Emily Sopensky Meritorious Service Award
2024’s winner is
Prof. Fei-Yue Wang
Professor, Formerly The University of Arizona, Currently Chinese Academy of Sciences
Fei-Yue Wang (S’87–M’89–SM’94–F’03) received his Ph.D. degree in computer and
systems engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA, in 1990. He
joined The University of Arizona in 1990 and became a Professor and the Director of the
Robotics and Automation Laboratory and the Program in Advanced Research for Complex
Systems. In 1999, he founded the Intelligent Control and Systems Engineering Center at
the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China, under the
support of the Outstanding Chinese Talents Program from the State Planning Council, and
in 2002, was appointed as the Director of the Key Laboratory of Complex Systems and
Intelligence Science, CAS, and Vice President of Institute of Automation, CAS in 2006. He
found CAS Center for Social Computing and Parallel Management in 2008, and became
the State Specially Appointed Expert and the Founding Director of the State Key
Laboratory for Management and Control of Complex Systems in 2011.
His current research focuses on methods and applications for parallel intelligence, social
computing, and knowledge automation. He is a Fellow of INCOSE, IFAC, ASME, and AAAS.
In 2007, he received the National Prize in Natural Sciences of China, numerous best papers
awards from IEEE Transactions, and became an Outstanding Scientist of ACM for his work
in intelligent control and social computing. He received the IEEE ITS Outstanding
Application and Research Awards in 2009, 2011, and 2015, respectively, the IEEE SMC
Norbert Wiener Award in 2014, and became the IFAC Pavel J. Nowacki Distinguished
Lecturer in 2021.
Since 1997, he has been serving as the General or Program Chair of over 30 IEEE,
INFORMS, IFAC, ACM, and ASME conferences. He was the President of the IEEE ITS
Society from 2005 to 2007, the IEEE Council of RFID from 2019 to 2021, the Chinese
Association for Science and Technology, USA, in 2005, the American Zhu Kezhen
Education Foundation from 2007 to 2008, the Vice President of the ACM China Council
from 2010 to 2011, the Vice President and the Secretary General of the Chinese
Association of Automation from 2008 to 2018, the Vice President of IEEE Systems, Man,
and Cybernetics Society from 2019 to 2021. He was the Founding Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of
the International Journal of Intelligent Control and Systems from 1995 to 2000, IEEE ITS
Magazine from 2006 to 2007, IEEE/CAA JOURNAL OF AUTOMATICA SINICA from 2014-
2017, China’s Journal of Command and Control from 2015-2021, and China’s Journal of
Intelligent Science and Technology from 2019 to 2021. He was the EiC of the IEEE
Intelligent Systems from 2009 to 2012, IEEE TRANSACTIONS on Intelligent Transportation
Systems from 2009 to 2015, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL Social Systems
from 2017 to 2020. Currently, he is the President of CAA’s Supervision Council, and the EiC
of IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Vehicles.
Call for Nominations for IEEE CRFIDÂ
Deadline 10 May 2024 
The Council on IEEE RFID is currently seeking nominations for the IEEE CRFID Emily Sopensky Meritorious Service Award.
Please send nominations (nomination letter and any supporting materials) to Luca Catarinucci (luca.catarinucci@unisalento.it).
This service award is given to members who have, exceptionally, served the council on RFID to advance its goals, mission, reaching out to the members, and enhancing the visibility of the Council within IEEE and globally. The winner will receive a plaque, certificate, and honorarium of $1000.00. The deadline for receiving materials is 10 May 2024.
Emily Sopensky Biography: Â A business consultant, Emily Sopensky specialized in strategies for technology companies. After 20 years in Central Texas, she became the second IEEE-USA Fellow to the U.S. State Department in Washington, DC. Her technology focus was Internet and web development as well as radio frequency identification. From 1995, she worked with Texas Instruments on RFID and their burgeoning RFID product lines, beginning with intelligent transportation systems. After moving to the DC area, she co-founded a consortium dedicated to the use of wireless digital technology in healthcare in 2008. With the Intelligent Healthcare Association, she chaired the Awards program to recognize healthcare facilities and providers using these technologies to contain cost and improve patient safety. Ms. Sopensky, a Wharton MBA, received her technology training on the job and through IEEE. She led the formation of the IEEE Council on RFID in 2015 which became a permanent council of the IEEE in 2022. Sadly, she lost her battle with cancer in 2019.
