US experts win Lord Kelvin Awards

24 November 2008

US experts Donald N. Heirman and Scott K. Jameson have received the prestigious IEC Lord Kelvin Award for their outstanding contributions to electrotechnical standardisation. The awards are given by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the world’s leading organisation that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies – collectively known as "electrotechnology".

They were presented by IEC President Jacques Régis during the IEC's 72nd General Meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, which has assembled 1000 experts in electrotechnology for a week of technical and management meetings addressing topics including electrical energy efficiency and the safety of electrical equipment. Nominations for the award are made by the IEC's member National Committees and Technical Committees and Subcommittees.

Donald Heirman is an expert in the field of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and has served as Chairman of the IEC Special International Committee on Radio Interference (CISPR) as well as a member of the IEC Advisory Committee on Electromagnetic Compatibility (ACEC).

Heirman runs his own telecommunications and IT consultancy, and is also associate director of theUniversity of Oklahoma’s Center for the Study of Wireless EMC. He has served the IEC as an expert since 1985, focusing on CISPR and TC 106: Methods for the assessment of electric, magnetic and electromagnetic fields associated with human exposure.

In 2007 Heirman became the Chairman of CISPR and of the CISPR Steering Committee. He led a major revitalization of the CISPR’s horizontal standardisation in Subcommittee A, Radio-interference measurements and statistical methods, leading to the compilation of more than 200 drafts, voting documents and publications in this field over the past five years.

For more than 20 years, Heirman has played a major role in EMC standardisation worldwide. In 1999, he facilitated the first IEC EMC standardisation workshop in the United States and, in 2002, his drive led to the successful issuance of the first International Standard on uncertainty in EMC measurements, which continues to be an important standard today.

Scott Jameson has been a key figure in ISO/IEC JTC 1 (the Joint Technical Committee for information technology of the IEC and the International Organisation for Standardisation), serving as its Chairman since 2001. Jameson is responsible for consortia and standards activities as Director of Standards Strategy in the Strategy and Technology Office of Hewlett-Packard’s software business.

ISO/IEC JTC 1 was created in the 1980s by the IEC and ISO to provide a single, comprehensive committee in which to address international IT standardisation. Under his leadership, the committee has become globally recognized as the focal point and forum of choice for formal standardisation of information and communication technologies.

Jameson has been active in standards work since 1989, holding management positions in Sun Microsystems and Compaq Computer Systems, as well as Hewlett-Packard. From 1991 and prior to his appointment as ISO/IEC JTC 1 Chairman, he served as head of the US delegation to the committee and led a number of activities, including the special working group on strategic planning. This led to a review of the ISO/IEC JTC 1 business plan, focusing on strategic initiatives and areas for future development.

Since its creation in 1994, the IEC Lord Kelvin Award has established itself as a landmark within the engineering world. Lord Kelvin, the British scientist and engineer, played a major role in the founding of the IEC in 1906 and became its first president, having achieved celebrity by successfully laying the first commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean.