William Ratcliff
Former IEEE Area 3 director
Life senior member, 80; died 20 June
Ratcliff was the 2008–2009 director of IEEE Area 3 (Southeastern United States).
An lively IEEE volunteer, he led efforts to alter the IEEE Regional Actions board to the IEEE Member and Geographic Actions board.
He additionally helped develop and launch the IEEE MOVE (Cell Outreach utilizing Volunteer Engagement) program. The three automobiles within the IEEE-USA initiative present U.S. communities with energy and communications capabilities in areas affected by widespread outages on account of pure disasters.
Ratcliff started his profession in 1965 as {an electrical} engineer at Public Service Indiana, an electrical utility based mostly in Indianapolis. There he helped design bulk energy programs and developed engineering software program. He left in 1985 to hitch producer Gulfstream Aerospace, in Savannah, Ga., the place he was an engineering supervisor till 1994.
He earned a bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering from Purdue College, in West Lafayette, Ind.
Lembit Salasoo
GEsenior analysis scientist
Life member, 68; died 17 August
Salasoo was a scientist for 36 years on the Basic Electrical World Analysis Middle, in Niskayuna, N.Y.
He earned two bachelor’s levels, one in pc science in 1976 and the opposite in electrical engineering in 1978, each from the College of Sydney.
He joined the Electrical energy Fee of New South Wales, an Australian utility, as a energy engineer.
In 1982 he moved to the US 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 electrical energy 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 pc tomography tools together with the Gemini tube utilized in CT scanners.
He and his crew developed a instrument to investigate secondary electron emission warmth switch within the tubes. For his or her work, they obtained GE’s 1998 Dushman Award, which acknowledges contributions to the corporate.
Within the early 2000s, Salasoo shifted his focus to creating know-how for clear power transportation—specifically for hybrid-electric buses, locomotives, and mine vans. He was a part of the analysis crew that performed 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 creating monetary programs for GE’s Utilized Statistics Lab. His work concerned making GE Capital, the corporate’s monetary companies subsidiary, compliant as a systemically necessary monetary establishment. Ought to a SIFI fail, it may set off a monetary disaster, so it should adhere to strict rules. For his work, he obtained 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 local weather analysis crew in creating know-how that predicts and mitigates the formation of long-lasting cirrus clouds, generally often called contrails, produced by plane emissions. Beneath his management, the crew received a grant from the Superior Analysis Tasks Company–Power.
Karl Kay Womack
Pc engineer
Life Fellow, 90; died 10 July
Womack spent his profession engaged on early computer systems at IBM in New York Metropolis. He earned a grasp’s diploma in electrical engineering from Syracuse College, in New York.
He was an avid science fiction and fantasy reader, in response to his obituary.
Thomas M. Kurihara
Chair of IEEE Requirements Affiliation working teams
Life member, 89; died 24 Might
Kurihara was an lively volunteer for the IEEE Requirements Affiliation. He was chair of the working group that developed the IEEE 1512 sequence of requirements 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 Know-how Society, he chaired its clever transportation programs requirements 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 lively 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 non-public business earlier than changing into a marketing consultant.
Kurihara and his household had been despatched to Japanese-American internment camps throughout World Conflict II. After the battle ended, they resettled in St. Paul. He was a lifetime supporter of the Twin Cities chapter of the Japanese American Residents 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 Metropolis Committee, which promotes useful relationships between residents of the 2 cities and encourages peace between the US and Japan.
In honor of his mother and father, in 2010 Kurihara established the Earl Okay. and Ruth N. Tanbara Fund for Japanese American Historical past on the Minnesota Historic Society. The cash 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 Schooling Society and a member of quite a few IEEE boards and committees.
He enlisted within the U.S. Military in 1965 and served as a medic in Japan for 5 years. After returning to the US in 1970 as a significant within the Military Reserve, he enrolled on the College of Massachusetts in Amherst. He obtained a bachelor’s diploma in well being and bodily schooling in 1974. Two years later he earned a grasp’s diploma in schooling from Springfield Faculty, in Massachusetts. He later returned to the College of Massachusetts and in 1996 obtained a Ph.D. in schooling.
Reilly started his profession in 1972 as a bodily schooling instructor at St. Matthew’s Parish Faculty in Indian Orchard, Mass. After two years there, he left to show social research, math, and science at Our Woman of the Sacred Coronary heart Faculty 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 Faculty (now the Massachusetts Faculty of Liberal Arts), coaching educators.
In 1985 he joined Lanesborough Elementary Faculty as a pc instructor, and he taught there till he retired in 2011.
In 1992 he based and served as director of K12 Web, an internet communication community for lecturers that preceded the Web. From 1995 to 2001 he was director of EdNet@UMass, a Net-based skilled improvement community on the College of Massachusetts’s Faculty of Schooling.
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 Schooling and served because the 2009–2010 chair of its electrical and pc engineering division. He was president of the Nationwide Schooling Affiliation’s Lanesborough chapter thrice.
He obtained a number of IEEE awards together with the 2010 IEEE Sayle Award for Achievement in Schooling from the IEEE Schooling Society and the 2006 Wilson Transnational Award from IEEE Member and Geographic Actions.
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 College of Wisconsin in La Crosse in 1953, he enlisted within the U.S. Air Pressure. After his lively obligation led to 1957, he earned a grasp’s diploma in instrumentation engineering from the College of Michigan in Detroit and an MBA from the College of Colorado in Denver.
Throughout his profession at Martin Marietta, he labored on the Titan missile program, the NASA House Shuttle, and plenty of Federal Aviation Administration air visitors management programs.
An lively IEEE volunteer, he was editor in chief of IEEE Aerospace and Digital Methods Journal and served on the Aerospace and Digital Methods Society’s board of governors.
