IEEE has elevated Andrew Kwak, founder of Dearnode, to the grade of Senior Member. IEEE notified him of the decision on September 26, 2026.
IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization, with roots going back to 1884. Senior Member is a grade IEEE grants after reviewing at least ten years of professional practice and significant performance, and it requires references from three Fellows or Senior Members.
A patent cited as prior art
A sleep-tech patent registered in 2018, with Kwak as sole inventor, has been cited as prior art in 13 patent documents. Five of them are Apple patent documents in the US and UK. The others include filings by Hyundai Motor and Kia, PixArt, Airoha, and Sleepwave, which started at LG Electronics.
For two of Apple's granted US patents, US 11928387 and US 12190014, Apple itself disclosed his patent to the USPTO as relevant prior art, rather than the examiner finding it.
What he is building now
At Dearnode, Kwak is building Orbit, a multi-account email app for Mac. Orbit ranked #7 Product of the Day on Product Hunt at launch.
On September 27, 2026, he filed a patent application for Orbit's AI engine, which is designed to make AI agents more secure and reliable. The agent works inside the user's own account without handing mail access to an outside server, and it checks its results directly against the mail server.
“It's meaningful to have IEEE recognize the work I've built up as an engineer. I'll keep focusing on building software people use every day.”
Andrew Kwak, founder, Dearnode Inc.