Past Winners
2023
Gisele Bennett, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, MEPSS LLC
Dr. Bennett is co-Founder and managing member of MEPSS LLC, a software-based startup for decision support and automation. She has held academic, industry, and research positions for over 30 years. These positions include Senior VP for Strategic and Research Initiatives and Professor at Florida Tech, numerous positions at Georgia Tech and founding member of startups. At Georgia Tech, she held the positions of Regents’ Researcher, Associate Vice President for Research (AVPR), Faculty Integration, and Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. As AVPR, she was responsible for increasing research collaboration between academic and applied research. At the Georgia Tech Research Institute, she held the Glenn Robinson Chair in Electro-Optics, founded the Logistics and Maintenance Applied Research Center and as the Director for the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory grew the research portfolio from industry and DoD.
She is a member of the Army Science Board, the Editor-in-Chief for Applied Optics, a member of the Strategic Planning Committee for Optica, a member of the AIP Investment Advisory Committee, and is the 2024 Vice President for Optica. She served on the board of directors for Optica (formally OSA) and was the President for the IEEE Council on RFID. She is a visiting lecturer for SPIE and Optica. Board of Trustees for Riverside Research Institute and is on the Georgia Tech Research and Economic Development External Advisory Board. She has patents, numerous publications, and contributes to ISO in developing standards for shipping container monitoring. She is a Fellow with Optica and SPIE. She has received numerous awards including Superior Civilian Service Medal, Department of the Army, the second highest award of the Department of the Army and the Commander’s Award for Public Service, Department of the Army.
Dr. Bennett holds a B.S.E and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Central Florida. She earned her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Certificate in Management of Technology from Georgia Institute of Technology.
2022
Paul and Merrily Hartmann
Paul Hartmann is President of RF SAW Inc. (https://rfsaw.com/) He has over 40 years of experience in designing various RF  electronic products that are now widely used in many communications networks. Prior to joining RF SAW, Paul served as the founding Vice President of Engineering and CTO of Applied Digital Access (ADA) in San Diego. Prior to that, he worked at Collins Radio/Rockwell International at Richardson, TX where in the mid-1970s, he led the design team that developed the first successful digital microwave system developed in the United States. Paul Hartmann holds B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and M.S. in Management and Administrative Science from the University of Texas at Dallas. He has 15 patents and authored numerous technical papers and magazine articles in IEEE and trade publications. Paul was deeply involved with the IEEE Communications Society, serving on its Board of Governors and in various chair roles for ICC and GLOBECOM conferences. He then became the founding chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on RFID.
Merrily Hartmann retired from SBC Communications, Inc. (formerly Southwestern Bell and now AT&T) in 2000 with 25 years of service. She worked there in various roles, from equipment engineering and network planning to business and sales. At retirement, she was Executive Director of Global Markets Sales Support, managing all sales operations for SBC’s largest customers. Prior to that, she worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories (Indian Hill – Naperville, IL) as a Senior Technical Aide and was involved in 1AESS Processor Project. Merrily received her B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Merrily has an extraordinary record of service as a volunteer conference organizer with the IEEE Communications Society where she served on its Board of Governors as Director of Conference Operations. She applied all her experience and talent in that area to the IEEE RFID conference series and tirelessly trained the young, inexperienced, and emerging volunteer engineers to run the conference including the financial aspects.
Paul and Merrily Hartmann both stood at the very origin of IEEE RFID conference series. They served  in various executive and chair roles for it, starting from the very first conference which took place in 2007 in Grapevine, TX and on for several subsequent years. They also were at the origin of creation of the IEEE Technical Committee on RFID that eventually evolved into the IEEE Council on RFID. Organizational and visionary abilities of Paul and Merrily Hartmann coupled with their energy and enthusiasm contributed to the success of the general IEEE RFID community and IEEE council on RFID that we observe today. Thanks to their early hard work, IEEE RFID conference became a highly respected, widely recognizable technical conference that attracts large numbers of attendees from both academia and industry.