The IEEE Young Professionals Bangalore Section Affinity Group was formed in 2000 and ever since then the young professionals team has been an integral part of section activities. Since its inception, the affinity group has organised numerous events that have stood out as a trademark and truly empowered technology.
Volunteer growth and member engagement has been a core focus for young professional operations. The young professional volunteers from Bangalore Section have stepped up to take larger responsibilities on a global scale such as chairing the IEEE Xtreme committee, IEEE Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technologies (SIGHT) committee etc. Several volunteers have been awarded with prestigious IEEE awards such as the Young Professional Achievement Award, Asia Pacific Outstanding YP Award etc. The affinity group also won the IEEE Young Professionals Hall of Fame award in 2017 and IEEE Region 10 Best Young Professionals Affinity group in 2015.
Over the past few years, the young professionals team has worked in close proximity with other IEEE societies such as Computer Society, Power and Energy society etc. and have initiated workshops such as Cyber Physical Workshop Series etc. to ensure that its members are updated with the latest trends in technology. Additionally, they have also aimed to partner with local developer communities to bring professionals from different domains and streams under one roof, thus extending their reach to all professional members and bringing in diversity in the kind of events they conduct. Some of the few major partnerships in the past have involved Drupal and iOS communities.
The Young Professionals team initiated their first annual young professional congress on 28th August 2015 at Christ University which was followed by their active involvement and organisation of the IEEE Region 10 Student/ Young-professionals/ Women in Engineering/ Life Member Congress from 25th-27th August, 2016 as part of IEEE Region 10 Fifty Year Celebrations. These congresses combine technical and leadership sessions to nurture volunteers to become tomorrow’s leaders.
IEEE Young Professionals have developed a strong connection with the industry and have aimed to strengthen the relevancy of IEEE Membership to industry. They have launched a highly successful program called “IEEE ELEVATE” to bridge the gap between the educational institutes and corporate world/startups by providing a platform for IEEE volunteers to develop and improve their skill set by interacting with professionals and Industry Leaders. Under this initiative, they have organised numerous industrial visits to ISRO, Nokia, General Electric, CDAC etc. and various technical workshops spread across a variety of technical areas such as Machine Learning, Swift, Cloud Computing, Android etc. Their focus to impart education in an effective manner has seen them put their efforts in conducting the Teachers-in-Service program by collaborating with the block education officers in Karnataka to train pre-university teachers on the application of engineering, science and mathematics by sharing real world experiences. They have trained over 250 teachers ever since the inception of this program and have helped to bring a positive change to the education system in rural India.
Frequent Student transition & Elevation Partnership programs have helped interested students learn about the young professionals and section activities and helped them transition from student membership to IEEE Young Professionals thus ensuring continuity of their membership. Students have also been apprised about India’s position in the field of research with the aim to equip them with the knowledge of technical writing and publishing under their #TechnicalWriteIndia campaign.