What is a Fellow?
The grade of Fellow recognizes unusual distinction in the profession and shall be conferred only by invitation of the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE’s designated fields of interest.
Requirements
Nominator — Any person, including non-members, are eligible to serve as a nominator with the following exceptions: members of the IEEE Board of Directors, members of the IEEE Fellow Committee, IEEE Technical Society/Council Fellow Evaluating Committee Chairs, members of IEEE Technical Society/Council Evaluating Committee reviewing the nomination, or IEEE Staff. Self-nomination is not permitted.
Candidate — The person must be an IEEE Senior Member at the time the nomination is submitted; his/her IEEE Membership dues must be current, and he/she must have completed five years of IEEE Membership. Note: IEEE affiliate membership, does not apply. The candidate cannot be a member of the IEEE Board of Directors, the IEEE Fellow Committee, IEEE Technical Society/Council Fellow Evaluating Committee Chair, or a member of IEEE Technical Society/Council Evaluating Committees reviewing the nomination.
Evaluation Process
The process consists of two evaluations. The first evaluation is completed by the IEEE Society/Technical Council that is identified on the nomination form. The IEEE Society/Technical Council evaluation is extremely important, because it is an impartial and even-handed view of the nominee’s merit, by persons who are familiar with his or her work. Once the IEEE Society/Technical Council evaluation is completed, their comments and scores are given to the IEEE Fellow Committee for the second evaluation. Society/Technical Council’s Fellow evaluations that are not received by the 15 June deadline will be deemed incomplete and will not be forwarded for consideration to the IEEE Fellow Evaluation Committee.
The nomination form is evaluated twice: first by the IEEE Society/Technical Council and second by the Judges on the IEEE Fellow Committee. These Judges are IEEE Fellows, but they may not have worked in the exact area of expertise of the Nominee. Your goal, as a Nominator, is to make the cited contributions of the Nominee easy to identify and to make their importance and impact easy to understand and verify.
Include in the nomination sufficient background material about the outstanding contributions of the Nominee; which you cited and why they are important. Describe the state of the art prior to the Nominee’s contributions and highlight the significance of the contributions in this context. Finally, summarize how the Nominee overcame the challenges involved. Include examples, if appropriate, illustrating the impact of the Nominee’s work. Such impact might include how the Nominee’s contributions paved the way for future contributors.
All nomination materials are forwarded in confidence to the IEEE Fellow Committee. The IEEE Fellow Committee has 51 members plus a chair. All committee members are IEEE Fellows and selected to represent the 10 IEEE Regions, and have expertise in the technical areas represented by IEEE Societies/Technical Councils.
The IEEE Fellow Committee recommends nominees to the IEEE Board of Directors, according to the following criteria:
- Significant contributions as Application Engineer/Practitioner, Educator, Research Engineer/Scientist, and Technical Leader.
- Evidence of technical accomplishments and realization of significant impact to society
- Evaluation by the IEEE Society/Technical Council selected by the nominator
- Confidential opinions of references and endorsers
- Service to professional engineering societies
- Total years in the profession
Each nominee is rated numerically on the basis of this information.
Deadline
All forms (nomination, reference, and endorsement) must be received by 7 February (11:59 p.m. ET). NO EXCEPTIONS WILL BE MADE
Contact
IEEE Fellow Activities Staff: fellows@ieee.org
How to nominate a candidate
Please visit the IEEE Fellow home page at : www.ieee.org/go/fellows
