The biographies of the IEEE Presidents are listed below.

The Presidents can be reached by sending an email to presidents@ieee.org.
To reach the IEEE Executive Director, send an email to executivedirector@ieee.org.

2024 IEEE President & CEO

Headshot of Thomas Coughlin.

Thomas Coughlin

Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates, is a digital storage analyst and business and technology consultant. He has more than 40 years in the data storage industry with engineering and senior management positions at several companies.

An IEEE Life Fellow, Dr. Coughlin has many publications and six patents. He is also the author of "Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide," which is now in its second edition with Springer. Tom is a regular storage and memory contributor for forbes.com and media and entertainment organizations. Coughlin Associates consults and publishes books and market and technology reports, including The Media and Entertainment Storage Report and an Emerging Memory Report, and puts on digital storage-oriented events.

Tom has served in numerous IEEE volunteer leadership roles, including President of IEEE-USA, Director of IEEE Region 6, Vice President and Board member of the IEEE Consumer Technology Society, Chair of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Section, and Chair of the Consultants Network of Silicon Valley. He is also active with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE).

2024 IEEE Past President

Headshot of Saifur Rahman

Saifur Rahman

Professor Saifur Rahman is the founding director of the Advanced Research Institute at Virginia Tech, USA, where he is the Joseph R. Loring Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also directs the Center for Energy and the Global Environment at the university. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and an IEEE Millennium Medal winner. He was the president of the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) for 2018 and 2019.


He is the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Electrification Magazine and the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy. He has published more than 160 journal papers and has made more than 600 conference and invited presentations. His h-index is 64 with over 20,000 citations.

In 2006, he served on the IEEE Board of Directors as the Vice President for Publication Services and Products. He is a distinguished lecturer for IEEE PES and has lectured on renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grid, energy internet, blockchain, and IoT sensor integration in more than 30 countries.

He is the founder of BEM Controls, LLC, a Virginia (USA)-based software company providing building energy management solutions. He served as the chair of the US National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for International Science and Engineering from 2010 to 2013. His research at Virginia Tech has been funded by Duke Energy, Tokyo Electric Power Company, the US National Science Foundation, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of Energy, and the State of Virginia (USA). He has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech.

2024 IEEE President-Elect

Headshot of Kathleen Kramer.

Kathleen A. Kramer

Kathleen A. Kramer is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of San Diego in California, USA. She worked to develop new engineering programs as a founding member of the faculty and eventually became the chair of electrical engineering, then serving as Director of Engineering (2004-2013), providing academic leadership for all of the university’s engineering programs. Her teaching interests are in the areas of signal processing, mechatronics and robotics, and communication systems.


She has also been a member of technical staff at several companies, including ViaSat, Hewlett Packard, and Bell Communications Research. She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AESS) and is a past vice president of the Society. She is a Fellow of ABET and a leader in the development of criteria for cyber security, mechatronics, and robotics.

Kathleen served on the IEEE Board of Directors as IEEE Secretary and chair of Governance and IEEE Region 6 (Western USA) Director. She was also chair of the 2023 IEEE Ad Hoc Committee on Innovating Funding Models.

She received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering magna cum laude with a second major in physics from Loyola Marymount University, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Executive Director and COO

Headshot of Sophia Muirhead.

Sophia Muirhead

Sophia (“Sophie”) Muirhead became IEEE’s Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer (COO) in January 2023. She manages a US$500 million+ business enterprise with a worldwide staff of more than 1,000 employees.

Prior to becoming the Executive Director and COO, Sophie was IEEE’s General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for four years, where she served as a trusted business and legal advisor to the organization’s Presidents and CEOs, Boards of Directors, senior volunteer leaders, and global staff.

Before joining IEEE in 2019, Sophie spent two decades at The Conference Board (TCB), a global business membership organization founded in 1917, with a mission to help its members anticipate what’s ahead, improve their performance, and better serve society. There she served as TCB’s first-ever Chief Legal Officer, building a legal team and internal legal function from scratch. She also had various operations roles, including leading TCB’s Marketing and Communications Center.

Sophie is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, the New York State Bar Association, and the Association of Corporate Counsel. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Hunter College Foundation and is a Trustee of the United Engineering Foundation.

Sophie graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor and a contributor to the Harvard International Law Journal. Born and raised on the island of Jamaica, she received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Hunter College, graduating magna cum laude, and also studied at the University of London and Boston University.