NEWSLETTER OF THE BALTIMORE SECTION OF THE IEEE
FEBRUARY 2005
The web site for the Baltimore section of the IEEE is:
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. New Chapter Of The IEEE Signal
Processing Society
2. Aerospace
And Electronic Systems (AES) Society
3. Communications
Society Meeting Notice
8. Message
From The New IEEE-USA President
9. IEEE
Educational Activities
1. New Chapter Of The IEEE Signal Processing Society
The Baltimore Section is considering the formation of a local chapter of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. Some of you may already be members of the Signal Processing Society. We would like to get an idea of how many of our IEEE members would be interested in attending signal processing meetings sponsored by this new chapter. We anticipate that the meetings would be held at the Historical Electronics Museum on West Nursery Road in Linthicum (right around the corner from BWI).
The following statement is taken from the IEEE Signal Processing Society web site and describes the field of interest for the society:
The Signal Processing Society's Field of Interest shall be the theory and application of filtering, coding, transmitting, estimating, detecting, analyzing, recognizing, synthesizing, recording, and reproducing signals by digital or analog devices or techniques. The term "signal" includes audio, video, speech, image, communication, geophysical, sonar, radar, medical, musical, and other signals.
(From the Signal Processing Society Constitution, Article II)
The theories and techniques of signal processing span a number of fields. My own work involves signal processing. At Northrop Grumman, we are upgrading the current synthetic aperture radar system for one of the military airplanes. In order to generate an image of a scene from the collected radar data, a good deal of signal processing needs to be performed. In order to understand why an image forms, you need to understand the underlying signal processing principles. Work that I had done at another company involved the use of signal processing. On a previous job, I had to build a MATLAB simulation for the baseband part of a wireless LAN system. To generate the transmitted sequence, we performed scrambling of the data sequence, convolutional encoding, interleaving, quadrature amplitude modulation, inverse Fourier transforming, etc. Understanding why each of these steps is performed requires knowledge of signal processing.
Signal processing is used in communications (especially the physical layer processing), medical imaging, radar, sonar, and many other fields. The cell phones we use today involve a good deal of signal processing. The new high-definition television uses signal processing.
The field of signal processing is the theoretical basis for much of the work we do and the products we build. We could not understand and do electrical engineering today without it.
When I was living in the Boston area, I attended a lot of signal processing meetings at Lincoln Labs. Boston had, and I’m sure still has, a very active Signal Processing Society. I remember the talk that Charlie Rader gave on some work he did in the past to analyze the acoustic data dealing with the Kennedy assassination. The room was packed. And yes, there were a lot of conspiracy theorists that showed up. It was a great talk.
If you are a professor at a local school, a graduate student, or an engineer working at a local company and you would like to share your signal processing work and experiences with your fellow IEEE members, the Signal Processing Society would be the best way to do it. It’s time to dust off your Oppenheim and Schafer DSP book and join with us to start the Baltimore Section of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.
For more information on the Signal Processing Society, consult the IEEE web page at:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/sp/
A tutorial on the Signal Processing Society can be found at:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/sp/Intro_to_SPSoc_8_2_04.pdf
If you have an interest in signal processing, if you would like to see a Baltimore Section of the Signal Processing Society formed, and if you would like to attend the signal processing meetings, please let me know. My email address is ronald_aloysius@ieee.org. I look forward to hearing from you.
2. Aerospace And Electronic Systems (AES) Society
REQUEST FOR AES VOLUNTEERS
The Baltimore Section requests the assistance of members of the Aerospace and Electronics Systems (AES) Society to plan and organize activities for its members in the Baltimore Chapter.
There are 195 active members of AES in the section. If anyone is interested in helping to organize AES activities, such as monthly meetings, please contact me at ronald_aloysius@ieee.org. I will see that the appropriate people are notified.
3. Communications Society Meeting Notice
Please join us as we start the 2005 IEEE COMSOC Meetings.
The next COMSOC meeting for Baltimore will be on Tuesday February 1 at 6PM at the Historical Electronics Museum in Linthicum. Food will be available at 5:30PM.
Directions can be found at our web site:
http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/Chapter/Comm/
Speaker: Ken Green
Topic: Current Trends in Network and Application Security Vulnerabilities
Abstract:
This talk will focus on current network and web application security trends based on TrustWave's recent experiences with InfoSec compliance assessment and incident response, primarily in the e-commerce industry. Topics will include vulnerabilities ranging from lack of best-practice measures such as firewall utilization to insecure software architectures and coding techniques employed in the development of custom web applications.
