IEEE Basis President is Empowering Future Engineers

All through his 30 years of volunteering, Delimar has labored to construct a neighborhood for college students. He based the College of Zagreb’s IEEE pupil department and later turned its chair. He went on to turn into the department’s counselor and a member of the IEEE Croatia Part’s pupil actions committee. He has held quite a few IEEE management positions, and he served on the group’s Board of Administrators.

To interact extra pupil members and assist join pupil branches worldwide, he helped discovered the IEEEXtreme programming competitors, an annual, 24-hour digital contest through which groups compete to resolve laptop coding issues.

He’s persevering with his mission because the 2025 president of the IEEE Basis, specializing in how the group’s charitable associate might help college students and younger professionals prosper. Due to donations, the Basis is ready to fund scholarships, analysis and journey grants, and fellowships in partnership with IEEE societies and sections.

“Supporting IEEE packages is one thing that I’m very happy with,” Delimar says. His targets as president, he says, are to extend consciousness of the Basis’s donor-supported packages and to steer extra folks to assist its causes.

Supporting the subsequent era of engineers

After studying about IEEE from a number of of his professors who had been members, Delimar joined the group in 1994 throughout his second 12 months on the College of Zagreb. However with out a pupil department on the faculty, there was no local people for pupil members. That 12 months he efficiently petitioned IEEE to ascertain the primary pupil department in Croatia. He served as its chair till he graduated together with his EE bachelor’s diploma in 1996.

By means of his involvement, he was concurrently “studying concerning the group and volunteering,” he says, including that it helped him higher perceive IEEE.

After graduating, he joined his alma mater as a educating assistant and researcher. He was later employed as a college member. He additionally carried out analysis in energy engineering beneath his former professor, IEEE Senior Member Zdravko Hebel, who is thought for his work on the Croatian energy transmission community.

Delimar continued to volunteer, serving as chair of pupil actions for the IEEE Croatia Part till 2001. He additionally was the counselor for the coed department.

“For me, IEEE Basis Day highlights how the IEEE Basis is greater than a charitable group—it’s the coronary heart of IEEE’s philanthropic efforts, the place generosity meets impression.”

Inside 4 years of his steering, “the department was collaborating with different branches in not solely Area 8 [Europe, Middle East, and Africa] but in addition world wide,” he says. He determined it was time to unfold his wings, and he started volunteering for the area.

His first place was because the 2005–2006 vice chair of the IEEE Area 8 pupil actions committee, which is chargeable for pupil packages and advantages. On the time, IEEE was having hassle retaining pupil members, he says.

“College students would graduate and never renew their membership,” he says. “There was additionally a problem with a few of the pupil branches, as they weren’t speaking nicely or collaborating with one another.”

Delimar and IEEE Member Ricardo Varela, who was additionally on the committee, brainstormed tips on how to higher have interaction college students and improve their participation. The 2 males wished to create an occasion that may enable college students the world over to take part on the identical time.

“It seemed like a really loopy thought,” he says, “as a result of it’s nighttime for one half of the world and daytime for the opposite half. You possibly can’t even maintain a gathering on the identical time in all places, not to mention an exercise.”

To beat the time-zone difficulty, Delimar and Varela devised a 24-hour competitors on programming, which was common amongst engineering college students on the time, Delimar says. Having the competition happen over 24 hours ensured all contributors had been on equal footing, he says.

Forty groups participated within the first IEEE Xtreme competitors, which was held in October 2006. It has since grown in recognition. Final 12 months almost 8,800 groups from 75 nations participated.

Though he’s not concerned within the contest anymore, Delimar says he’s happy with its success.

In 2007 he turned vice chair of the IEEE Area 8 membership actions committee, which plans occasions for members. He was then elected because the 2010–2011 Area 8 director, and in 2013 he turned IEEE secretary. Each are Board-level positions.

“Being part of the IEEE Board of Administrators gave me the chance to find out about and serve on a number of fascinating committees that had been making an attempt to succeed in explicit targets on the time, similar to rising member engagement, enhancing coaching for brand new IEEE officers, and refining IEEE’s skill to shortly adapt to the fast-changing atmosphere,” Delimar says.

His time on the board impressed him to advocate for the formation of an advert hoc committee on European public coverage actions. He served as its chair, and in 2018 it turned a everlasting committee. Renamed the IEEE European Public Coverage Committee, it helps members of the European Union and European Free Commerce Affiliation in creating technology-related insurance policies. Delimar was its chair till 2020.

“IEEE has been in a position to present a united, unbiased voice of what’s good for expertise and what’s good for Europe,” he says. “It has been very nicely acquired by the European Fee.”

In 2016 Pedro Ray, the 2010 IEEE president, requested Delimar to be a volunteer for the IEEE Basis, and he joined the board the subsequent 12 months.

“It’s been a really rewarding expertise,” he says.

Main the IEEE Basis

Delimar says that his essential purpose as president is to extend consciousness amongst IEEE members of the Basis and its packages.

“The Basis helps greater than 250 funds and packages, and I need to strengthen its connections and partnerships throughout IEEE,” he says.

To perform that purpose, the Basis has been elevating its visibility. In 2023 it celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a reception in New York Metropolis. Different celebratory actions had been held that 12 months on the IEEE Imaginative and prescient, Innovation, and Challenges Summit and Honors Ceremony and the IEEE Energy & Power Society Basic Assembly.

Final 12 months the Basis established 16 February as IEEE Basis Day. The annual celebration marks the day in 1973 when the philanthropic group was launched. The inaugural occasion was designed to mirror the Basis’s imaginative and prescient of being the center of IEEE’s charitable giving. This 12 months’s celebration targeted on college students and younger professionals, highlighting beneficiaries of scholarships, grants, and fellowships and the impression they’ve had on the recipients.

“For me, IEEE Basis Day highlights how the IEEE Basis is greater than a charitable group—it’s the coronary heart of IEEE’s philanthropic efforts, the place generosity meets impression,” Delimar says. “Our donor-supported packages—like scholarships, journey grants, awards, analysis grants, and competitions—are greater than monetary assist for our college students and younger professionals; they’re catalysts for making desires come true.”

He says he needs to have interaction members who aren’t sometimes donors and thus broaden the Basis’s attain.

“I need to allow folks with completely different skilled journeys, financial backgrounds, cultures, and geography to have the ability to take part as donors for the IEEE Basis,” he says. “Each donor—whether or not they’re a pupil, younger skilled, or IEEE life member—is essential.”

Go to the IEEE Basis web site to find upcoming occasions, study methods to make a present, and see how the group’s charitable efforts are making an impression.