reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as 40 percent with opportunistic plug-in charging. Trailer manufacturers Kässbohrer and Krone have adopted the platform, as has BPW—the same running-gear specialist codeveloping the Nivalis axle.
In North America, Range Energy is developing a system with up to 300 kWh of onboard energy capacity, compatible with diesel, battery-electric, and hydrogen fuel cell tractors. Range, which has announced a partnership with ZF to help drive the development and adoption of the Range eTrailer System within the North American commercial trucking industry, is now equipping its trailers with ZF’s AxTrax 2 e-axle for battery-powered propulsion. Range Energy has a separate pilot agreement with DB Schenker, the German logistics company that is also among the European operators that tested the Trailer Dynamics system. Range and DB Schenker say they plan to deploy a powered trailer in commercial trucking operations in North America, with first deliveries scheduled for later this year. The breadth of activity across continents reflects a field that has moved well past the question of whether powered trailers work. The argument now is about which architecture works best and at what cost.
What the field does not yet have is a common standard for measuring and reporting savings. The figures from various pilots—an average of 40 percent from Trailer Dynamics, up to 18 percent implied by the Nivalis projection—reflect different routes, loads, seasons, and battery sizes. In some cases, they represent short validation runs rather than sustained operational data. Fleet operators evaluating competing systems are working with numbers that are difficult to interpret and impossible to rank against one another.
Both architectures reduce available payload, but by very different margins. The M300’s roughly 4-tonne addition dwarfs the one-to-1.4-tonne addition of the Nivalis system. Trailer Dynamics argues the weight penalty is largely academic in practice, because more than 90 percent of trailer movements are constrained by cargo volume before they approach legal weight limits. Under current European regulations, both systems reduce payload on a one-for-one basis. Frameworks under discussion would change that. New rules could allow up to 4 extra tonnes for electric trucks, with proposals to extend the provision to electric trailers. If amended, the payload effect would turn positive for both systems. Until then, every kilogram of kit is a kilogram unavailable for freight.
The choice between large-battery and small-battery powered trailers is a bet on which cost will fall faster: battery pack prices or the cost of grid-charging infrastructure. A large-battery system delivers higher savings but requires reliable charging access across the operating cycle. If infrastructure buildout stalls—as it has repeatedly in heavy-duty transport—operators face the same dependency problem that has slowed battery-electric truck adoption. The Nivalis architecture hedges against that risk: Its 32-A connection requires only a standard industrial outlet, and the solar array and regenerative braking handle significant energy input without infrastructure at all. Gilman frames the design philosophy in terms of the industry it serves.
“Logistics lives with low margins,” he said. “We are focused on the product which fits the industry technically and financially. It overcomes the capital expenditure hurdle and maximizes financial benefit by adding sources of energy which are symbiotic to each other.” And because Nivalis’s axle is comparatively light, he says, operators won’t be forced to reduce payload.
Trailer Dynamics sees it differently.
“Long-haul transport will increasingly move toward depot-based and destination-based charging models,” says Michael W. Nimtsch, the company’s managing director. “The question is not how small a battery can be made, but how much economic value each additional kilowatt-hour can generate over the life of the vehicle.”
On solar and regenerative recovery, Nimtsch argues that both are useful complements to stored battery energy rather than substitutes for it.
“Compared with the daily energy demand of a long-haul truck, solar generation remains relatively modest,” he says. The Nivalis energy breakdown supports that view in relative terms: Grid charging contributes the largest share of projected savings, regenerative braking second, and solar third. That hierarchy means performance depends more on charging access during dwell time than the multisource framing might suggest, even if that access requires only a standard industrial outlet.
Trailer Dynamics prices its system between €145,000 and €195,000 and targets a payback period of no more than five years. Nivalis targets five to six years at current costs, falling to three to four years as volumes grow. Asked exactly what the price tag says, the company declined to answer. The minimum annual savings needed, Gilman said, is between €5,000 and €6,000 per trailer. Until someone publishes a full year of results from a trailer running in normal commercial rotation, fleet operators cannot answer the two questions that actually drive adoption: What does this cost, and when does it pay back?