Bio:
Ken Green is the Chief Security Architect for TrustWave Corporation, a privately held firm based in Annapolis, Maryland that specializes in Information Security and Compliance. He currently serves as the technical lead for TrustWave's online service offerings, including the TrustKeeper InfoSec Compliance platform and TrustMinder web content analysis and compliance service. Ken served as an electrical engineer for the Department of Defense for fifteen years prior to joining the TrustWave team.
Directions can be found at our web site:
http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/Chapter/Comm/
4. Robot Challenge
The Robot Challenge will take place on Saturday, April 16 (8:45 AM to 2 PM), and Sunday, April 17 (12:30 PM to 3 PM). We have a need for judges and helpers at the registration desk. No past experience is necessary. Please contact Neville Jacobs for details, by e-mail to Nevilleed@aol.com, or by phone at 410-653-4176. Student members would be very welcome.
5. Student Paper Contest
The undergraduate Student Paper contest is now open to all undergraduates who are members of the IEEE. The awards are $1,000 1st place, $500 2nd place and $250 third place. The papers are due in the mail by April 1, with oral judging on April 9. We would like to encourage all of our student members to participate. You can become a student member up until the date the paper is submitted.
See the following web address:
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/student/2005_baltimore_section_paper_contest_guidelines.htm
Call for Judges:
Judges are needed to review the written papers and the oral presentations. Please contact Jeff Friedhoffer, jafried@ieee.org, if you are willing to participate as a judge. Thank you in advance, we are using this to encourage our students to become members of the IEEE and to remain as members once they graduate.
6. New UMBC Graduate Program
The following describes a new UMBC graduate program developed to meet regional workforce needs for e-government professionals.
Grad Program Gives Skills for Growing Online Interaction Between Government, Individuals, Business.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County's (UMBC) departments of Public Policy and Information Systems will debut a new graduate certificate program in electronic government (e-gov) this fall. The program is the first in the Baltimore/Washington area focused on skills needed to increase and improve online transactions and services offered by federal, state and local government to individuals and businesses.
Professors in the program include three of the nation's top e-gov experts:
Pattee Fletcher, a professor in UMBC's Public Policy department, has extensive federal information technology (IT) experience, having worked for the General Accounting Office and consulted for the U.S. Treasury and Freddie Mac.
Stephen Holden brought 16 years of federal government IT experience to UMBC's Information Systems department after helping to develop the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) e-file system. The increasingly popular program, which enables taxpayers to securely file and pay their taxes electronically, has made the IRS a pioneer in e‑government at the federal level.
Donald F. Norris, director of the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research and a professor of Public Policy at UMBC, is a nationally known analyst, author and consultant on state and local government IT management. Norris and Fletcher are co-editors in chief of The International Journal of Electronic Government Research.
According to Holden, the push towards e-government comes straight from the White House, a process started under Clinton/Gore and continuing in the Bush administration. "In his February 2002 budget, President Bush outlined a management agenda for making government more focused on citizens and results, which includes expanding electronic government," Holden says.
The federal government has recognized the need for additional training in the area of e‑government. A recent study by the CIO Council found that less than 5 percent of more than 19,000 federal IT workers have extensive knowledge in e-government. Private sector contractors supporting public agencies can also benefit from UMBC's graduate certificate and help to fill this knowledge gap.
Holden notes that customer satisfaction ratings in the public sector lag far behind private industry when governments continue to use paper transactions. "The payoff for e‑government is significant, because customer satisfaction ratings for e-gov rival, and in some cases, beat private sector standards," says Holden.
The new certificate will bring management, policy and IT perspectives to a slate of courses aimed at mid-career professionals with technical or management backgrounds. The 15-credit program starts its first classes this fall semester.
For more information on e-gov at UMBC, please call 410-455-2336, email egov@umbc.edu or visit http://www.umbc.edu/egov/.
7. New IEEE-USA President
NEWS from IEEE-USA
1828 L Street, N.W., Suite 1202, Washington, D.C. 20036-5104
Princeton Engineer, Inventor Becomes IEEE-USA President, Cites Innovation and Offshoring as Major Concerns.
WASHINGTON (6 January 2005): Dr. Gerard A. Alphonse of Princeton, N.J., an IEEE Fellow who holds more than 50 U.S. patents, became IEEE-USA president on New Year's Day.
