The course surveys many different concerns that an engineer or designer needs to consider when developing a new product - hardware circuits, software processes, power, cooling, human interfaces, testing, integration, delivery, and support after product launch. It presents many different tradeoffs, such as buy versus build, architectures that suit specific applications, and types of markets.

Short bio:

Kim has spent 25 years in designing and developing medical, military, and satellite equipment. He authored, Electronic Instrument Design: Architecting for the Life Cycle, published by Oxford University Press and is currently working on three other books. He is Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement magazine, writes the Tried and True column, and is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. He co-founded Stimsoft, a medical products company, which sold in 2003 and now consults in product development. He has published widely in engineering journals and has several patents.

CEU Credits:

THIS COURSE WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR CEU-CREDITS. The course will be 2 x 4 hours, on two consecutive Saturdays. Each hour counts as 0.1 CEU (CEU = Continuing Education Units). Also, 0.1 CEU = 1 PDH (Professional Development Hour). The CEU is a currency that measures a person's participation in a formal, non-credit continuing education program, such as a workshop, seminar, tutorial, or self-study course. IEEE is an Authorized CEU Provider through the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET). As defined by IACET, one CEU is equal to ten contact hours of instruction in a continuing education activity. Currently, thirty states require Professional Development Hours to maintain P.E. licensure, encouraging engineers to seek CEUs for their participation in Continuing Education programs. Evidence of participation in these courses also helps engineers meet company training requirements.

The Section will cover the cost for the course, and each interested participant who requests CEUs will have to cover the cost of $15.00 for his/her individual certificate.

Potential applicants to the course and CEUs need to register before Dec 22, 2006 by sending an email to Boris at bgramat@jhmi.edu.

Directions to HEM:

The Historical Electronics Museum (HEM) is located near BWI airport. The address for the HEM is:

Historical Electronics Museum

1745 W. Nursery Road, Linthicum, MD 21090

410-765-0230

The directions for the HEM are as follows:

From Baltimore:
Route 295 South (Baltimore Washington Parkway)
Take West Nursery Road exit, turn left at light and go through four stoplights.
Museum is on the left, next to the Marriott Hotel.

From Annapolis:
Route 97 North
Take BWI Airport exit. Right at first light onto Aviation Boulevard.
Turn right at sixth light onto Elkridge Landing Road.
Turn right at second light onto West Nursery Road.
Museum is on the right, next to the Marriott Hotel.

From Washington:
Route 295 North (Baltimore Washington Parkway)
Take West Nursery Road exit, stay right on ramp.
Go through three stoplights.
Museum is on the left, next to the Marriott Hotel.

From Route 195:
Route 170 North (Camp Meade Road) towards Linthicum.
Left at first light onto Elm Road.
Left at light onto Elkridge Landing Road.
Right onto West Nursery Road.
Museum is on the right next to the Marriott Hotel.

From Interstate 95:
Exit onto 195 East to 295 North and follow directions from Washington (above)

3. Section Election Results

The ballots have been counted and these are the new section officers for 2007:

Chair: Robert Cuellar

Vice Chair: William Semancik

Treasurer: Helen Garrison

Secretary: Dave Kisak

The following votes were received:

Mail: 16

Fax: 3

E-mail: 65

Total: 84

Three voters did not mark their ballots and some voters appear to have voted only for persons they know as they did not vote for some positions.

4. Mentors Wanted for IEEE Robot Challenge for High School Students

As you may be aware, the IEEE Baltimore Section has been sponsoring one of the Baltimore Museum of Industry's Engineering Challenges since 1996. The IEEE Sponsored Engineering Challenge consists of a basic walking Robot that High School students essentially have to "build from scratch" using the raw materials and instructions provided. Advance automated robot options are available as well. In supporting this challenge, the IEEE provides a "Robot Mentor" service. We are in need of several Mentors who the students can ask questions and discuss their progress. The Mentors also provide encouragement, helpful hunts, and most importantly, visit the students in their classrooms. Mentoring is very rewarding as the students really value interacting with people from beyond the classroom, and teachers appreciate the support as well. We are in special need of Mentors who have the flexibility in their schedules to perform the in-school visits.

For more information about the IEEE Robot Challenge, please visit our website:

www.robotchallenge.com

If Mentoring for the Robot Challenge is of potential interest to you, please consider attending our next Mentor Workshop, January 20th, 10 to 2 PM at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, 1415 Key Highway in Baltimore. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact Walt Willing at waltwilling@juno.com or by phone at 410-765-7372. To help with the SPAM blockers, please include the word ROBOT in the e-mail subject line. Thanks.

