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What do an instinct to fix things and the 1999 global panic over whether computers would survive the date change to 2000, known as the Y2K bug, have in common? Both helped shape IEEE Senior Member Ajay Prasad’s career.Prasad is an industry process director at Dassault Systèmes in Detroit. His focus is global oversight of industry process experts specializing in Enovia, a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution and one of the company’s flagship products.Ajay Prasad Employer Dassault Systèmes in DetroitTitle Industry process directorMember grade Senior memberAlma maters Bangalore University, in Bengaluru, India; and the University of Birmingham, EnglandAs a child growing up in Bangalore, India, his curiosity to build real-world solutions was ignited by his father, a mechanical engineer. Prasad’s father often fixed things around the house, including cars and bicycles. His ability to take something broken and return it to working order laid the groundwork for his son’s career in engineering.Prasad was in his final year of undergraduate studies when the Y2K panic hit its peak.“Nobody knew what would happen when the year turned to 2000,” he says, “and it was almost projected like the end of the world was coming.”The phenomenon left him with the desire to fix computer problems, but he wasn’t sure how he would go about it, as he had no background in computer science.As it turned out, computer systems didn’t crash when the 1900s ended. The world did not end on Jan. 1, 2000, and neither did his interest in how computers worked.The consulting pivot that changed his careerPrasad graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and management from the RV College of Engineering, in Bengaluru. It was at a time when tech companies were heavily recruiting engineers, regardless of their specialization.“They were mainly looking for problem-solving skills,” Prasad says.His parents expected him to immediately enroll in a master’s degree program, he says, but a job offer from Tata Consultancy Services in Bengaluru to work as an assistant systems engineer trainee changed that plan.“My dad was actually out of town for work when […]

This article is brought to you by Capital One.After five years leading natural language understanding and eventually the entire Alexa AI organization at Amazon, Prem Natarajan made a nontraditional move: He became Chief Scientist at a bank. Not just any bank: Capital One, a financial institution serving over 100 million customers, helping everyday Americans manage their financial lives.For Natarajan, a veteran of DARPA-funded research and academia who had watched machine learning evolve from task-specific applications to foundation models, the logic was clear. Some of the most interesting advances in AI research and deployment were shifting from big tech’s horizontal platforms to industry verticals like finance, where the most complex problems aren’t just building models but making AI work under the constraints of real-world customer problems, contextual business knowledge, continuous learning, with an incredibly high bar for accuracy and privacy.That’s also what made Capital One the right place to do it. For decades, the company has been recognized as one of the most data- and analytics-driven financial institutions in the industry. Its business model from the very beginning was built around using data and technology to personalize financial products for customers. A decade ago, Capital One went all in on the cloud and rebuilt its data ecosystem, creating a unified environment for data, compute, and AI and machine learning experimentation. Today, its modern infrastructure, disciplined approach to governance, and deep bench of talent form the foundation that allows it to lead in enterprise AI.Advances in AI research and deployment are shifting from big tech’s horizontal platforms to industry verticals like finance.So, why does a bank need a Chief Scientist? The answer lies in a fundamental misconception about AI in financial services. Most financial institutions still view AI as a technology to deploy – leveraging the latest large language model, deploying it through APIs, and integrating it into existing workflows – rather than a scientific discipline. Capital One is doing something different: building a scientific community and research […]

In the mid-noughties, when music by the Killers and Franz Ferdinand blared out of every pub and nightclub I passed, I spent my days and nights struggling through a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. My research focused on simulating how special light waves interact in liquid crystals and using simple equations to approximate and understand those interactions. When I look back at my thesis now, liquid crystal technology is old hat, and I imagine my work could be completed with AI assistance in a matter of days—maybe hours. But the same cannot be said for the work of the pure mathematics Ph.D. students with whom I shared a cramped office at the University of Edinburgh. At the time, I felt sorry for these colleagues, who day after day sat at their desks, seemingly tearing their hair out and making no progress. (Though I was struggling too, I was at least always making some headway.) When we finished and went our separate ways, some hadn’t even published a paper.Now, in hindsight, I finally understand why they toiled for years on abstract mathematical problems that only a handful of people in the world care about. It wasn’t arrogance, as I thought at the time; they weren’t trying to prove their superior intelligence by being the first to solve a seemingly intractable mathematical problem. It wasn’t even a form of masochism (which was my second guess)—penance for some imagined inadequacy. I realized they derived joy, satisfaction, and meaning from the long journey toward understanding.“Sometimes, understanding just strikes you as being very beautiful.” —Jeremy Avigad, Carnegie Mellon University“Sometimes, understanding just strikes you as being very beautiful. Sometimes it’s a feeling of accomplishment, like completing a marathon,” muses Carnegie Mellon University mathematician Jeremy Avigad. “But it’s not quite either of those: It’s just a wonderful feeling when you’ve been thinking long and hard about something complex, difficult, and then—all of a sudden—it just comes together.”This feeling has driven mathematicians throughout history. Likewise, the way mathematicians pursue that feeling has changed little over the centuries. They […]