One of Alphonse's major goals is for IEEE-USA to tackle issues relating to innovation and offshore outsourcing (offshoring). He hopes to bring together technical workers and key stakeholders from government, industry and academia to advance equitable solutions to the transfer of high-value, high-wage jobs overseas.
"It's more than just a jobs issue," Alphonse said. "Even more fundamental is how the United States and other nations will ensure their economic prosperity, national defense and standard of living in an increasingly competitive, technology-based global economy. Success requires that the United States be more productive and innovative than our competitors.
"My goal as IEEE-USA's 2005 president is to make sure key decision makers are aware of the needs of the U.S. technical workers who are responsible for that technological innovation."
Alphonse is a founder and senior vice president of advanced technologies for Medeikon Corp., a developer of optical technology for medical diagnostics and therapy in Ewing, N.J. For 43 years beginning in 1959, he worked in a broad range of technical areas for the Sarnoff Corp., formerly RCA Laboratories. He was awarded four RCA/Sarnoff Technical Achievement Awards.
In 1986 Alphonse invented and demonstrated the world's highest performance superluminescent diode. The device is a broadband semiconductor light source and key component of next-generation fiber optic gyroscopes, low coherence tomography for medical imaging, and external cavity tunable lasers with applications to fiber optic communications.
Alphonse taught in the Electronic Physics Department at La Salle University's evening division in Philadelphia from 1967-82. During his last four years, he served as department head and also taught electrical engineering courses in linear systems, communications and microwave theory at the College of New Jersey in Ewing. He was appointed a consultant to the National Science Foundation for a two-year term in 1975.
Alphonse began his IEEE volunteer career in the 1960s as secretary/treasurer of the Princeton Central Jersey Section, and became Section chair in 1970. He has worked on numerous IEEE committees and boards, and in 2002-03, served as Region 1 director and member of the IEEE Board of Directors. Alphonse is a member of the IEEE Lasers and Electo-Optical Society and was elected to the board of the IEEE Engineering Management Society in 2003. He received an IEEE Millennium Award in 2000.
Alphonse, who speaks four languages, is a native of Haiti who came to the United States as a college student in 1954 at age 18. He arrived with two suitcases, one for books and one for clothes, and lived in a New York University dormitory for four years. Alphonse earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from NYU in 1958 and 1959, respectively. He added a doctorate in electrophysics from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1967.
The author or co-author of more than 120 technical papers, Alphonse is a member of the Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi honorary societies and the Science & Art Committee of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute.
For more on Alphonse's vision for IEEE-USA, see:
http://www.ieeeusa.org/communications/presidentscolumn/Alphonse/alphonsejan05.html
IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of the IEEE. It was created in 1973 to advance the public good and promote the careers and public policy interests of the more than 225,000 technology professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to:
8. Message From The New IEEE-USA President
The following is a message from Gerard A. Alphonse, 2005 IEEE-USA President.
Greetings to all. It is a great honor for me to have the opportunity to serve you as 2005 IEEE-USA president. I am pleased that we have a dedicated group of volunteers serving on the IEEE-USA Board of Directors, its Operating Committee, and the 20-plus committees under the four IEEE-USA vice presidents, as well as a talented and dedicated staff to carry out our programs. We hope to implement some outstanding programs this year.
Over the past several years, we have witnessed worldwide workforce shifts due to the pressures of globalization. Technical workforce issues, offshoring and guest worker visa abuses remain difficult problems. We seek a balance between the need of U.S. workers and engineers to preserve their jobs, and the need of industry to access the talent pool necessary to sustain economic growth. We seek fair treatment for H-1B visa holders, while also seeking to prevent employer abuses of the H-1B and L-1 programs.
We plan to gather major stakeholders from government, industry and academia, and technical workers to look at innovation and offshoring in an effort to discover equitable solutions that satisfy the needs of all parties. Such solutions could include increased R&D to maintain the U.S. technological lead, and incentives for companies that reinvest in their U.S. operations and workforce.
A recent Boeing Co. paper, "Ensuring Workforce Skills of the Future: The Birth to Work Pipeline," perhaps best summarized the challenge offshoring presents to the United States: "As globalization drives businesses to create relationships that take advantage of human and capital resources without respect to borders, how will individual nations ensure their economic stability, national defense, and standard of living for their own citizens?"
We hope our innovation and offshoring forum can help to answer this question. To ensure the forum's success, I have appointed a steering committee that has already begun to develop plans and make contacts with key members of Congress.
