Nominees for Second Vice President

  Sattupathu V. Sankaran

Position statement. The IEEE Computer Society should sensitize itself to cater to the current needs and employment challenges of the large member population in Regions 1 through 7 who have contributed to the significant growth of the Society over many years. The Society should at the same time harness the enormous membership talent and potential available in Regions 8, 9, and 10 (BRIC countries, for example) to make it truly global. Fresh thinking and innovation should energize the approach and implementation in coming years to increase the value to members and the perception of the same.

The wealth of information in standards and in the Computer Society Digital Library should be judiciously split and packaged to be within reach of SME companies and individuals, while enhancing the Computer Society’s revenue. With significant growth in student members, the active help of graduates-of-the-last-decade members should be channeled to track and retain the graduating student members, who are the future of the IEEE and the Computer Society.

Biography. Sankaran received a BS in electrical engineering from Jadavpur University and an MS in control systems from the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked in industry for more than 30 years in India and the US, including IBM and BHEL in India and Westinghouse, EPRI, and Duke Power in the US. Sankaran’s interests focus on industry research and development, power plant controls, modeling and simulation, industry-academic relations, and general management functions. He was senior professor and associate dean at the International Institute of Information Technology-Bangalore before moving on to corporate IT consulting.

Sankaran was a recipient of the 1987 FICCI Award to BHEL for outstanding industrial research in India and the 1992 Society for Computer Simulation Industry Technology Award for EPRI’s mobile training simulator.

A recipient of the IEEE Millennium Medal, Sankaran currently serves as 2009 vice president for chapter activities of the Computer Society. He served in IEEE’s Bangalore section, rising from Executive Committee member in 1997 to chairman in 2002-2003 and helped groom the section to mature levels, with membership development awards in three consecutive years. Sankaran also served as membership development chair for R10 from 2004 to 2006, R10 becoming the largest in the IEEE during that period.

  Jeffrey M. Voas

Position statement. I have been a member of the IEEE Computer Society for more than 20 years, and I have served in a variety of volunteer positions, including program chair, general chair, and editorial board member.

Simply put, we are today in a downward financial spiral. If the current predictions are true, or even close, we will go down to reserves of around $5 million in the next 24 months, barely enough to cover a month or two of expenses.

Expenses have been cut and continue to be cut, however you can only cut so deep. I am a firm advocate for revenue generation and, given my entrepreneurial background, I advocate an aggressive, albeit somewhat risky, approach to spending our resources on revenue creation instead of continuous cost-cutting. No risk, no gain.

Having said that, I also believe in aggressive market analysis before product launch to reduce such risks. While I know that the Computer Society, as well as the IEEE, recognizes this, I believe we have a long way to go here to improve.

If given the opportunity to be your second vice president, these are the ideas I wish to bring to the Executive Committee and turn into standard operating practices.

Biography. Jeffrey M. Voas is currently director of systems assurance at SAIC and is an SAIC technical fellow. Before joining SAIC, Voas was the chief scientist and cofounder of Cigital.

Voas has been highly active in the software engineering research community for more than 18 years. He has given numerous keynote lectures and has performed many program chair, general chair, and program committee roles for the IEEE. Voas has served the IEEE Computer Society as a member of volunteer bodies that include the Conference Publications Operations Committee, Electronic Products and Services Board, and Board of Governors.

A senior member of the IEEE, Voas holds two US patents and has authored more than 190 publications. His interests are in various aspects of trust, including software testing, reliability, safety, fault tolerance, and certification.

Voas received a BS in computer engineering from Tulane University and an MS and PhD in computer science from the College of William and Mary. He then served a two-year postdoc for the National Research Council at NASA-Langley between 1990 and 1992.

Voas has received honors that include the IEEE Reliability Society’s Reliability Engineer of the Year (2000), the IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000), and the IEEE Computer Society Golden Core award (2009).