William Ratcliff
Former IEEE Region 3 director
Life senior member, 80; died 20 June
Ratcliff was the 2008–2009 director of IEEE Region 3 (Southeastern United States).
An energetic IEEE volunteer, he led efforts to alter the IEEE Regional Actions board to the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities board.
He additionally helped develop and launch the IEEE MOVE (Mobile Outreach utilizing Volunteer Engagement) program. The three autos within the IEEE-USA initiative present U.S. communities with energy and communications capabilities in areas affected by widespread outages as a consequence of natural disasters.
Ratcliff started his profession in 1965 as {an electrical} engineer at Public Service Indiana, an electric utility based mostly in Indianapolis. There he helped design bulk power systems and developed engineering software. He left in 1985 to hitch producer Gulfstream Aerospace, in Savannah, Ga., the place he was an engineering manager till 1994.
He earned a bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering from Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Ind.
Lembit Salasoo
GEsenior analysis scientist
Life member, 68; died 17 August
Salasoo was a scientist for 36 years on the General Electric Global Research Center, in Niskayuna, N.Y.
He earned two bachelor’s levels, one in computer science in 1976 and the opposite in electrical engineering in 1978, each from the University of Sydney.
He joined the Electricity Commission of New South Wales, an Australian utility, as a power engineer.
In 1982 he moved to the USA after being accepted into Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in New York. He earned a grasp’s diploma in engineering in 1983 and a Ph.D. in electric power engineering in 1986.
After graduating, he joined GE Analysis’s superconducting magnet group, the place he centered initially on researching conduction-cooled MRI magnets.
He later labored on laptop tomography tools together with the Gemini tube utilized in CT scanners.
He and his workforce developed a software to research secondary electron emission heat transfer within the tubes. For his or her work, they acquired GE’s 1998 Dushman Award, which acknowledges contributions to the corporate.
Within the early 2000s, Salasoo shifted his focus to growing know-how for clean energy transportation—particularly for hybrid-electric buses, locomotives, and mine trucks. He was a part of the analysis workforce that carried out a proof-of-concept demonstration of a hybrid locomotive at Union Station in Los Angeles as a part of GE’s Ecomagination initiative, a clean-energy R&D program.
His space of analysis modified once more within the 2010s to growing financial systems for GE’s Utilized Statistics Lab. His work concerned making GE Capital, the corporate’s monetary providers subsidiary, compliant as a systemically important financial institution. Ought to a SIFI fail, it may set off a financial crisis, so it should adhere to strict rules. For his work, he acquired the 2015 Dushman Award.
From 2015 to 2020 he developed defect detection fashions at GE utilized in metallic additive manufacturing. In 2023 he led GE’s climate research team in growing know-how that predicts and mitigates the formation of long-lasting cirrus clouds, generally referred to as contrails, produced by plane emissions. Beneath his management, the workforce received a grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy.
Karl Kay Womack
Laptop engineer
Life Fellow, 90; died 10 July
Womack spent his profession engaged on early computer systems at IBM in New York City. He earned a grasp’s diploma in electrical engineering from Syracuse University, in New York.
He was an avid science fiction and fantasy reader, in response to his obituary.
Thomas M. Kurihara
Chair of IEEE Standards Association working teams
Life member, 89; died 24 Might
Kurihara was an energetic volunteer for the IEEE Standards Association. He was chair of the working group that developed the IEEE 1512 collection of standards for incident administration message units utilized by emergency administration facilities. He additionally chaired the IEEE 1609 working group, which developed requirements for next-generation V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communications.
A member of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, he chaired its intelligent transportation systems standards committee from 2017 to 2022.
After graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in 1957 from Stanford, he joined the U.S. Navy. By the point his energetic obligation led to 1969, he had attained the rank of lieutenant commander.
He then labored as an engineer for the U.S. authorities and in personal business earlier than turning into a marketing consultant.
Kurihara and his household have been despatched to Japanese-American internment camps throughout World War II. After the war ended, they resettled in St. Paul. He was a lifetime supporter of the Twin Cities chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, a nationwide group that advocates for civil rights and seeks to protect the heritage of Asian People. He was a member of the St. Paul–Nagasaki Sister City Committee, which promotes useful relationships between residents of the 2 cities and encourages peace between the USA and Japan.
In honor of his dad and mom, in 2010 Kurihara established the Earl Ok. and Ruth N. Tanbara Fund for Japanese American Historical past on the Minnesota Historical Society. The money is used to doc and protect the group’s historical past, notably in Minnesota.
Robert A. Reilly
Former IEEE Division VI director
Senior member, 76; died 21 Might
Reilly served because the 2015–2016 director of IEEE Division VI. He was a former president of the IEEE Education Society and a member of quite a few IEEE boards and committees.
He enlisted within the U.S. Army in 1965 and served as a medic in Japan for 5 years. After returning to the USA in 1970 as a significant within the Army Reserve, he enrolled on the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He acquired a bachelor’s diploma in well being and bodily education in 1974. Two years later he earned a grasp’s diploma in schooling from Springfield College, in Massachusetts. He later returned to the College of Massachusetts and in 1996 acquired a Ph.D. in schooling.
Reilly started his profession in 1972 as a bodily schooling trainer at St. Matthew’s Parish School in Indian Orchard, Mass. After two years there, he left to show social research, math, and science at Our Girl of the Sacred Coronary heart College in Springfield. He labored on the college, which closed in 2006, for 3 years.
From 1979 to 1982 he was an teacher at North Adams State School (now the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts), coaching educators.
In 1985 he joined Lanesborough Elementary School as a pc trainer, and he taught there till he retired in 2011.
In 1992 he based and served as director of K12 Net, a web-based communication community for academics that preceded the Internet. From 1995 to 2001 he was director of EdNet@UMass, a Net-based professional development community on the College of Massachusetts’s College of Education.
Reilly was a visiting scientist within the early 2000s at MIT, the place he researched computer-based purposes and cognitive studying theories.
He was a member of the American Society of Engineering Education and served because the 2009–2010 chair of its electrical and computer engineering division. He was president of the National Education Association’s Lanesborough chapter thrice.
He acquired a number of IEEE awards together with the 2010 IEEE Sayle Award for Achievement in Education from the IEEE Education Society and the 2006 Wilson Transnational Award from IEEE Member and Geographic Activities.
Ron B. Schroer
Aerospace engineer
Life senior member, 92; died 9 Might
Schroer was an aerospace engineer at Martin Marietta (now a part of Lockheed Martin) in Denver for greater than 30 years.
After receiving bachelor’s levels in chemistry and bodily science from the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse in 1953, he enlisted within the U.S. Air Force. After his energetic obligation led to 1957, he earned a grasp’s diploma in instrumentation engineering from the University of Michigan in Detroit and an MBA from the University of Colorado in Denver.
Throughout his profession at Martin Marietta, he labored on the Titan missile program, the NASA Space Shuttle, and various Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control methods.
An energetic IEEE volunteer, he was editor in chief of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine and served on the Aerospace and Digital Programs Society’s board of governors.