2026-07-08 03:02:42
Toshio Fukuda has been blazing trails for most of his career. He is considered to be one of the most prolific scholars in robotics, writing more than 2,000 research papers and authoring several books on the field. He’s an influential figure thanks to his pioneering work developing biomedical robotic systems, industrial robots, micro-nano robotics, mechatronics, and AI-driven automation.
Fukuda launched one of the first robotics conferences, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). It is still popular almost 40 years later.
Employer
Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology, in Alexandria
Title
Professor and vice president of research
Member grade
Life Fellow
Alma maters
Waseda University, in Tokyo; University of Tokyo
An IEEE Life Fellow, he is a professor emeritus in the department of micro-nano systems engineering and a visiting professor at Nagoya University, in Japan, where he taught for nearly 25 years. Currently, he is a vice president of research at the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology, in Alexandria, Egypt.
Within IEEE, Fukuda has held top volunteer positions including the organization’s highest office: He served as IEEE president in 2020, becoming the first person of Asian descent to hold the role.
He’s a former program director of Japan’s Moonshot program, which by 2050 intends to develop advanced AI robots.
Born in Japan, Fukuda has been recognized by the country for his contributions to science with two of its highest awards: the Medal of Honor with a purple ribbon in 2015 and the Order of the Sacred Treasure in 2022.
IEEE honored him with this year’s Richard M. Emberson Award for “distinguished service advancing the technical objectives of IEEE, especially in the area of robotics.” The IEEE Board-level award is sponsored by the IEEE Technical Activities Board. Fukuda received the award on 24 April at a ceremony in New York City.
As a former IEEE president who has served as a master of ceremonies at several of the organization’s major award events, Fukuda noted that he is more accustomed to bestowing awards than receiving them.
“It’s very interesting to be on the receiving end,” he says.
As a teenager, Fukuda spent his summer breaks teaching himself how to build things including transistor radios and steam engines.
“It was very nice to have a hands-on hobby and make these kinds of things myself,” he says. His experimentation led him to study engineering.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1971 from Waseda University, in Tokyo. He says one of his professors there—Ichiro Kato, regarded as the father of Japanese robotics research—was a good mentor who made a positive impact.
Fukuda’s research interests were robotics and mechatronics, a field that combines robotics, electronics, computer science, and control systems.
He went on to earn a master’s degree and a doctorate in science from the University of Tokyo, in 1971 and 1977. During those years, he also attended Yale, where he conducted research on advanced control theory in 1973.
He reflects fondly on his time at Yale: “It was a very nice environment and a kind of free-thinking atmosphere. It motivated me to study more.”
“IEEE doesn’t care who you are, what you do, what country you are from, or whether you are male or female. IEEE accepts people who have energy and passion.”
While at Yale, Fukuda served as an assistant to his advisor—which led him to consider a career in academia, he says, because he enjoyed the freedom that research work afforded him.
But he realized that such freedom comes with a price. University researchers are expected to raise the money that funds their work. He compares researchers to small-business owners who have to bring in money to keep their enterprise afloat.
That realization led him to select robotics as his field because he intended to develop technologies useful to industry, he says.
After earning his doctorate, he returned to Japan in 1977 to work as a research scientist at the government’s Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, later renamed the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, in Tsukuba.
“There was a lot of research going on at the lab, including practical robotics and theory,” he says.
He left Japan in 1979 to become a visiting research fellow at the University of Stuttgart, in Germany. During his year there, he studied systems, software problems, and related topics.
He returned to Japan and was hired as an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Tokyo University of Science. He conducted research into practical uses for robots by visiting industrial plants. He decided to develop robots that inspect industrial equipment such as those used in assembly plants, oil refineries, and power stations—places that “can be hostile environments for humans,” he says.