5. Volunteers Needed to Assist in Schools Initiative

The IEEE has developed 22 low-cost hands-on technical lesson plans that could be integrated into and enrich the current math and science curriculum. The objective is to stimulate the interest of students of all ages, from elementary school to high school, and excite them about science and eventually engineering. Without more students going on to take engineering at college, it is expected that the country will be unable to meet the foreseeable requirements for all types of engineers in the future.

Volunteers are needed to learn about the program (known as TISP, for Teachers In Service Program) and then meet with school teachers and administrators during on one of the professional development days within the academic calendar year to explain the program to them and to work through one of the lesson plans. There will be no contact with classrooms, but if your presentations successfully persuade the teachers to adapt these lesson plans into their curriculum, the benefits to the students should be significant. In regions where this program has been carried out, the response from teachers has been very favorable.

Baltimore would become the focus point for these activities in Region 2, and we are seeking about 50 volunteers who would commit to 1 1/2 days of training over a weekend, and about 3 hours a year during working hours (more if you can spare it), meeting with teachers and administrators. The time frame for this activity would be the second half of 2007, but we would like your response now, so that we can make the commitment to IEEE that we will have the support needed to carry through on this activity. Please note that all expenses for materials will be covered by IEEE. Volunteers are needed to take this program to the local schools.

If you are interested in seeing more about the program, you are invited to look at the program's website:

http://www.tryengineering.org

This activity would be run concurrently with the Robot Challenge - the IEEE Baltimore Section’s initiative that currently supports high school students, Discover-E, an activity supported by local industry that encourages engineers to visit classrooms, as well as other activities and challenges promoted by other Technical societies. They all stand to benefit from the symbiotic benefit of a technical enhancement of the curriculum.

Please contact Bill Semancik by e-mail at wsemancik54@comcast.net if you interested, or call him at 410-489-5825 for more information. Retirees who would have less difficulty in meeting school officials during working hours would be especially welcome.

6. Engineering Seminars for Soft Skills

We are asking if there is potential interest in engineering seminars that discuss soft skills. The seminars are described at the following website:

http://www.carlselinger.com/seminars.html

Here is an excerpt from this web site describing the seminars:

“Carl Selinger’s “Stuff You Don’t Learn in Engineering School” seminars, articles and book help younger engineers and emerging project managers – indeed, all professionals -- learn the non-technical soft skills that are important to be more effective and happier in the real world. These skills include making decisions, setting priorities, running meetings, speaking, writing and listening better, leading teams, dealing with stress and having fun, and understanding themselves and others. Lisa Belkin has talked about Carl and “Stuff” in her Life’s Work column in the New York Times.

His book Stuff you Don’t Learn in Engineering School: Skills for Success in the Real World has been published by Wiley-IEEE Press.

Articles on these themes are now appearing regularly in IEEE Spectrum magazine where Carl is a Contributing Editor (go to http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers).”

If there is interest in seminars of this type, please let Boris Gramatikov know. His email address is as follows:

Dr. Boris Gramatikov

Bgramat@jhmi.edu

7. PES Technical Meeting Results

IEEE Baltimore Power Engineering Society (PES) held its third Technical Meeting of the year on December 6, 2006. The meeting was held at Baltimore Gas & Electric's Rutherford Business Complex-South location, 7225 Windsor Blvd, Baltimore, MD 21224. Our presenter was none other than Mr. Jack Casazza, an IEEE Distinguish Lecturer and President of the American Education Institute. The presentation was on the "Effect of Future Technical and Regulatory Developments on (Electric) Transmission Systems". The meeting was attended by approximately forty attendees, including members and non-members of PES. Jack Casazza delivered a very entertaining and informative presentation that enlightening for all who were present. For more information on Baltimore PES activities, please visit our website at:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/baltimorepes

8. Baltimore PES First Annual Gala Results

The Baltimore Power Engineering Society (PES) first annual Gala was a huge success. The event was held on Tuesday December 5, 2006 and was attended by 68 members and friends of PES. Sophisticatedly adorned in semiformal attire, everyone was greeted by the elegant atmosphere provided by the Grey Rock Mansion in Pikesville, Maryland. The evening kicked off with a wine tasting event hosted by Boordy Vineyard and ended with an excellent talk on “The State of the Engineer” by our distinguished speaker, Dr. Warren DeVries – Dean of the School of Engineering and Information Technology at UMBC. The event would not have been such a success had it not been for the seven corporate sponsors, including ABB, Baltimore Gas & Electric, Constellation Energy, General Electric, JB Sales, KCI and Martini & Associates. These sponsors made it possible for several young professional engineers to attend the event for free, including members of GOLD. The event is intended to be an annual event and will be held again in the Fall of 2007.

