Ken Laker, the 1999 IEEE president, died on 2 August on the age of 76.
Laker labored with the IEEE Board of Administrators within the early Nineteen Nineties to buy private computer systems for the group’s leaders to make it simpler to conduct IEEE enterprise by way of the Web. Later, he led the creation of the IEEE Digital Museum (now the Engineering and Expertise Historical past Wiki), a web-based repository of academic content material.
Additionally a philanthropist, he helped set up the annual IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship to acknowledge a deserving scholar whose challenge demonstrates an understanding {of electrical} or electronics engineering, pc science, or different IEEE area of curiosity. The US $10,000 scholarship is run by IEEE Academic Actions and is payable over 4 years of undergraduate college examine.
Laker was a member of the IEEE Heritage Circle, which acknowledges those that make ongoing and beneficiant donations to the IEEE Basis, the group’s philanthropic accomplice.
Along with sharing his time and abilities with IEEE, he was a professor {of electrical} engineering for 35 years on the College of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.
He additionally was cofounder and chief govt of DFT Microsystems, a semiconductor firm based mostly in Montreal.
Contributions at Bell Labs and at Penn
He obtained his bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering in 1969 from Manhattan Faculty, in Riverdale, N.Y. Whereas there, he accomplished the Reserve Officers’ Coaching Corps program, which prepares college students to grow to be leaders within the U.S. army. Upon commencement he was commissioned as a second lieutenant within the Air Drive.
He went on to earn grasp’s and doctoral levels in EE in 1970 and 1973 from New York College, in New York Metropolis.
After graduating in 1973, Laker joined the Air Drive Analysis Laboratory, in Bedford, Mass., as a researcher who investigated army purposes of floor acoustic wave units. He left in 1977 to affix Bell Labs, in Holmdel, N.J., as a member of the technical workers. He performed and supervised analysis and improvement of analog and digital application-specific built-in circuits.
Laker joined the College of Pennsylvania in 1984 as an EE professor. Through the subsequent three many years, he performed pioneering analysis in mixed-signal integration programs and taught lessons in very-large-scale integration circuits and programs, in addition to management, engineering design, and mental property safety and administration.
He co-authored 4 textbooks on microelectronic programs.
In 2000 he helped discovered DFT, which manufactured check gear for high-speed semiconductor interfaces. He served as its CEO for 2 years. He retired in 2019.
Introducing Internet-based providers
Laker joined IEEE in 1968 as an undergraduate. He later grew to become a member of the IEEE Strong-State Circuits and IEEE Circuits and Programs societies. He served because the 1983 CAS president.
In 1993, whereas serving as Division I director, he was concerned within the early levels of modernizing IEEE operations and processes with networked computer systems and Web entry.
He later was named chair of the brand new IEEE Digital Providers Steering Committee, which oversaw the acquisition of computer systems for all IEEE Board members to digitize hundreds of IEEE paperwork. Committee members additionally labored on the primary system to digitize IEEE’s membership renewal course of.
As IEEE president, Laker helped additional increase the group’s Internet-based providers. He labored with the IEEE Publication Providers and Merchandise Board to develop a blueprint for the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. IEEE Xplore, launched in Might 2000, stays a number one useful resource for scientific and technical info, offering on-line entry to the full-text variations of greater than 6 million paperwork.
Within the late Nineteen Nineties, Laker joined the IEEE Historical past Committee and labored with different volunteers to develop the IEEE Digital Museum, a Internet-based archive of articles, movies, and audio recordings highlighting important technological developments. Later, that content material was migrated to IEEE’s World Historical past Community, which was changed in 2015 by the IEEE Engineering and Expertise Historical past Wiki.
In 1999 Laker labored with Peter Lewis, IEEE Basis director emeritus, to ascertain the annual IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship. Annually, a winner is chosen from college students who offered their tasks on the Society for Science’s Regeneron Worldwide Science and Engineering Honest. The newest scholarship was given to a teen who created a device to detect glaucoma.
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