I want to promote a stronger relationship between IEEE-USA and the IEEE Regions and Sections outside the United States. For more than 30 years, IEEE-USA has developed programs to serve the professional needs of the IEEE's U.S. members. These programs are numerous and include services such as salary surveys, job search programs, career activities and educational and training programs, as well as programs to promote and support legislation for the benefit of society. Many of these services are generic to engineering communities everywhere in the world. Last year we initiated efforts to share our professional activities know-how with the IEEE worldwide. I intend to continue this outreach in 2005 in the hope that all IEEE members will benefit.
The IEEE Sections Congress will bring IEEE delegates from all over the world to Tampa, Fla., in October. We are working with Sections Congress planners on sessions and speakers in which delegates can discover parts of our programs they can model and adopt.
At the first IEEE-USA Operating Committee meeting this month, we plan to refine our high-priority activities for the year, including updating our strategic plan to align it with the IEEE's strategic goals.
IEEE-USA will continue to be your voice in Washington on career and technology policy issues, lobbying Congress to protect U.S. innovation and cyber-security, and providing federal lawmakers and Cabinet departments with advice and guidance. We will also continue our Congressional Advocacy Recruitment Effort (CARE) to facilitate your communication with your state representatives and those on Capitol Hill.
To learn more about what IEEE-USA is doing for you, please visit our Web site (www.ieeeusa.org), and don't hesitate to share your thoughts with me at galphonse1@comcast.net.
9. IEEE Educational Activities
NEWS FROM IEEE EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES AND THE HISTORY CENTER
(1st Quarter 2005)
REGISTER NOW FOR VINNY COMPETITION
Named after Leonardo da Vinci, VINNY is an award given to students in grades K-12 for the best one-minute videos explaining how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) can help solve common global problems. VINNY is a worldwide video competition designed to build awareness of STEM. Teams of 3 students and 1 teacher will identify and research a global problem and discover ways that STEM can help solve it. The teams will create a one-minute video explaining the global problem and a possible STEM solution. There are 3 levels of competition: grades K-5, 6-8, and 9-12. The award is given in both English and Spanish, for a total of 6 categories and prizes. The VINNY website is available at http://vinny.pcs.cnu.edu. The deadline for registration is February 15, 2005. VINNY is proudly sponsored by the NASA Center for Distance Learning, Christopher Newport University, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Funding for the project is providing by the IEEE Foundation.
CALL FOR 2005 EAB AWARD NOMINATIONS
The IEEE Educational Activities Board is accepting nominations of IEEE members for its annual awards. The deadline for nominations is 30 April 2005. Awards include: IEEE EAB Meritorious Achievement Award in Accreditation Activities; IEEE EAB Meritorious Achievement Award in Continuing Education; IEEE EAB Major Educational Innovation Award; IEEE EAB Pre-College Educator Award; IEEE EAB Meritorious Service Citation; IEEE EAB Employer Professional Development Award; And FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2005
IEEE EAB Society/Council Professional Development Award (PLEASE NOTE that the EAB Society/Council Professional Development Award is offered in odd-numbered years alternating with the Section Professional Development Award which is offered in even-numbered years). For award descriptions, honorarium details, and nominations packets, visit:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/eab/EABAwards/callnominations-2005.htm
For more information, contact: Rae Toscano, Manager +1 732 562 5482;
Karen Kleinschmidt, Administrator, +1 732 562 5493;
Email: eab-awards@ieee.org.
RECORD NUMBER OF IEEE MILESTONES IN 2004
2004 saw seven Milestones dedications, a record! These came from around the globe, and several more exciting ones are in the pipeline for approval in early 2005. Although not yet nominated a Milestone by the IEEE New York Section, in December 2004 a ceremony was held marking the addition of Philosophy Hall at Columbia University to the U.S. National Historic Landmark Survey, having been nominated by the IEEE History Center as part of a joint project with the U.S. National Park Service. Sections are urged to get involved in local history, particularly through the Milestones Program. More information can be found at:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/milestones_program.html.
HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS RELEASED
Also in October, the Guglielmo Marconi International Fellowship Foundation at Columbia University held their 30th anniversary banquet in Bologna, Italy, at which they presented a historical book they had commissioned from the IEEE History Center. Around the same time, Eta Kappa Nu celebrated their centennial with another historical work from the Center, this one underwritten by the IEEE Foundation.
ORAL HISTORIES UPDATE
The IEEE History Center continues to collect oral history interviews with important contributors to our fields, from every corner of the world. The Center now manages over 450 interviews, with more than one half available on the Web. They can be viewed at:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories.html.
