I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and a great start to the Holiday Season. I would also like to remind those who have not renewed their membership to do so before they get his with holiday shopping bills.

IEEE-LI has a lot to be thankful for. Our section is recognized and received Certificate of Recognition for meeting our retention goal for 2017 membership year. This recognition is significant since IEEE membership nationally is down. I thank our Membership Development committee, current society chairs as well as past active chairs for their efforts in making this possible. Below are the some of the highlights of 2017 and activities that have helped us retain members.

• Four successful and well-attended conferences organized by our sections. We had the IEEE-LISAT, and Microwave Symposium in Spring. The Photonics conference and Power and Electronic Symposium in the fall of 2017.
• Two successful and well attended co-sponsored conferences. International Energy and Sustainability conference IESC2017 at Farmingdale State College, and the CEWIT 2017 conference at Stony Brook University.
• Initiated and conducted monthly socials for networking. These socials have been very well received.
• Many technical seminars, and talks by various societies to help working engineers and professionals keeping up to date, with the technological advances in their specialization field. For a complete list of these events, please visit: https://ieee.li/calendar-of-events/
• Sponsored Student club activities at Hofstra and NYIT.
• Hosted the annual Award Banquet in Spring of 2017. Through the Award Banquet, our section recognizes many active members, volunteers, companies and organizations that support our section’s activities.

I wish you all happy holidays and hope to see you in many technical a,d social events for members in 2018 !!!!

Marj Issapour
Chair, IEEE Long Island Section