His work drew interest from chemical, oil, and utility companies.
“I got a lot of money from them for this very practical application, which funded my research,” he says, laughing.
Fukuda grew tired of making those robots, he says, so he switched to creating ones for scientific applications. He developed many techniques, but he probably is best known for his modular, cellular robotic systems (CEBOTs), which he introduced in 1985.
He has described how CEBOTs work in numerous papers published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.
The CEBOT system is composed of a number of autonomous robotic cells that stick together like interlocking Lego plastic bricks, he says.
Each cell is a fundamental modular unit that has a function. When a simple task is given, the system can analyze it and generate the structure of the cellular manipulator. The cells connect to and detach from each other through connection mechanisms and cooperate mutually, creating complex structures and configurations.
“You start developing from the component-wise to the cell-wise to a small functional unit—and then you come up with clusters that make bigger systems. We can make a society of robot beings like that,” he explained in his oral history published on the Engineering and Technology History Wiki. “It’s a distributed robotic system, a self-organized robotic system, and also an evolutionary robotic system.
“It’s also a fault-tolerant robot system because if something is wrong, you just remove those things and make a new one. You keep the system working. That’s a great thing.”
Today CEBOTs are used for a variety of tasks such as delivering medication in hospitals, assisting with planting crops, and transporting products in distribution centers. Check out IEEE Spectrum’s Robots Guide for news from the world of robotics.
In 1989 Fukuda joined Nagoya University as a professor of mechanical engineering and micro-nano systems engineering. During his 24-year career there, he was director of the university’s Center for Micro-Nano Mechatronics. He developed a long list of technologies at the university, including many for medical applications. He also conducted groundbreaking research into intelligent robotic systems and micro- and nano-robotics.
Another technology he is known for is brachiation robots, which he helped develop in 1988. He calls them monkey robots because they’re based on the pendulum-like movement of monkeys swinging from tree to tree. The gravity-based locomotion enables continuous movement.
Brachiation robots now are inspecting high-voltage transmission towers and bridges, searching damaged buildings for survivors, and performing maintenance on pipelines and cables.
Fukuda retired from the university in 2013 and was named professor emeritus.
He didn’t stay retired for long, though. He next held a teaching appointment at Meijo University, in Nagoya, until he left in 2022 to join the Egypt-Japan University.
He joined IEEE in 1980 at the encouragement of one of his research advisors, Professor Fumio Harashima, now an IEEE Life Fellow. After attending conferences and reading the organization’s publications, Fukuda says, he looked forward to becoming more involved.
“I wanted to know how to organize a conference and how to edit a paper for one of its Transactions,” he says. “I wanted to know what was going on from inside the organization, not just the outside.”
In 1988 he was the founding chair and organizer of IROS, in Tokyo. The conference had 330 attendees that year, and was supported by Harashima. Today it is one of the largest and most prestigious conferences on the topic, attracting more than 9,000 people annually. Out of 120,000 conferences, it was the only conference in the Nature Index database for this year, Fukuda says.
In 1996 he and other members launched IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics.
He was the founding president of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council, which was established in 2002. He is considered a pioneer in nanotechnology research, particularly regarding how it relates to robotics.
Over the years, he has held numerous volunteer positions on IEEE editorial boards and committees.
He was the 1998–1999 president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, becoming the first non-U.S. member to hold the title.
He was director of IEEE Division X (2001–2002 and 2017–2018), which covers intelligent systems, biological engineering, robotics, control systems, and photonic technologies. He served as the 2013–2014 director of IEEE Region 10 (Asia-Pacific).
As the 2020 IEEE president, Fukuda saw the organization through the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of travel restrictions, he realized IEEE should change how it offered its in-person services, specifically educational programs. He encouraged IEEE Educational Activities to develop an online learning platform. The IEEE Learning Network started with just three courses and now offers nearly 2,000 courses, webinars, and learning materials.