When considering the 1960s sitcoms Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, both of which featured women with supernatural powers navigating life with mortals, most people wouldn’t connect them with pursuing an engineering career. But Karen Panetta did. The sitcoms’ main characters—Samantha Stevens, a witch; and Jeannie, a genie—were “strong, empowered female leads using magic,” Panetta says, and they inspired her to become an engineer, as it was like sorcery to her.Panetta, an IEEE Fellow, is dean of graduate education at the Tufts University engineering school, in Medford, Mass., outside of Boston.Karen PanettaEmployer Tufts University, in Medford, Mass.Title Dean of the engineering school’s graduate educationMember grade IEEE FellowAlma maters Boston University and Northeastern University in BostonLike Samantha and Jeannie, Panetta has made magic happen, such as when she helped to invent the first CPU digital-twin simulator. Digital twins are computer simulation programs that track and adjust the operations of a physical device in detail. Her simulator has been adapted for several industrial uses, including by NASA to help design spacecraft.Panetta also mentors young women to encourage them to pursue a STEM career through the Nerd Girls program she launched at Tufts in 2000. Engineering undergraduate students work on technology for socially conscious projects such as environmental cleanup, renewable energy, and the development of assistive devices to improve mobility for people with disabilities.Panetta received this year’s IEEE Mildred Dresselhaus Medal for “contributions to computer vision and simulation algorithms, and for leadership in developing programs to promote STEM careers.” The award, sponsored by Google, was presented at the IEEE Honors Ceremony on 24 April in New York City.Receiving the medal is particularly special to Panetta, she says, because she knew its namesake: Mildred Dresselhaus, an IEEE Life Fellow who pioneered the study of carbon nanostructures at a time when researching physical and material properties of commonplace atoms was unpopular. She was a MIT professor of physics and electrical engineering, and died in […]

What could you do if you could make a circuit trace by just bending a piece of paper? How about bridging modern technologies and traditional handicrafts while providing opportunities for learning skills in both.As part of our interdisciplinary research into digital craftsmanship at the MEI Lab at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, we came across research that demonstrated how to impregnate paperlike material (technically a “nonwoven textile”) with the kind of liquid metal used to make conductive ink. Initially, the impregnated material is nonconductive because an insulating oxide layer forms that encapsulates microscopic droplets of the liquid metal. However, applying pressure via shaped molds will crack open the insulating layer, allowing neighboring particles to merge, and thus creating conducting regions in the shape of the mold.Both of us were introduced as children to origami and kirigami (similar to origami, except that cutting is allowed in addition to folding). We, along with our colleagues, decided to see if those traditional techniques could be used on the new material to eliminate the need for molds. Our goal was to allow crafters to make hybrid papercraft creations that contained easily integrated elements such as LEDs and motors.In particular, we were interested in the possibility of combining the separate stages of creating a papercraft object and adding electrical conductors. Previous approaches to creating electrified papercraft objects relied on adding a separate flexible conductor—such as adhesive copper tape—to the paper. This increases the effort required and runs the risk of creating open circuits as the conductive material conforms to the object’s shape. Isopropanol and a gallium-indium liquid material are used to impregnate a paperlike material that is 55 percent polyester and 45 percent cellulose. Electronic components such as LEDs and motors are held in place with masking tape. James ProvostOur first step was to see if the pressures involved in bending and cutting alone would be sufficient to create conductive traces. We became frequent visitors to our university’s materials science and engineering […]