Norman Balabanian received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees from Syracuse University, where he stayed on as a faculty member. After seven years as Chairman of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, he retired in 1991. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Colorado (Boulder), University of California
(Berkeley), and the Instituto Politecnico Nacional (Mexico) as a staff member of UNESCO. He was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in 1974. For 18 months in 1977-78 he was Academic Advisor at the Institut National d'Electricite et d'Electronique in Algeria. He spent 5 years as a Visiting Scholar in
Electrical Engineering at Tufts University and — simultaneously — in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at MIT. Since 1995 he has been a Courtesy Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

Dr. Balabanian is the author of eleven books and numerous articles. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984 and the Third Millennium Medal in 2000. For many years he served on the AdCom of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (as President for 2 years). He served as editor of the Transactions on Circuit Theory (1963-65), Transactions on Communications (1976), and — for 10 years — Technology and Society Magazine (1979-87 and 1993-95). For three years he was an officer of the Electrical Engineering Division of the American Society for Engineering Education, culminating as President in 1966-67. He also is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For 30 years he has concerned himself with studying the relationship between technology and society. He served for a time as Director of the Program in Engineering and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and taught a course on engineering ethics and professional responsibility for 12 years.

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CONTROLLING TECHNOLOGY; THE ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY OF ENGINEERS

Technology profoundly transforms society. How should technology be guided toward humane purposes? Who bears primary responsibility? Who but the engineers who create new machines, devices, structures, and systems are in the best position to know the properties, the capabilities, the liabilities, and the potential consequences
of producing and deploying them? This responsibility is both individual and collective.
This talk explores the nature of engineering as a profession and outlines what it means for an engineer to be a professional. It describes mechanisms for protecting engineers against adverse action by employers when the engineers act in accordance with the IEEE Code of Ethics. It also will examine the responsibility of professional societies like IEEE for providing reliable information to the public so that citizens can give their informed consent to public policies relating to technological matters such as energy, microwave radiation, hazardous waste, etc.

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