The IEEE SSIT Hyderabad Section Chapter, in collaboration with the IEEE SSIT CBIT Student Branch Chapter under the Department of Information Technology, organized a Distinguished Lecturer Program on 17 April 2026. Dr. Sagar Gujjunoori, Chairman, IEEE SSIT Hyderabad Section Chapter extended an open invitation to academicians, researchers, and students to take part in this informative session.

The session featured Dr. Fahmida Chowdhury, Program Director at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), USA, as the keynote speaker. She delivered a lecture on the topic “Success in Research: Funding, Publishing, and Beyond.”

The Distinguished Lecturer Program aims to provide valuable insights into building a successful research career, with a focus on securing research funding, publishing in reputed journals, and understanding the broader research ecosystem. The session is meant to benefit students, faculty members, and research scholars by offering practical guidance and global perspectives.

SSIT is seeking a lead volunteer to coordinate SSIT engagement at GHTC 2026. Please contact Heather if you are planning to attend (or interested in attending) GHTC and would be interested in taking on this role!

About the Event

The IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (IEEE GHTC) is a flagship, international conference sharing evidence-based technology interventions and effective approaches for addressing the needs of underserved communities around the world. IEEE GHTC 2026 returns to last year’s theme “Technologies in Context,” encouraging authors to present technological solutions situated within their social, cultural, economic, and political contexts, as well as research on context-aware humanitarian engineering practice and education.

The Chapters Committee, Student Activities Committee, and Young Professionals Committee of the Membership Committee of IEEE SSIT are pleased to announce the projects selected for funding for the year 2026 under the recent Call for Proposals on Technology and Society. These initiatives attracted a diverse range of innovative submissions, reflecting the growing commitment of members to address societal challenges through technology-driven solutions. 

The selected proposals stood out for their thoughtful approach, strong relevance to contemporary issues, and clear alignment with the core mission and values of SSIT. These projects demonstrate excellence in integrating ethical, social, and technological perspectives, and are expected to create meaningful impact within communities while fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing across IEEE networks.

A list of all selected projects is available below, including the names of the chapters and the titles of their respective events.

SB Chapters

1. SBC31231G - Chaitanya Bharathi Inst of Tech-Hyderabad,SIT30
   1. "Empowering Village Girls: AI, Leadership & Ethics"
2. IEEE - SSIT, Sri Sairam Engineering College
   1. "H.E.R. — Hope • Empower • Rise"
3. IEEE SSIT Student Branch Chapter Anurag University
   1. "Digi Raksha — Interactive Cyber Safety Simulation"
4. IEEE Student Branch Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College
   1. "Responsible Technology, Policy & Community Engagement Series 2026"
5. SSIT - KCT SB , Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore
   1. "Smart Technologies for Social Good: A Hands-On IoT Workshop for Rural Pre-University Students"
6. IEEE SSIT Chapter – Chandigarh University Student Branch
   1. "IEEE SSIT Student Orientation, Meet & Greet, and Innovation Challenge: Technology for Humanity"
7. IEEE SSIT KPRIET SBC
   1. "RIIZE 3.0"

Chapters

1. SSIT - MADRAS CHAPTER
   1. "Responsible AI: Ethics, Governance and Societal Impact"
2. IEEE SSIT Uttar Pradesh Section Chapter
   1. "Semiconductors for Society: Ethics, Sustainability & Policy"
3. SCV-OEB SIT30/SSIT
   1. "Diffie-Hellman 50th Anniversary"
4. SSIT Argentina Section
   1. "Congress: Mendoza Digital "Advanced Technology for a Better Society"
5. SSIT Indonesia
   1. "AI and the Future of Learning: Ethics, Innovation, and Human-Centered Education"
6. IEEE SSIT Kerala Chapter
   1. "Suraksha Kavacham: The Digital Shield Initiative"

Ontario Tech University convened more than 200 leaders from academia, industry, government, and the next generation of skilled workers at its inaugural AI Forum on 27 March 2026. Held under the theme “Building Trust: The Strategic Advantage of Human-Centred AI,” the event focused on one of the most urgent questions facing Canada today: how to develop artificial intelligence systems that people can trust while also supporting innovation, accountability, and economic growth.

In his remarks, Dr. Steven Murphy, President and Vice-Chancellor of Ontario Tech University, stressed the important role universities must play as Canada’s AI agenda continues to evolve. He described the forum as the beginning of a larger and necessary generational conversation about how AI will shape society, the economy, and the future of work.

