The IEEE Board of Directors shapes the future direction of IEEE and is committed to ensuring IEEE remains a strong and vibrant organization—serving the needs of its members and the engineering and technology community worldwide—while fulfilling the IEEE mission of advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.
This article features IEEE Board of Directors members Leila De Floriani, Kathy Herring Hayashi, and Vincenzo Piuri.
IEEE Fellow Leila De Floriani
Director, Division VIII
De Floriani is a mathematician, computer scientist, and educator with academic experience in Europe and the United States. She is a pioneer in data visualization and geometric modeling. Her work on multi-resolution terrain modeling and visualization has been extensively used in geographic information systems, video games, flight simulators, and web-based terrain navigation tools. Her recent work on topology-based analysis resulted in software tools for tree segmentation and reconstruction from big forestry data acquired through lidar. These tools have been used to track forest characteristics in connection with carbon emission evaluation and forecasting forest evolution.
As the 2020 president of the IEEE Computer Society, De Floriani established a permanent committee on Diversity and Inclusion. Additionally, she strengthened the society’s leadership in open access and open science—focusing on research reproducibility, which led to a roadmap for professional societies. She is also a member of the IEEE Conferences Committee.
Having authored more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific publications, De Floriani served as editor in chief of the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics from 2015 to 2018. She introduced research reproducibility projects by publishing papers enhanced with reproducible code and data.
De Floriani is a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition and Eurographics Association. She was named a pioneer by the Solid Modeling Association designation that honors early contributors and those who have expanded the field. She also received the IEEE Computer Society Golden Core recognition for her long-standing service to the society.
She is also an inducted member of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Community Visualization Academy and the IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu honor society.
IEEE Senior Member Kathy Herring Hayashi
Director, Region 6: Western U.S.
SemiCon Headshot Central
Kathy Herring Hayashi has been involved in the semiconductor industry her entire career. She has developed, deployed, and analyzed advanced software tools to create computer and mobile phone chips. She designed advanced in-house CAD software tools for the semiconductor industry, transitioned to commercial electronic design automation tools, and then brought her professional leadership to focus on semiconductor-yield solutions. Herring Hayashi currently works with semiconductor workflows in large-scale computer environments.
Herring Hayashi has served in a wide variety of leadership roles, interfacing within many levels of IEEE. She has a track record of projects that embrace innovation and community leadership. As the IEEE Region 6 director, Herring Hayashi has led region-wide initiatives related to semiconductors, engaging young professionals and supporting sustainable and global humanitarian related technologies. In this role, she also establishes Board-level policies and interfaces with IEEE volunteer leadership. She serves as Vice Chair of the IEEE Global Semiconductors ad hoc and is a member of the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) and IEEE-USA Board of Directors.
She says that by working together with IEEE members, the IEEE community can help others reach career goals by showing them the full benefits of the organization.
Herring Hayashi has received many honors. She was named one of the Women of Influence in Engineering from the San Diego Business Journal, and she received a Pinnacle Award from Athena, which recognized her as one of San Diego’s outstanding technology leaders. She also received the IEEE MGA Innovation Award for initiating the industry IEEE Evening of Innovation collaboration for members at the IEEE Honors Ceremony. Herring Hayashi is a member of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu.
IEEE Fellow Vincenzo Piuri
Director, Region 8: Africa, Europe, Middle East
Vincenzo Piuri
Piuri is a scientist, educator, and community leader. His theoretical research deepened interdisciplinary aspects of artificial intelligence to allow for adaptivity to evolving environmental situations and operational needs. His scientific achievements have enhanced applications in industry, the environment, biometrics, and ambient intelligence. Piuri’s original research results have been published in more than 400 international journals, conference proceedings, and books.
A member of the IEEE Computer, Computational Intelligence, and Instrumentation and Measurement societies, Piuri has served scientific and professional communities and IEEE for almost 40 years. He has spent the last 15 years in worldwide leadership roles.
In his IEEE volunteer activities, Piuri focuses on serving with a human-centered personalized approach, empowering everyone in the community to be leaders in technology and innovation, and embracing emerging technologies. By nurturing local communities, supporting underserved groups and geographical areas, and promoting cooperation, he has been a champion of proactively ensuring equal opportunities and promoting diversity and inclusion.
Piuri was the past editor in chief of the IEEE Systems Journal and former associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing; he has also served as associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Computers, the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, and IEEE Access.
In addition to being an honorary professor at several universities around the world, he is a distinguished scientist of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Piuri received the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society Technical Award in 2020 and in 2019, he was inducted into the IEEE Technical Activities Board Hall of Honor.
