New Technology Connections: Future Directions

Blockchain - More than Cryptocurrency, blockchain is a technological foundation to a new way of conducting transactions, securing networks, and recording the validity and origin of data. Blockchain will allow a new perspective on how humans interact to society's challenges; touching upon everything from financial transactions, energy trading, carbon emission trading, protection and easy access to healthcare records, to the protection of the valued assets of corporations and nation states.

Digital Reality - This initiative serves to enable the coming Digital Transformation through collaboration among technologists, engineers, regulators, and ethicists. The Digital Transformation is fueled by advances in sensors and actuators, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). By leveraging these technologies and others, such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and Digital Twins, the line between the physical world and the digital world will be increasingly less distinct.

Future Networks - IEEE Future Networks is dedicated to bringing together researchers, scientists, and engineers from industry, academia, and governments around the world to solve the challenges associated with the development and deployment of next-generation network infrastructure. The IEEE Future Networks initiative will be a collaborative effort, bringing interdisciplinary exchange from a wide range of professional expertise and practical application knowledge.

Quantum - IEEE Quantum will serve as IEEE's leading community for all projects and activities on quantum technologies. The initiative is currently developing a project plan to address the current landscape of quantum technologies, identify challenges and opportunities, leverage and collaborate with existing initiatives, and engage the quantum community at large.

Big Data - Big data is much more than just data bits and bytes on one side and processing on the other. IEEE, through its Cloud Computing Initiative and multiple societies, took the lead on the technical aspects of big data. To provide increased value, IEEE provided a framework for collaboration throughout IEEE. IEEE launched a new initiative focused on big data. One of the products from the initiative is the successful IEEE DataPort.

Brain - This initiative is dedicated to advancing technologies that improve the understanding of brain function, revolutionizing current abilities to reverse engineer neural circuits in both the central and peripheral nervous systems, and developing new approaches to interface the brain with machines for augmenting human-machine interaction and mitigating effects of neurological disease and injury.

Cloud Computing - This has become a scalable service consumption and delivery platform in the modern IT infrastructure. IEEE is advancing the understanding and use of the cloud computing paradigm, which currently has a significant impact on the entire information and communications ecosystem.

Cybersecurity - Through outreach projects, workshops, experiments, and challenge competitions, the IEEE Cybersecurity Initiative builds on IEEE’s long-standing and world-leading technical activities in cybersecurity and privacy to actively engage, inform, and support members, organizations, and communities involved in cybersecurity research, development, operations, policy, and education.

Internet of Things (IoT) - IoT is a self-configuring and adaptive system consisting of networks of sensors and smart objects whose purpose is to interconnect "all" things, including everyday and industrial objects, in such a way as to make them intelligent, programmable, and more capable of interacting with humans.

Life Sciences - The overall objective is to make IEEE a major and recognized player in the life sciences, in particular in the disciplines that are at the intersection between the organization's traditional fields—electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science—and the life sciences.

Rebooting Computing - IEEE seeks to rethink the computer, "from soup to nuts," including all aspects from device to user interface. This group works from a holistic viewpoint, taking into account evolutionary and revolutionary approaches.

Smart Cities - IEEE experts will work with local government leaders and city planners around the world to explore the issues and address what's needed to prepare for the ever-increasing urban population growth, including engaging and interacting with local inhabitants to increase awareness of their urban environment, leading to the formation of smart cities.

Smart Grid - The "smart grid" has come to describe a next-generation electrical power system that is typified by the increased use of communications and information technology in the generation, delivery, and consumption of electrical energy.

Software Defined Networks (SDN) - SDN and NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) are creating the conditions to reinvent network architectures. This is happening first at the edge of the network where "intelligence" has already started migrating, and where innovation is more urgently needed to overcome the "ossification" by improving networks and services infrastructure flexibility.

Sustainable ICT - Sustainable Information and Communications Technology is a key driver of sustainability when green metrics (energy consumption, atmospheric emissions, e-waste, life cycle management) are effectively coupled with its positive socio-economic impacts. IEEE is focused on achieving sustainability and promoting its awareness.

Transportation Electrification - IEEE seeks to accelerate the development and implementation of new technologies for the electrification of transportation which is manifested in the electric vehicles (EV) of today and the future.

• 3D Imaging and Multi-Media

• In Memory Computing

• 3-D Printing

• Internet of Space

• Autonomous Systems and their Societal Impact

• Micro Fluidics

• Bio Fuel

• NanoPore DNA Sequencing

• Carbon Sequestration

• NewOS: RebootlessOS

• Clean Water

• Power in Mobile Systems

• Cognitive Radio

• Reliability

• Digital Cultural Heritage and Smart Environments

• Robotics and Swarms

• Environmental Engineering

• Safety Critical Systems, Next Gen

• Fog Computing and Networking

• Symbiotic Machines