When one thinks of major student organizations on campus, the Stanford chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, pronounced “I-triple-E”) may not leap to mind. Yet IEEE, Stanford’s main organization for electrical engineering and computer science, boasts full turnout at its events and a 500-member mailing list.

President Dmitry Belogolovsky, a co-terminal student in computational and mathematical engineering, calls the IEEE “a social pre-professional group for people with common interests to mingle and meet each other.”

The IEEE is an international organization with more than 365,000 members. In addition to student members, most of the computer science and electrical engineering professors at Stanford are also members of the IEEE, according to Belogolovsky.

Stanford IEEE organizes mixers, faculty and industry dinners and community service projects, as well as activities like broomball games and study breaks. A few of these events are held each quarter.

In addition, the group is responsible for publishing The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Journal.

“IEEE is like a club for people who want to hang out outside of the lab,” says Belogolovsky. “In electrical engineering, students have a lot of work and tend to hang out inside labs a lot. This gets people together.”

On April 20, IEEE hosted a student/faculty mixer featuring a presentation by Marc Pawlinger, senior director of engineering at Adobe. About 130 students and faculty members attended the event.

“Things really came together at the Adobe presentation last month,” says Belogolovsky. “It was very satisfying.”

“After a great keynote speech, students and faculty enjoyed a good dinner among good company,” says Vice President of IEEE Yuriy Teslyar, a senior. “The main goals of the event were to encourage interaction among the EE/CS engineering community as well as to introduce them to the inner workings of a tremendous technology and company, and we accomplished both.”

“I think people were really happy just mingling there,” comments Belogolovsky. “When we tried to start the event, actually, we couldn’t, because people were still talking for a while. There was a lot of energy in the room—the atmosphere was great and it was great to see everyone come together.

“Everyone had a great time, and we are looking forward to maintaining this tradition,” Teslyar adds.

Belogolovsky said that Stanford IEEE is thinking about holding one more event this quarter, possibly featuring a representative from Advanced Micro Devices.

“Leading companies actually contact us because they’ve heard about IEEE,” Belogolovsky says. “It’s actually not a problem to get speakers.”

Recently, Stanford IEEE has hosted speakers representing Nvidia, IBM, Broadcom and Digital Chocolate.

Belogolovsky remarked that IEEE aims for variety in speakers.

“Our objective is to have different people from different walks of life. Of course the focus is on technology, but we try to reach out to different types of audiences,” he says.

“This year we’ve tried to focus on big companies and startups, computer science and electrical engineering, hardware and software, because we have that kind of duality,” Belogolovsky adds. “We have both electrical engineers and computer scientists as well as other people who are interested in electronics.”

Belogolovsky emphasizes the social aspect of the group, which aims to connect students with similar interests.

“It’s fun to hear speakers, but it’s also great to have people mingle, and that’s the main purpose of Stanford IEEE,” he said. “It also gives students a way to interact with faculty outside of the academic environment.”

All IEEE events—funded by the ASSU and the GSC—are free of charge and advertised through posters and emails.

“A lot of people show up to our events,” says Belogolovsky, citing the Adobe mixer as an example. “We usually have overflow. We’re a major student group on campus.”