Keith Hipel, who is University Professor of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo and currently holds the position of Past President of the Academy of Science (Royal Society of Canada), has been an active member of our IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) Society for twenty-five years. On October 15th, 1996, Keith was formally inducted as Fellow of IEEE at the 1996 IEEE International Conference on SMC held in Beijing, China, along with Bill Gruver and Pierre Borne. Keith has many fond memories of working with Bill, Pierre and many other fine colleagues and friends over many years to assist in the development of our unique Society. Bill, who passed away on February 29th this year, is sorely missed by his many friends within SMC, all of whom greatly appreciate the many contributions that he made to enhance our admirable Society.
Recently, Keith felt honoured to receive two prestigious international awards. Specifically, on February 8th, 2016, the United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE) formally announced that Keith was elected Foreign Member of the NAE in recognition of his distinguished contributions to engineering “For development and application of conflict resolution techniques from a systems engineering perspective”. A formal Induction Ceremony will take place at the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, DC, on Sunday, October 9th, 2016.
In Japan, Keith was recipient of the DPRI Award for 2016 from the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) of Kyoto University at the DPRI Annual Meeting held on February 23rd, 2016. Keith was granted the DPRI Award for his “outstanding contributions in research and education” and enjoys the privilege of being a lifetime DPRI Fellow. Subsequent to the induction ceremony, Keith delivered a keynote address entitled “Technology and Policy Options for a Low-Emission Energy System in Canada”, which is based on a recently released Council of Canadian Academies publication prepared by the Expert Panel on Energy Use and Climate Change, for which Keith was a Co-chair.
Keith has served our SMC Society in many ways over the years and is presently an elected Member of the Board of Governors, Co-chair of the Technical Committee on Conflict Resolution, Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on SMC: Systems, and Member of the Fellow Selection Committee. He is holder of the Joseph G. Wohl Outstanding Career Award (2012) and Norbert Wiener Award (2000) from our Society; he is serving this year on the selection committees for these two awards. After the NAE Induction Ceremony in Washington DC in early October this year, Keith looks forward to participating in the 2016 IEEE International Conference on SMC which will be held in the enchanting city of Budapest where the great John von Neumann was born.