Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

• 1. Introduction

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  The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, known worldwide as the IEEE, traces its founding to 1884, when electrical engineering was barely a discipline at all. Today, more than 486,000 STEM professionals across the globe hold membership in this organization. What began as a single American society has become one of the most consequential bodies in the history of technology, shaping the standards and science behind nearly every electronic device on the planet. How did a niche professional association born in the nineteenth century grow into a force that now claims to produce over 30% of the world's published literature in electrical, electronics, and computer engineering? And what happens when an organization built on open knowledge collides with geopolitics?

• 2. Two Rivals, One Organization

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  The American Institute of Electrical Engineers was the older and larger of the two groups that eventually became the IEEE. Founded in 1884, it dominated the field for decades. Then, in 1912, a rival body called the Institute of Radio Engineers emerged. The AIEE initially overshadowed the IRE, but the newer organization drew students with particular energy, and by the mid-1950s the IRE had grown larger. The two organizations merged in 1963, forming the IEEE as it exists today. The combined body set up a corporate office in New York City, while an operations center in Piscataway, New Jersey, opened in 1975 to handle the day-to-day business. Internationally, the Australian Section of the IEEE formed in 1972 and operated for more than a decade before splitting in 1985 into separate sections organized by state and territory.

• 3. Publishing on a Global Scale

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  Approximately 200 peer-reviewed journals and magazines carry the IEEE name, making the organization one of the largest publishers of technical literature in the world. Beyond journals, the IEEE publishes more than 1,700 conference proceedings every year. All of this output, along with material from several hundred annual conferences the IEEE sponsors, is gathered into the IEEE Electronic Library, accessible through a platform called IEEE Xplore on a subscription or per-purchase basis. The organization also produces tutorials and formal standards through its standardization committees. For authors submitting work, the IEEE maintains its own editorial style guide based on the Chicago Manual of Style, offered in both Microsoft Word and LaTeX templates. In April 2024, the IEEE made a notable editorial decision: it banned the use of Lenna test images from its journals and announced it would decline any paper that contained them.

• 4. Standards, Societies, and Structure

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  Thirty-nine technical societies sit inside the IEEE, each devoted to a specific area of knowledge, offering their own publications, conferences, and networking opportunities. Governing the global membership is a structure of ten regions, each made up of sections that serve members and volunteers directly. A reorganization is planned to take effect on the 1st of January 2028, merging Regions 1 and 2 into a single Region 2 while splitting out a new Region 11 from the existing Region 10. Supporting the human side of membership is a unit called Membership Geographic Activities, which focuses on recruiting and retaining members and creates opportunities for volunteers to attend conferences and organize technical, STEM, and humanitarian events through a platform called vTools.

• 5. Foundation and Philanthropy

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  The IEEE Foundation was incorporated in 1973 as a separate charitable body with a close relationship to the IEEE itself. Its original purpose was narrow: to accept and administer donations for the IEEE Awards program. Donations eventually grew beyond that need, and the foundation's scope expanded to include unrestricted funds alongside donor-designated funds for educational, humanitarian, historical preservation, and peer recognition programs. By the end of 2014, the foundation's total assets stood at nearly $45 million, divided roughly equally between unrestricted and donor-designated funds. Membership on the foundation's Board of Directors carries a requirement that all directors be active IEEE members, and one third must be current or former members of the IEEE Board of Directors. In September 2008, the IEEE History Committee launched the IEEE Global History Network, an initiative that now redirects to the Engineering and Technology History Wiki.

• 6. Politics at the Standards Table

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  In May 2019, IEEE moved to restrict Huawei employees from peer reviewing or editing papers, citing what it described as the severe legal implications of U.S. government sanctions against Huawei. The ban did not touch Huawei's rights inside IEEE's standard-setting body; employees could still vote, attend standards meetings, submit proposals, and comment on new standards. Even so, the decision drew outrage from Chinese scientists on social media, and some professors in China cancelled their memberships in protest. The restrictions lasted only weeks. On the 3rd of June 2019, after receiving clearance from the United States government, the IEEE lifted the editorial and peer review ban on Huawei. The episode illustrated the pressure an international technical body faces when the governments of its members come into conflict.

• 7. War, Propaganda, and Editorial Accountability

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  On the 26th of February 2022, the chair of the IEEE Ukraine Section, Ievgen Pichkalov, publicly called on IEEE members to freeze activities and membership in Russia and asked the organization to issue a public disapproval of Russia's invasion. Three weeks later, on the 17th of March 2022, IEEE Spectrum published an article framed as a Q&A interview with IEEE Russia Siberia senior member Roman Gorbunov, presenting what editors described as a plurality of views among IEEE members. Activist Anna Rohrbach responded on the 30th of March 2022 with an open letter arguing that the article repeated common narratives in Russian propaganda and requesting that IEEE Spectrum acknowledge publishing a piece that furthered misinformation. A few days later, on the 6th of April 2022, editors added a note to the piece apologizing for not providing adequate context at the time of publication, though the original article was left unchanged. The controversy left unresolved questions about how a global professional body should handle speech that its own members regard as disinformation, a tension the IEEE has not yet formally resolved.