Dr. Barry Perlman, New President of MTT-S
I am humbled by the task before me as the new President of The Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S). I am grateful for the trust my AdCom colleagues bestowed upon me and mindful of the hard work of my predecessors. The MTT-S is a very well-run Society led by a cadre of long-term volunteers, many of whom are actively engaged in other activities of IEEE such as the Technical Advisory Board (TAB). It is arguably the premier worldwide organization for the publication and the sponsoring of meetings comprising quality and timely material in the rapidly growing field of wireless technology. The Society actively pursues new technologies, has a process to identify and mentor society leaders, has a growing transnational membership and has new initiatives in China and India and increased support for GOLD/Student programs. In a recent review by the IEEE Society Review Committee (SRC), the feedback was that they consider some of our Society's operations to be "Best Practices," including our active mentoring of young members, our Ombudsman program, and the archive of our past publications on our website.
However, one constant in our profession is change, and while the fundamentals are still deeply rooted, new technologies and businesses continue to be developed with substantial impact on our lives requiring a high degree of adaptation and flexibility by academia, industry and government to remain relevant with a competitive advantage. Dramatic changes have occurred that have led to a new global economy operating in ways not envisioned even several decades ago. As an example, in the last few years, the global engineering workforce has undergone substantial change, and the U.S workforce, in particular, shows trends that we would never have anticipated 15 or 20 years ago-the outsourcing of mainstream engineering jobs; increasing reliance on foreign-born Ph.D. graduates; and the need for retraining engineers to enable them to change careers a number of times before retirement. With an increasingly global technical community, the balance of trade can shift as trade is liberalized and economic conditions make it attractive to seek sources of supply where development and production costs are relatively low to satisfy demand elsewhere. As we try to predict the future of the engineering profession and specifically microwave engineering education, we must take into account some important factors. History has shown that changes in the microwave engineering profession follow changes in cultural, social, and political environments. Evidence shows that these changes have led to technology breakthroughs that helped or harmed social progress, depending on the political environment surrounding them.
Microwave/RF technology and technology in general can be very disruptive. The term disruptive technology was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and introduced in his 1995 article "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave." The concept of disruptive technology continues a long tradition of the identification of radical technical change in the study of innovation by economists, and the development of tools for its management at a firm or policy level. The rapid pace of technology and its importance to our economy requires that we rebalance our federal R&D portfolio to support our most urgent priorities; encourage long term, basic engineering research; upgrade our national capacity (infrastructure) to support world-class engineering research; increase student interest in engineering careers, particularly those related to MW/RF engineering; and encourage a more global approach to attracting more talented students, engineers and scientists from all over the world. Once again, we find ourselves at a crossroads in history- operating within a new economy- and we'd better roll up our sleeves and get busy. If we do so and are mindful and deliberate in making critical decisions and focusing on important initiatives, our society will continue to be the premier forum to promote the RF and microwave engineering profession by advancing and distributing knowledge and supporting professional development.