W. Ross Stone, an influential IEEE Technical Activities chief, died on 29 March on the age of 75.
The Life Fellow obtained the 2023 IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award “for sustained contributions to and impactful leadership in the IEEE Technical Activities publication enterprise.”
Stone held a number of management positions with the IEEE Technical Activities Board for greater than 4 many years. He remodeled the best way the TAB periodicals committee operates by establishing a number of packages and processes to revitalize IEEE publications and provoke strategic plans to make sure their success sooner or later, in response to his Emberson Award quotation.
He was president of Stoneware, a enterprise he based in San Diego that offered consulting and knowledgeable witness providers associated to antennas, propagation, and telecommunications.
Communications and patent regulation knowledgeable
Stone obtained a bachelor’s diploma in 1967 in earth sciences from the University of California, San Diego. He went on to earn grasp’s and doctoral levels in utilized sciences from UCSD in 1973 and 1978, respectively.
He labored as chief scientist at McDonnell Technologies and a analysis advisor at IRT. In the early Eighties he based Stoneware, which additionally offered litigation assist providers, patent infringement evaluation, prior artwork analysis, and invention and design consulting within the areas of cellphone handset antennas and base stations, mobile programs, IEEE 802.11 applied sciences, LTE networks, Wi-Fi, and wi-fi networking applied sciences. During his profession, he additionally served in management positions for 16 wi-fi communications startups.
He was an adjunct professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and the Politecnico di Torino.
Longtime editor of IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine
Stone, who served as chair of the TAB periodicals committee, established 15 advert hoc committees to additional IEEE’s publication targets. The advert hoc committees developed new analysis metrics for proposed articles, a mentoring program for publication editors, and long-term open-access methods.
For greater than 30 years, Stone was editor in chief of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Newsletter, which developed into IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine.
“While he’s known for his rigor and results-oriented approach, those who work with Stone never fail to describe him as a gentleman,” certainly one of his Emberson Award endorsers stated. “He’s invariably polite, open to discussion, and handles any disagreements sensitively and respectfully. Stone has a kind word for every collaborator and displays an unwavering sense of humor in the most complicated situations.”
In addition to his contributions to IEEE, Stone served as editor for greater than 20 years of The Radio Science Bulletin, a publication of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI).
He was a Fellow of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, the Electromagnetics Academy, and URSI. He was additionally a life member of the Phi Eta Sigma honor society. In addition, he was a member of a number of societies together with the Association for Computing Machinery, Optica, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Society for Technical Communication.