IEEE Awards Booklet - 2017 - 2

Presentation of awards
sPeaKers
at ieee honors ceremony

James D. Plummer supported and lead
major innovations at Stanford University's
School of Engineering that have changed
the way engineering research and teaching is carried out, impacting industry and
academia worldwide. As the longest-serving
dean (1999-2014), he led the eﬀorts at Stanford to build major interdisciplinary centers
to address challenges facing engineering
such as energy, the environment, and biomedicine. He also helped
develop online education courses and technologies and the world's
first massively open online courses (MOOCs) to provide unlimited participation and open access to learning through the Internet.
Plummer's contributions to the school have been instrumental in
increasing the number of students choosing engineering majors,
especially in computer science, product design, and bioengineering. An IEEE Fellow and member of the U.S. National Academy
of Engineering, Plummer holds the John Fluke Professorship in
Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

Wanda Reder is the chief strategy oﬃcer at
S&C Electric Company, a global provider of
electric power switching, protection, and control solutions. She has responsibility for strategy, competitive positioning, and acquisitions,
and she built an engineer-procure-construct
organization that has positioned S&C as a
leader in wind, solar, and energy storage markets. Prior to S&C, she served as vice president at Exelon, overseeing asset management, engineering, planning,
and standards for electric utility power operations in Philadelphia, PA,
and Chicago, IL.

Sarah Audet has worked in the area of
sensor and medical device, design, development, and manufacture at several companies
including AT&T, Princeton Gamma-Tech,
Motorola, and Medtronic. She is currently
a program director at Medtronic, where she
has worked since 1997. She is also on the
Board of Directors of Starbase Minnesota, a
501c nonprofit whose mission is to educate
and inspire youth in science, technology, engineering, and math,
and to mentor women in science fields.
She received her B.S. degree from the State University of New
York at Upstate Medical Center in the area of medical technology,
M.S. in electrical engineering from Boston University, and her Ph.D.
in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Delft, the
Netherlands. Sarah has also earned an M.B.A., project management
professional certification, and Six Sigma Black Belt certification.

Alberto Broggi is general manager at
VisLab srl (spinoﬀ of the University of
Parma, acquired by Silicon-Valley company
Ambarella Inc. in June 2015) and a professor
of computer engineering at the University
of Parma, Italy, and has been pioneering the
field of machine vision applied to driverless
cars and unmanned vehicles in general.
Broggi has organized milestone events in
the development of vehicular robotics including the 1998 MilleMiglia in Automatico, the TerraMax 14-ton driverless truck, the
2010 VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge, and the
2013 BRAiVE project, which involved an autonomous vehicle
negotiating two-way narrow rural roads, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights, and roundabouts in the middle of the day in downtown
Parma without human intervention and representing the first
time an autonomous vehicle was driven on public roads with no
one in the driver's seat for part of the test.

Mario Milicevic is a Ph.D. candidate in
the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of
Toronto, where his research focuses on the
integrated circuit design of error-correction
decoders for wireless, optical, and quantum
security systems. He served as the 20152016 chair of the global IEEE Young Professionals committee where he was involved
in launching IEEE's technology entrepreneurship community and
bringing exposure to the IEEE Young Professionals at high-profile global events such as the Consumer Electronics Show, South
by Southwest Conference, and the Web Summit.

Kurt Petersen received his B.S. with
honors in electrical engineering from
the University of California, Berkeley,
in 1970, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology in 1975. Since 1982, he
has cofounded six successful, high-tech
companies in Silicon Valley, including
Cepheid. In 2001, he was awarded the IEEE
Simon Ramo Medal for his contributions to micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). Petersen is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and is a Life Fellow of the IEEE
in recognition of his contributions to "the commercialization of
MEMS technology." In 2011, Petersen joined the Silicon Valley
Band of Angels. Today, he spends most of his time helping and
mentoring early stage, high-tech start-up companies.

Ms. Reder has also been a long-time IEEE volunteer. She served
as the first woman president of the IEEE Power & Energy Society.
During her tenure, she created trendsetting programs such as the
launch of "IEEE Smart Grid," which carved a leadership position
for IEEE. It has become the definitive source for information on
smart grid technology using social media and Web presence.

2 | 2017 IEEE awards bOOkLET

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2017