The Emberson Award joins a slew of other recognitions Fukuda has received from IEEE. They include several from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society: a 2004 Pioneer Award, a 2009 Saridis Leadership Award, and the 2011 Harashima Award for Innovative Technologies. He is also a recipient of the Board-level 2010 IEEE Robotics and Automation Technical Field Award.
He says he feels strongly that IEEE should be a diverse organization that is welcoming to all. As IEEE president, he led efforts to devise a diversity, equity, and inclusion program. Several policies, procedures, and bylaws were revised to give members a safe, inclusive place for discourse.
“It’s important for IEEE to make everyone feel comfortable,” he says. “DEI programs are important. All people should be equal. IEEE doesn’t care who you are, what you do, what country you are from, or whether you are male or female. IEEE accepts people who have energy and passion.
“It accepted me, from the Far East. That’s why I like it.”
You can learn more about Fukuda and his career from the oral history conducted by the IEEE History Center.
2026-07-06 21:54:01
A practical educational guide to common and uncommon VHF propagation modes, covering the physics, range implications, and real-world behaviors engineers need to understand.
What Attendees will Learn
1. Why “line of sight” fails as a practical VHF planning model.
2. How refraction, reflection, diffraction, and scattering deliver or destroy signals where geometry alone cannot predict.3. How tropospheric refraction extends the VHF radio horizon roughly one-third beyond optical line of sight.
4. How temperature inversions form ducts that can carry VHF signals over 1,500 km.5. How sporadic E, meteor burst, and EME propagate VHF signals across hundreds to thousands of kilometers.
6. What frequency limits, distance ranges, and environmental triggers apply to each propagation mode.
7. How to apply this knowledge to link budgeting, interference prediction, and contingency planning.
2026-07-04 02:00:02
Many IEEE members who collect historical engineering artifacts often offer them to the IEEE History and Heritage group, which includes the IEEE History Center, to display. To bring these artifacts to the public, the group created the IEEE Global Museum, which curates traveling exhibits for display at conferences and in libraries, universities, and other venues.
The program educates people about how technological progress has unfolded over generations, and how engineers and researchers build on past achievements to benefit humanity.
Curating the exhibits has been rewarding, says Daniel Jon Mitchell, director of the group’s heritage programs.
“People tell me that they are genuinely moved by having history and artifacts explained to them in an accessible, intelligible way,” Mitchell says. “When people are moved and emotionally affected by what you’re doing, they’re going to remember that. And I think that’s part of the power of what we’re doing.”
The most recent traveling exhibit was on display in April in New York City during the IEEE Honors Ceremony, which celebrates engineering pioneers who have developed technologies that changed how people connect with the world. Attendees explored the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit, which drew inspiration from IEEE Spectrum’s Chip Hall of Fame. The exhibit conveys the roles integrated circuits play in fields such as signal processing, audio engineering, and telecommunications. The Commodore 64, one of the artifacts on display, stirred up treasured childhood memories for guests who had used the home computer.
Other exhibits have focused on early radio inventions and power and communications technologies.
The Global Museum works with IEEE societies to mark their anniversaries by interpreting and displaying pertinent items.
The idea of a traveling museum came to fruition in 2024 after Alexander Magoun, IEEE’s outreach historian, connected with Mike Molnar. The IEEE associate member owns one of six superheterodyne radio prototypes developed by Edwin Howard Armstrong, who probably is best known for inventing the FM radio system. Armstrong received the first IEEE Medal of Honor in 1917.
The radio converts incoming frequencies into a fixed, lower intermediate one using a local oscillator and a frequency mixer. The technology paved the way for modern electronic communications devices. The prototype became the focal point of the Global Museum’s flagship Unseen Signals: E. Howard Armstrong’s Radio Revolution exhibit, which celebrates the inventor’s life and his impact on the broadcasting industry and wireless communications.
