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Honda will serve as the host company for the SAE International 2015 World Congress & Exhibition in Detroit, Michigan, April 21-23, 2015. Erik Berkman, executive vice president of Honda North America and general chairman of this year's World Congress, will share a series of blog posts leading up to the event.

Once a year, the global automotive engineering community assembles to share new ideas about the future of mobility and spur on the next generation of engineers. And the place we do that is the SAE World Congress in Detroit. Honda is proud to be the host company this year.

I have always found the auto business to be an exciting place to work. Developing a vehicle is a very complex process, requiring constant innovation to meet the ever-changing needs of society. While consumer electronics are in the limelight for innovation a lot these days, it wasn't too long ago, that automotive engineers were recognized as innovators and leaders.

We are now in an age where innovations in communications, electronics, materials, environmental controls and sensing technologies are creating exciting new opportunities, as well as vexing new challenges for the vehicles we create and the factories where they are built.

The SAE World Congress remains the place where the great minds of our industry come together to share, debate, analyze and celebrate these issues.  This will lead to better engineering solutions for our customers. It also enables a level of collaboration that creates professional development opportunities for our industry's "next generation."

This year, we will make special efforts to help young engineers better envision their futures and their career paths. This will include seminars and white papers focused on providing useful insights into the breadth of possibilities to be found in our industry. But I think the greater opportunity will occur with the fun, small-group interactions, such as roundtable discussions and "speed mentoring" sessions where younger engineers can engage one-on-one with industry veterans.

In short, at the 2015 SAE World Congress, we will be developing careers as well as vehicles. And this makes me proud to be a member of SAE and to chair this year's event.

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