The event also reflected Ontario Tech’s broader leadership in artificial intelligence. The university has recently launched the School of AI and the Mindful Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (MAIRI), strengthening both interdisciplinary education and applied research in this rapidly developing field. In addition, Ontario Tech is piloting an in-house AI Learning Agent in undergraduate and graduate classrooms, with a focus on trust, accountability, and academic integrity.

A keynote by Dr. Hossein Rahnama, “Perspective-Aware AI and the Rise of Human-AI Agents,” examined how AI can work with people by understanding human perspectives and enhancing, rather than replacing, human capabilities.

Dr. Peter Lewis, Canada Research Chair in Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence and Director of MAIRI, focused on what it means to trust AI and how trust should shape the design, deployment, and governance of intelligent systems. Together, the two keynotes reinforced the forum’s emphasis on human-centred, trustworthy, and responsible AI.

As AI continues to advance, the Ontario Tech AI Forum made clear that the future of innovation depends not only on what AI can do, but on how it is designed, governed, and aligned with human values. Through this inaugural event, Ontario Tech reinforced its commitment to ensuring that AI development in Canada remains both ambitious and responsible.

1. What is this standard?

The IRIS standard defines a framework and diagnostic tool for assessing organizational readiness to adopt AI systems that interact with, simulate, or influence human identity. IRIS, the Identity Resilience and Interaction Score, measures psychological, cognitive, and relational readiness at the individual level and aggregates those results to generate an organizational readiness profile.

The framework evaluates how well an organization supports readiness across dimensions, including how individuals maintain a stable sense of self when interacting with AI systems that simulate or replicate human behavior, how they critically engage with AI outputs and know when to question or override them, how workforces adjust their thinking and decision-making in high-saturation AI environments, and how people emotionally and cognitively respond to AI systems designed to mimic human presence and collaboration. Results are designed to inform ethical governance, deployment, and AI system design strategies.

IRIS aims to serve as a protective and watchful eye over human needs for flourishing and well-being as AI systems become integrated into working environments and workflows. The framework consists of six evidence-based behavioral domains assessed through a self-report numbered scale showing strength of agreement, which provides organizations with actionable insights into workforce readiness for human-AI collaboration, while remaining practical and implementable at scale.

IRIS is designed to be applicable across private, public, and cross-sector organizations, particularly those building and deploying synthetic identities, AI agents, clones, digital twins, and autonomous systems that directly engage with humans and impact perceptions of agency and identity.

2. Why is it important?

There is currently no global standard that assesses human readiness for AI systems that interact with, simulate, or influence human identity. Existing standards focus on data integrity, algorithmic bias, and technical performance, leaving the cognitive and relational impacts on human users and collaborators largely unaddressed.

This gap has real consequences. Organizations deploying synthetic agents, AI coworkers, digital personas, and clones face risks that no existing framework is equipped to detect: identity destabilization, psychological fatigue, over-trust and over-dependence on AI systems, as well as organizational misalignment with human values. IRIS connects individual-level diagnostics to organizational decision-making, helping leaders develop and deploy AI systems that are psychologically safe and ethically grounded.

This work sits squarely within SSIT's focus on the ethics of technology design, development, deployment, and use, as well as the economic, health, and safety implications of emerging technology. A workforce that is not psychologically prepared for AI integration moves beyond an operational risk to a social one, with consequences that extend well beyond any single organization.

 
3. What is a real-world example of how this might help?

Consider a global professional services firm that deploys a suite of Generative AI tools and AI agents across its advisory workforce. By conventional adoption metrics, the rollout is a success. Utilization rates are high, productivity indicators are positive, and leadership declares the integration complete.

But underneath those metrics, a different story unfolds. Staff begin offloading cognitive work to the tools at an accelerating rate. At first this looks like efficiency, but over time it becomes cognitive debt. The capacity for independent judgment erodes. Employees stop trusting their own thinking, deferring to AI outputs even when their professional experience signals something is wrong. Over-reliance sets in not just professionally but personally: the same tools being used for client advisory work are being used to handle personal decisions, manage emotions, and process daily life. The boundary between professional and personal use dissolves, and no governance mechanism exists to address it because no one anticipated this reality.

By the time leadership recognizes the problem, the workforce is experiencing two things simultaneously: burnout from constant AI-mediated work and a kind of cognitive surrender, a felt sense that independent thinking is no longer necessary or even possible. That combination is a readiness failure, and it is precisely what IRIS is designed to detect before it compounds.

