New Technology Connections is your resource to emerging technologies within IEEE. The IEEE Future Directions Committee has identified the technologies on this page as primary focus areas and has established them as formal initiatives to engage IEEE. For each initiative, you will find a wealth of knowledge, resources, and opportunities to participate.
Visit each featured portal to access upcoming conferences, news articles, technical papers, related standards, and academic programs. To get involved, please join the IEEE technical communities available on the portals below and receive the Future Directions Newsletter. To learn more, contact Future Directions.
IEEE Future Directions is committed to bringing you the best knowledge, resources, and opportunities in emerging technologies within IEEE. As Future Directions evolves and expands its offerings, subscription to the current Future Directions Technical Communities for IEEE Society members will be free as a Society member benefit. IEEE Members and Non-members will pay a fee. Details of this change, including regular and student rates, can be reviewed in your IEEE account during the annual membership renewal for 2021.
As a participant of the Future Directions Technical Communities, you will receive access to a growing suite of content, including online courses, webinars, white papers, videos, and more at discounted rates.
Thank you for being a part of the Future Directions Technical Communities. We value your involvement and look forward to your continued participation in IEEE Future Directions.
Get involved in the current IEEE Future Directions Initiatives:
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
Join IEEE Future Directions at the following events.
Subscribe to the IEEE Future Directions Newsletter
Participants of current and graduated IEEE Future Directions technical communities receive this newsletter automatically. If you wish to receive the newsletter in your inbox, please subscribe to one or more of the technical communities listed on this page.
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For additional articles on emerging technologies, visit the Future Directions Feature Articles page.
The IEEE Future Directions Resource Center offers a selection of products for sale, including eLearning and continuing education courses, newsletters, videos, webinars, and white papers. IEEE members and technical community subscribers receive discounts on all products. Through the Resource Center, you will get a glimpse into the various Future Directions initiatives and their wide range of offerings.
IEEE Future Directions interviews top subject-matter experts in the field through its Q&A podcast series.
These initiatives had their start within IEEE Future Directions and have graduated. Some have continued as self-managed communities, and others have taken a different path.
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
The IEEE Technology Roadmaps Committee (ITRC) works to provide guidance and infrastructure to support technology roadmap activities across IEEE. ITRC reports into the IEEE Future Directions Committee.
The growing interest in technology roadmaps spans a wide range of IEEE organizational units. ITRC seeks to enable the success of IEEE’s technology roadmap activities by leveraging the expertise of experienced roadmap developers to create tools and templates and document a high-level roadmap development process to assist new roadmaps.
Through its committee and Industry Advisory Board, IEEE Future Directions has compiled and maintains a list of new technology areas for consideration. For more detailed information, please see the IEEE Future Directions New Technology Proposal List.
You are welcome to submit new ideas via this form. For inquiries, contact IEEE Future Directions at ieee-fd@ieee.org.
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Read the IEEE Future Directions Blog by Roberto Saracco for daily insight and observations on emerging technologies, trends, and their implications.
IEEE Future Directions now offers a comprehensive collection of webinars on a variety of groundbreaking, cutting-edge technologies.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation by European Union (EU) authorities to strengthen and unify data protection for EU citizens and individuals within the European Union. The primary aim of GDPR is to give EU citizens and residents control over their personal data. GDPR went into effect 25 May 2018.
For more information, visit the IEEE GDPR page.