The entire set of History Center pages is searchable from the center's home page, http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/index.html, if, say, one wanted to see if a particular country or region was mentioned. The Center has recently begun work on a project with the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society to collect more interviews in their field, in preparation for the EMC's 50th anniversary celebration in 2007.
IEEE SETF - INCORPORATING STANDARDS INTO UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS
Volunteers from the IEEE Educational Activities Board and Standards Association have come together and formed the IEEE Standards in Education Task Force (SETF). The goal of SETF is to help the electrical and computer engineering undergraduate programs with incorporating standards into the learning process. A grant from the IEEE Foundation was sought and supported for a needs survey and the development of proof of concept learning products during 2004 and 2005. Through the survey, roadblocks to the introduction of standards into the undergraduate learning process were identified, namely: (1) the scarcity of learning supplements to classroom instruction that would impart essential knowledge about standards and (2) the cost of access to appropriate standards. The survey respondents encouraged the creation of web-based tutorials on, case illustrations using, and a reference guide to standards, many of which are currently being developed by the SETF. These web-based learning products will be pilot tested at two academic institutions in 2005 and, after any refinements based upon the pilot testing, the web site will be made available on an open-access basis. More information about this project will be announced in the coming months.
ABOUT IEEE EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES
The IEEE Educational Activities Board is responsible for coordinating the educational activities of the IEEE. The volunteer and staff members of IEEE Educational Activities carry out this responsibility by developing educational programs to ensure (1) The technological literacy of pre-college students, (2) the continuous maintenance and improvement of engineering education programs through active participation in accreditation activities, and (3) the development of continuing education products and services that serve the professional development and lifelong learning needs of electro-technology professionals worldwide. For more information, visit:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/eab/
or email:
ABOUT THE IEEE HISTORY CENTER
The IEEE History Center is a staff unit of IEEE that is located not at the IEEE Operations Center, but on the nearby New Brunswick campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, which cosponsors the Center's activities. The Center's mission to preserve, research, and promote the legacy of IEEE technologies is overseen by the IEEE History Committee, a standing committee of the IEEE Executive Committee. Since most of the activities in carrying out this mission are educational in nature, the Staff Director of the History Center reports to the IEEE Managing Director for Educational Activities, and Center staff work closely with EAD staff on many programs. Those interested in more information are invited to look at the Center's website:
(http://www.ieee.org/history_center)
or to email the Center at:
10. IEEE-USA Needs Help
Early this year, Congress will begin debating legislation that could profoundly affect American engineering professionals.
We Need IEEE Members to Come to Washington on March 8th and 9th to Help Us Defend Your Profession!
IEEE engineers face an unprecedented challenge, and an equal opportunity, this year. Done right, pending legislation could strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness and prosperity. Done wrong, these proposed reforms could undermine job opportunities and retirement security for many American professionals, including engineers and scientists. It all depends on what Congress decides to do.
Among the many important issues that Congress will debate this year the most important for engineers include proposals to:
Expand the country’s temporary work visa program. Although it will target low-skill workers, this proposal could substantially increase the number of temporary visas available for foreign professionals.
Partially privatize Social Security and strengthen the nation’s defined pension system.
Change the processing of visas international students need to study in the U.S. Some proposals would make the student admissions process more restrictive. Others will expedite student admissions.
Make it easier foreign engineers and scientists to permanent residents of the U.S.
IEEE-USA will be working aggressively to protect the interests of IEEE members, but we can’t do it alone. We need help from individual IEEE members who are concerned about the future of their profession.
On the afternoon of March 8th, 2005 we invite all concerned engineers to meet us on Capitol Hill for an intensive training session on key professional careers issues. Then on March 9th, you will visit with your legislators to discuss the state of engineering in America and practical ways Congress can improve it.
All IEEE members in Regions 1 – 6 are encouraged to participate, including students and retired engineers. No experience is necessary. All you need is a willingness to try to make the country better. IEEE-USA will provide you with background on pending legislation and tips on holding successful meetings with members of Congress. IEEE-USA held a very successful similar event last year. Only two of the participants had ever met a lawmaker before, yet all were able to successful communicate personal concerns and practical recommendations to their legislators.
More information on the 2005 IEEE-USA Careers Fly-In, including how to register, can be found here: www.ieeeusa.org/policy/Careerflyin. Limited support for a few IEEE members from key legislative districts will also be available.
Questions? Contact Vin O’Neil or Russ Harrison at (202) 785-0017 or e-mail Russ at r.t.harrison@ieee.org.