“The radio prototype is one of the most incredible pieces that we could put on display,” Mitchell says. He and Magoun sourced other artifacts including an Audion used in Armstrong’s experiments on wireless signal amplification; a selection of consumer products that attempted to cash in on radio’s popularity, including a flour sifter and laxatives; and a Motorola Walkie-Talkie from the Korean War. They were from museums or private collectors along the East Coast of the United States.
“Aside from [Guglielmo] Marconi, Armstrong is the most significant contributor to the history of radio,” Mitchell says. “The exhibit is not only a biography but also a story of the cultural and political implications his work had.”
Visitors can play 15 short clips of past radio broadcasts covering politics, religion, sports, or another topic.
The Armstrong exhibit was unveiled in 2024 at the National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, Pa.
The 93-square-meter exhibit is still traveling around the United States. It is on display until 15 August at the Pavek Museum, in St. Louis Park, Minn.
From 21 November until 9 May 2027, it is scheduled to be at the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady, N.Y. Entry to the museum is free for IEEE members with a digital membership card.
The IEEE History and Heritage group collaborates with IEEE societies to create exhibits for special events. In 2024 Mitchell curated an exhibit to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and its 100th Vehicular Technology Conference. The Our Mobile World exhibit was launched at the conference, held in October in Washington, D.C.
“The society’s leadership helped me focus attention on key developments that meant a lot to its members,” Mitchell says.
“The IEEE Global Museum wants to present exhibits that connect with its audiences, whether these are IEEE members or the public,” he says. “Just knowing what was important historically doesn’t mean that this will resonate, so I really appreciated the insight.”
The exhibit’s artifacts included a Motorola DynaTac “brick” cellphone, a CB radio from the 1980s, and one of the earliest handheld GPS receivers. Visitors played an interactive game to test their knowledge spanning a century of wireless technology, motor vehicles, and mobile communication inventions.
Mitchell worked this year with the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society to launch a virtual exhibit, Powering Up, which is available on the Global Museum website. It provides an overview of high-voltage power engineering, and it highlights the roles that manufacturers General Electric and Westinghouse played in making long-distance, high-voltage transmission of electrical power possible. Videos and photos of impulse generators and tests are featured in the exhibit.
Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang, who received the 2026 IEEE Medal of Honor, exploring the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit.IEEE Conferences, Events & Experiences
One photo shows lightning arcing between high-voltage generators. Others show the impulse generators used at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, demonstrations of artificial lightning, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan visiting GE’s high-voltage laboratory in Pittsfield, Mass.
The Unseen Signals exhibit was created for large venues, but the Microchips That Shook the World exhibit was designed to be displayed in different spaces, Mitchell says. Artifacts are premounted to ensure easy setup, and they’re encased in glass because many are rare.
Microchips are crucial for signal processing, audio engineering, and telecommunications, making them a point of interest despite their small size, Mitchell says. One rare artifact on display is the Kodak KAF-1300 image sensor. Invented in 1986, it was used in one of the earliest digital cameras made for photojournalists.
The KAF-1300’s image sensor chip “is credited with bringing digital cameras out of the laboratory,” Mitchell says. “Only around 500 were produced.”
Visitors can understand how transistors work, he says, by pressing buttons to turn them on and off.
“There are billions of transistors in modern microchips,” he notes, “and you can combine them in a way that performs logical functions.”
Unseen Signals, one of two identical exhibits, was curated by Mitchell and Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum’s special projects editor, with help from several Spectrum colleagues. Together, they served as on-site docents for guests at the IEEE Honors Ceremony.
The display also featured a preview of IEEE’s immersive “Inside the Microchip” video project, which delves beneath the silicon surface of Nvidia’s NV20 chip, using forensic photography and computer-generated renderings. The video, to be released this year, aims to teach middle school students about the microchips that are inside their gaming devices.
The exhibit was on display at the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference, held in May in Orlando, Fla. Later this year, members will be able to visit it at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., and the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada.
The IEEE Global Museum is made possible thanks to donations to the IEEE Foundation.