Chapter Origination

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The IEEE-related activity, which finally had led to establishing the SP/AES Societies Chapter in Kiev, dates back to 1994 when the future chapter organizer was awarded by the Soros Grant to participate in the IEEE AP Conference in Seattle, WA, USA. In that time the IEEE for us was just the well known publisher of a number of remarkable journals that could be found in a couple the largest libraries; the copies of papers from them could be ordered from the former VINITI or UkrNIINTI. In the former USSR we even could not imagine that one can be an IEEE member. Political reasons for that, perhaps, disappeared in the independent Ukraine; however due to hard economic situation and low personal income, an engineer or scientist who really needed to join IEEE did not have any possibility to do it. For example, in 1994 my salary as the Full Professor of the State University was the equivalent of USD17. However, when in June 1994 in Seattle I got the rest of the Grant, which was awarded to me, after the organizers subtracted the cost of air ticket (they provided me with a ticket in business class) and accommodation, I felt myself rich enough to join IEEE (AP-S) directly during the Conference in Seattle. The same did a couple of other participants from Ukraine; among them, as I remember, O. Tretyakov and A. Timchenko were. In that time we thought that we were one of the first IEEE members from Ukraine. We did not know then that the Ukrainian community in Canada had recently sponsored some 50 memberships in the IEEE, and nominated the then Minister of Education as Chairman of Ukrainian Section. Those memberships were distributed among top officials often not interested in professional information and real activities (http://www.rocket.kharkov.ua/~euachapter/). In some time it became clear that such an artificial way of introducing IEEE units is not viable. Ukrainian electronics community needed an IEEE Chapter created by the normal way. In 1995 I was among 16 individuals who signed the petition for creating the IEEE Chapter based in Kharkov that was submitted to IEEE on April 28 by Prof. A.I. Nosich, the chapter organizer who joined IEEE earlier, holding a visiting professorship at the University in Ankara, Turkey. That Chapter is now known as the IEEE East Ukraine Joint Chapter of the AP, MTT, ED, AES, GRS, NPS & EMB Societies, and I am still a member of that great chapter at least as a member of MTT, GRS, and from time to time AP societies. Nevertheless, from the end of 90-s we felt the necessity and desire to create a separate chapter related with AES-S and SP-S in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev city, because we have quite strong community in the fields of Aerospace and Electronic Systems and Signal Processing mainly in the National Aviation University but also in several other institutions in Kiev. Kiev is located in the center of Ukraine about 500 km to the west from Kharkov. That idea was strongly supported by Alexander Nosich, the founder of the East Ukraine Joint Chapter. It was also effectively encouraged by Prof. Jozef Modelski who was IEEE Region 8 Vice-chair for Technical Activities in the years 2005-06. However, it was not so easy to find and consolidate at least 12 eligible IEEE AES-S and SP-S members in Kiev to sign the Petition (student members were not authorized for signing the petition in that time). Finally, this task was solved, and the Petition signed by 16 IEEE Members and agreed with Prof. V. Tarasenko, the Chairman of the Ukrainian IEEE Section, was sent on October 19, 2006 to IEEE Headquarter in Piscataway with copy to Alfred Hero, the IEEE Signal Processing Society President and Jim Leonard, the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society President as well as other relevant IEEE officers. Finally, by the letter of May 14 we were informed by Cecelia Jankowski, Managing Director Regional Activities on behalf of the IEEE Regional Activities Vice President, Pedro Ray, and IEEE Technical Activities Vice President, Peter Staecker that IEEE Ukraine (Kiev) Section – Signal Processing/Aerospace & Electronic Systems Joint Societies Chapter – has been formed with the effective date of the Chapter formation 7 May 2007. We consider the coincidence of this date with the date of the Radio Day – a celebration devoted to the demonstration of the first radio receiver by Alexander Popov as really symbolic.

 Felix Yanovsky, 

Founder of the Chapter

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