Had IRIS been applied before deployment of these AI tools, it would have generated an Organizational Readiness Profile revealing the workforce's vulnerability to over-reliance, its readiness gaps around maintaining independent judgment in AI-mediated environments, and the cognitive and relational risk factors that made this trajectory predictable. The intervention point must be before the tools go live, not after the damage is done.

4. What stage is it at?

The working group is in active formation under the SSIT Standards Committee, with the AI Standards Committee as co-standards committee. More than 20 people are expected to be actively involved in the development of this standard. The current timeline targets completion of the standard in 2028.

The initial focus is on codifying the framework's principles, addressing technical, regulatory, and ethical challenges, and engaging stakeholders from diverse fields. A key priority is ensuring that the standard complements rather than duplicates existing IEEE efforts, filling the human readiness gap that precedes successful AI adoption.

5. What is the current geographical or disciplinary representation of your working members?

The working group is actively forming, and its current composition reflects the disciplinary range this standard requires to be credible. Members have been drawn from applied psychology, AI development, organizational science, and ethics, alongside practitioners with direct experience in workforce transformation and regulatory compliance. 

Geographically, the group's early formation spans North American and European contexts, with active outreach underway to expand into regions where AI adoption is accelerating under markedly different conditions. The regulatory architecture shaping AI deployment in the EU, for instance, differs substantially from the national AI strategies driving adoption in Gulf states, or the infrastructure-constrained and rapidly scaling contexts across parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Identity, trust, and the perceived boundaries between human and machine are not universal constructs; they are culturally and institutionally situated, and the standard's validity depends on building that variation into its development rather than retrofitting it afterward. 

6. What type of people might be interested or well-suited for this standards group?

The group is actively seeking anyone working at the intersection of technology and human experience. This includes AI developers and technology companies building agentic AI or synthetic entities; organizational development and AI ethics professionals; HCI and UX researchers; cognitive scientists and digital identity researchers; workforce training and human capital strategists; regulatory and compliance professionals focused on psychological safety; non-governmental organizations focused on responsible AI; and public and private sector bodies integrating AI in education, mental health, and government.

For SSIT members specifically, this group is a direct fit for those engaged in ethical and well-being practices in the workplace, the social issues of information technology, and the role of technologists in addressing ethical issues and public policy. If your work involves understanding interactions between technology and society at the human level, this standard is designed with your expertise in mind.

7. What triggered your own interest in this area?

Working across sectors and industries, I kept witnessing the same pattern. Organizations were adopting AI tools rapidly and broadly, and the human fallout was just as rapid and just as broad. It was not confined to one type of organization or one type of workforce. It was everywhere.

What became clear over time was that the field was conflating two different things: AI literacy and human readiness. They are not the same. Knowing how to use a tool is not the same as being psychologically prepared to engage with it in ways that are healthy and sustainable. Exposure is not readiness. And yet exposure was being treated as sufficient, with training programs and onboarding processes designed to teach people what AI could do, while leaving entirely unaddressed the question of what these systems were doing to people.

That gap is not incidental. These tools are designed to interact with fundamental human psychology. They simulate presence, relationship, judgment, and authority. They are relational by design. An organization can have a highly AI-literate workforce and still be completely unprepared for what sustained engagement with these systems produces over time. No existing standard was measuring that. IRIS is an attempt to build the instrument the field was missing.

8. Call to Action

We are building the infrastructure for psychologically safe and ethically grounded AI interaction, and we need people who take seriously both the technical and human dimensions of that work. Whether your background is in cognitive science, organizational ethics, AI development, policy, or workforce strategy, your expertise is directly relevant to what IRIS is working to accomplish.

If you are interested in joining the working group or learning more, please reach out to me at [email protected] or contact the IEEE Standards Association Program Manager, Malia Zaman. 

Aging adults represent a rapidly growing segment of the global population. Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of people aged 60 and older is projected to nearly double—from 12% to 22% of the world’s population.

Technology designed to enhance the quality of life, well-being, and longevity of older adults and people with accessibility needs—collectively referred to here as “AgeTech”—is an expanding market that has attracted significant investment, research, and product development. 

