What Are Intersociety Activities?

Intersociety activities are formal and informal programs through which professional engineering and scientific societies collaborate on initiatives that cross disciplinary boundaries or require resources beyond what any single organization can provide alone. These activities include joint conferences, co-authored standards, shared educational programs, coordinated policy statements, and membership exchange arrangements. The driving rationale is that modern engineering problems, in fields from biomedical devices to autonomous systems, sit at the intersection of multiple technical disciplines and benefit from expertise distributed across several professional communities.

The scope of intersociety activity has grown as engineering specializations have multiplied. IEEE alone maintains formal agreements with over seventy national engineering societies through memoranda of understanding, as described on the IEEE National Society Agreements page. Many of IEEE's technical societies have supplemental sister-society relationships with domain-specific organizations: the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society coordinates with clinical and biomedical professional bodies, while the IEEE Power and Energy Society works with utility industry associations on standards development.

Cross-Society Collaboration and Membership Exchange

A common mechanism for intersociety engagement is the reciprocal membership arrangement, in which members of one society receive reduced or complimentary access to another society's journals, events, or technical communities. These arrangements lower the practical barrier to learning across disciplines. Joint membership directories and unified event calendars allow engineers to identify counterparts in adjacent fields, facilitating research collaborations and technology transfer between communities that would otherwise remain siloed.

Some intersociety relationships are managed through umbrella organizations. In the United States, the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) provides a forum where over twenty engineering societies coordinate on workforce policy, diversity initiatives, and public outreach. Internationally, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) connects national engineering societies from over one hundred countries on issues including engineering education, sustainable development, and international standards.

Joint Technical Initiatives and Conferences

Intersociety collaboration produces conferences that would not be viable for a single society to organize alone. The International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), jointly supported by IEEE and other technical bodies, brings together semiconductor device researchers from industry, government, and academia under a single program. Similarly, joint IEEE and IET symposia combine the membership bases of both organizations to achieve critical mass for specialist topics in power electronics, photonics, or communications that neither body could fill independently.

Joint publications extend the reach of technical communities. Co-sponsored journals draw on editorial boards from multiple societies, combining peer review expertise across disciplines and exposing authors to readership they would not reach through a single-society outlet.

Standards and Policy Coordination

Many technically complex standards require input from multiple professional communities. IEEE Standards Association regularly coordinates with ISO, IEC, and domain-specific bodies to avoid conflicting requirements and accelerate adoption across industries and jurisdictions. Intersociety coordination at the policy level extends to government relations, where several societies issue joint statements on research funding priorities, workforce development, or technology regulation. These coordinated voices carry more weight with legislative and regulatory audiences than individual society positions, because they signal broad professional consensus rather than narrow interest.

Applications

Intersociety activities have applications in a wide range of fields, including:

• Engineering workforce development and continuing education programs
• Joint development of technical standards spanning multiple disciplines
• Co-organized conferences on interdisciplinary topics such as biomedical engineering or energy systems
• International coordination on engineering ethics and professional certification
• Public policy advocacy on research funding, infrastructure investment, and technology regulation