To view picture from the event, please visit our website at:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/baltimorepes

9. IEEE EDOC Conference

The Eleventh International IEEE EDOC Conference (EDOC 2007) “The Enterprise Computing Conference” will be held in Annapolis, MD 15 – 19 October 2007.

The EDOC 2007 Organizing Committee is looking for volunteers to work with the committee in support of local arrangements, registration, publications and publicity.

About the conference:

Formerly known as the enterprise distributed object computing conference, EDOC 2007 will be the eleventh event in the series of conferences, which since 1997 has brought together leading computer science researchers, IT decision makers, IT architects, solution designers and practitioners from academia, industry and government to discuss enterprise computing challenges, models and solutions. Enterprise computing is based on a wide (and ever growing) range of methods, models, tools and technologies traversing a broad spectrum of vertical domains and industry segments, from electronic and mobile commerce to real-time business applications for collaborating enterprises.

The EDOC 2007 Conference will emphasize the integration and management of enterprise computing research and development as well as novel implementation approaches and technologies related to business processes integration, management, execution and monitoring at any or all of the business, application, middleware and technical levels.

The main conference will be preceded by two days of workshops for which a separate call for proposals will be issued. For example, EDOC 2006 workshops included: VORTE: Vocabularies, Ontologies and Rules for the Enterprise; MWS: Middleware for Web Services; and, AQuSerM: Advances in Quality of Service Management among others

Topics:

The EDOC 2007 program will include papers addressing the domains, the life-cycle issues and the realization technologies involved in developing, deploying and operating enterprise computing systems. Topic areas include:

- State of the art in distributed enterprise applications

- Enterprise computing metrics and environment

- SW engineering approaches to distributed enterprise applications

- Web services

- Business Process Management (BPM) Systems

- Business Rules

- Identity Management and Distributed Access Control

- Information and Data Integration

Conference Schedule

Abstract submission (optional) 30 March 2007

Paper submission due 1 May 2007

Acceptance notification 30 June 2007

Workshop Schedule

Workshop proposals due 6 April 2007

Workshop selection TBD

Paper submission due TBD

Acceptance notification 30 June 2007

10. Continuing EE Education

We are re-running this request for interest in a continuing education program. This program will be in the format of seminars focused on a particular topic of interest. The seminars may run either during the week after work hours or possibly on Saturday. The idea for the program is described below.

Name of project: Continuing EE Education (“CEEE”)

Goal: A section-level program aimed at:

Updating the IEEE members on new developments in the EE field.

Familiarizing engineers with basic new tools, products and techniques as well as giving them the initial knowledge and skills to use them.

Inviting representatives from different vendors to present leading novel products.

Giving tutorials in new areas.

Helping IEEE fellow members become more competitive, especially in times of uncertain jobs, off-shoring and salary stagnation.

Facilitating networking.

Broadening the horizon of each IEEE member.

Fostering collaboration between members of different societies as well as generation of new ideas (“cross-pollination” element).

The program should be open to all IEEE members, including students. It is meant to be a cross-societies initiative, i.e. should not be limited to narrow topics serving the interests of a single chapter only. Emphasis should be placed on meeting with experienced experts from different fields. Critical comparisons between different solutions of EE problems are expected to be made, and trends should be discussed.

Potential topics of interest could include, but are not limited to:

Software tools:

Programming languages

Compilers

Real-Time Operating systems

Debuggers

Emulators

Hardware tools:

Novel electronic components

Single-Board Computers (SBC)

Embedded solutions

FPGAs

Printed circuit board design (schematics capture, layout)

Circuit simulation (PSPICE)

Portable devices

Signal and image processing (examples, tools, help)

Wireless devices:

Theory

Standards

Available OEM products

Trends

Internet-based methods and devices:

Standards

Available tools

Web Page Design

Contemporary design tools (like AutoCad and Solid Works)

Reliability and Compliance issues

We plan to invite qualified speakers from academia, industry and governmental institutions. The speakers will be professionals who can give first-hand information and share front-line experience on the technology, methods and tools being presented.

We plan to organize 2-4 meetings annually. Each meeting is planned to last for 2 hours or more. We could meet on weekdays, or on Saturdays.

Please send us your suggestions and preferences regarding topics, time and place of meetings, the name/acronym of the program etc.

Boris Gramatikov

Baltimore Section

Bgramat@jhmi.edu