Every year, IEEE Region 8 (Africa, Europe, Middle East) recognises outstanding performance of Sections, Chapters, Affinity Groups and volunteers serving members and the technical community. This is a competitive process with nominations judged by the IEEE Region 8 Awards Committee.
The 2025 Region 8 Awards Ceremony was held during the 125th IEEE Region 8 Committee Meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia on 18 October 2025. These awards recognised contributions in IEEE fields of interest supporting members in Region 8 during 2024 in different categories with one Award presented in each category.
We are pleased to congratulate the IEEE UK and Ireland Society on Societal Implications of Technology (SSIT) Chapter on being awarded the 2025 IEEE Region 8 Medium Chapter of the Year Award for delivering excellent services to its members during 2024.
IEEE SSIT is a multi-disciplinary horizontal Society addressing Social Implications of Technology in its broadest sense. Its Technical areas include Humanitarian Technology; Ethics in Technology; Universal Access in Technology; Societal Impacts; Protecting the Planet; Gender Equality and Social Inclusion. It has an active role in Standardisation in relation to IEEE 7000 standards.
The IEEE UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter organises guest lectures across the year focused on topics of interest to the general membership of IEEE, SSIT Members and the wider community aligned with SSIT’s Technical Areas.
During 2024 the UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter organised and co-hosted 18 technical meetings with guest lecturers from around the world including a SSIT Distinguished Lecture, career talks related to robotics, technology predictions, Ethical concerns with Artificial Intelligence, Post Quantum Internet, Self-Driving Cars, Implications of Robotics for Public Policy and Climate Change Foundations. These lectures supported awareness of how to leverage technologies in an appropriate and ethical manner. The topics selected were designed to be of broad public interest to support professional development.
Recordings of technical meetings are available on IEEE.tv.
The IEEE UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter facilitated three SSIT Standard Groups to provide insights into the standards they are working on and published standards in the P7000 standard: Designing a Standard to Minimise Misuse of Technology for Coercive-Control (P2987); Automating Empathy in Human-AI Partnerships: Issues, Ethics and Governance (P7014.1 ) and Ain’t Misbehavin’: A Gentle Introduction To The IEEE Standard for Fail-Safe Design of Autonomous and Semi-Autonomous Systems (P7009).
The IEEE UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter assisted the Section in organising three IEEE Week meetings in London, Liverpool and Dublin with participation of 2024 IEEE President, Dr Tom Coughlin.
The UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter operationalized a successful collaboration program of cross-chapter technical meetings with a wide variety of stakeholders. This chapter has co-operated with: SSIT Chapters in Region 8, Canada (R 7) and the USA (Regions 1, 2, 3, 6); Computer Society Chapters (R1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8); Life Members and other UK and Ireland Society Chapters.
2025 Region 8 Medium Chapter of the Year Award
IEEE Region 8 and IEEE UK and Ireland Section congratulates the IEEE UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter Chair, Miriam Cunningham and Vice-Chair Dr Ali Hessami on this achievement.
The 2025 IEEE Region 8 Medium Chapter of the Year Award was presented to the IEEE UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter by: Prof. Dusanka Boskovic, Region 8 Director; Prof Kathleen Kramer, 2025 IEEE President; Prof. Vin Piuri, Region 8 Past Director; Tiziana Tambosso, Vice-Chair, Region 8 Technical Activities and Lee Crudgington, Region 8 Chapter Coordination Chair. It was accepted on behalf of the IEEE UK and Ireland SSIT Chapter by Paul M Cunningham, Chair, IEEE UK and Ireland Section.
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