AgeTech products and services include wearable devices and non-contact sensors for health and wellness monitoring, intelligent home solutions that facilitate aging in place, cognitive support and automation for caregiving, wearable robotics that assist with mobility and rehabilitation, among others. AgeTech is not a single piece of technology—it is an application area that leverages a wide variety of technologies that span half of IEEE’s many technical fields of interest. These include signal processing, sensors, computing, communications, robotics, microwave, AI, medicine and biology, and many more. AgeTech applications also come with concerns about the social implications of technology, including data privacy, security, trust, and digital literacy.

The AgeTech ecosystem is in the early stages of development. In spite of technological advancements, there are significant barriers that limit the adoption and effectiveness of these technologies. Practitioners cite issues such as usability, human factors, interoperability, absence of standardized test methods, safety and security concerns, insufficient accessibility-aware design, and low digital literacy.

These are all issues that IEEE is well-positioned to address. The IEEE AgeTech activity began in late 2024 under the auspices of the IEEE Standards Association (SA) Industry Connections program. At that time, the initial focus was on identifying new standards to promote more effective AgeTech product solutions. The first output of the activity was a proposal for an IEEE standard to address an urgent market need: a measurement standard for fall detection devices. As a result, a new SA standards working group, P3925 Standard for Evaluation of Wearable Fall Detection Devices, has been formed to develop the standard.

During 2025, it became clear that there was a much broader opportunity for IEEE to contribute by leveraging all of IEEE’s capabilities and resources. Beginning in 2026, IEEE AgeTech became an IEEE-wide Future Directions Initiative with an expanded scope.

IEEE’s mission is to advance technology for the benefit of humanity. The IEEE AgeTech Initiative aims to fulfill IEEE’s mission for the growing and important aging segment of society. The initiative brings together a community of IEEE volunteers from across IEEE’s operating units and societies/councils and is working to:

1. Develop a technical roadmap for AgeTech application areas analyzing the current state-of-the-art and prioritizing needs for research and technology innovation and standardization.
2. Conduct workshops and seminars to support development of the roadmap.
3. Create an online AgeTech Resource Hub (ARCH) to provide information, guidelines and tools to promote aging-friendly design and digital literacy.
4. Organize Innovation Challenges to foster the submission of aging-related data sets for AgeTech product design and AI training, as well as pitch competitions to stimulate innovative AgeTech solutions.
5. Establish a community of IEEE volunteers who are AgeTech users (such as Life Members) to serve as a resource to industry for product testing and focus groups.

The work on the IEEE AgeTech roadmap is currently organized into subcommittees focused on four initial application domains: Healthcare Wearable Devices, Intelligent Home Solutions, Caregiving Robotics, and Wearable Robotics. We encourage volunteers interested in these areas to join and contribute to the workshops and development of the roadmap. The work on the online resource hub (ARCH) is being done by an Education Committee which provides another opportunity for volunteer contribution. The Innovation Challenges Committee, in collaboration with IEEE Young Professionals, is organizing the data challenge and pitch competitions. 

We are also looking for volunteers who are interested in helping to establish and become part of an IEEE AgeTech Tester Network. We are, of course, extending the collaboration beyond IEEE itself—connecting with universities, start-ups, established companies, non-profit organizations, government agencies and other external partners to make a lasting global impact. 

SSIT is at the heart of addressing the complex interactions between technology, society, ethics, policy and privacy. This is an important, exciting and rewarding opportunity for SSIT members to contribute to advancing IEEE’s mission, to ensure AgeTech is safe, inclusive and trustworthy.

Please visit the IEEE AgeTech Initiative website to learn more about the initiative, sign up for our mailing list, and most importantly, volunteer to contribute to one of our committees.

Information About the Journal

The IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society (TTS) publishes four issues each year (March, June, September, and December); submissions are accepted on a rolling basis.

The editorial team seeks research papers on the interactions among technology, science, and society; on the impact of such interactions on individuals and society; and on the ethical, professional and social responsibility in the practice of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

For expressions of interest to serve on the editorial board as an ongoing reviewer or associate editor, or for other enquiries please email founding editor-in-chief George Roussos at [email protected].

SSIT is a Technical Cosponsor for IST-Africa 2026.

SASIGD 2026

13–14 August 2026

Gandipet, Hyderabad, India

The IEEE International Conference on Sustainable AI for Social Impact and Global Development (SASIGD 2025) focuses on leveraging AI to address critical global challenges, emphasizing sustainability, inclusivity, and equity. Conference tracks include AI-driven solutions for environmental sustainability, healthcare innovation, inclusive development, energy efficiency, smart cities, and economic empowerment.