NEWSLETTER OF
THE
FEBRUARY 2007
The web site for the
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. January’s Continuing EE Education
Course
2. Mentors
Wanted for IEEE Robot Challenge for High School Students
4. Volunteers
Needed to Assist in Schools Initiative
5. PES -
Annual Engineers Week Dinner Meeting
7. Engineering
Awards for 2006
10. Engineering
Seminars for Soft Skills
1.
January’s Continuing EE Education Course
The two-week Continuing Education Course conducted at the beginning of January was a real success. The course, Developing Real-Time Embedded Products, was offered by Kim Fowler. Each session lasted about four hours. Approximately fifteen people attended. All of us would like to thank Kim for his time and effort to present this course to the IEEE.
We hope that we can conduct these Continuing EE Courses from time to time. If anyone is interested in presenting a course, please contact Boris. (See the last item in this newsletter.)
2. 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:
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.
3. Robot Challenge Judges
This is an early reminder to our colleagues who in
previous years have generously volunteered to act as judges for the Robot
Challenge. The Challenge will be held this year on Saturday morning, April 28,
and on Sunday afternoon, April 29, at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. We
would like you to hold these days open if you are willing to help us with the
students again. Any other members who would also like to participate should
contact Neville Jacobs at
4. 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.
If you are interested in seeing more about the program, you are invited to look at the program's website:
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.
5. PES - Annual Engineers Week Dinner Meeting
The Baltimore Chapter of the Power Engineering Society is
once again inviting you to attend its Annual Engineers Week Dinner Meeting.
This year’s dinner meeting will be held on Thursday February 22, 2007 from 6 PM
to 9 PM at the
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/baltimorepes/
Please RSVP as soon as possible, but no later than Monday, February 12. You may RSVP via email by responding to baltimorepes@ieee.org.
6. Signal Processing Society
A few people have asked about the status of the Signal Processing Society. The speaker that we had planned on for February was forced to back down due to concerns at work. If I can get a speaker for February, I will send out a meeting notice to the Signal Processing Interest Group.
We seem to be having some trouble this year in getting speakers. Last year, we had speakers lined up to talk. If anyone would like to present to the IEEE Signal Processing Society, send me an email. If you know anyone who would like to present, let me know. Send me their email and I can contact them.
I appreciate everyone’s help.
7. Engineering Awards for 2006
The following is a note from Kathryn O'C. Gunkel, P.E.,
Chairman, Awards & Recognition Committee, Engineers Week Council. She is
addressing the Nomination Forms for
“This year, we are advertising directly to the Engineering firms that are members of the Engineering Society of Baltimore as well as all member societies. However, the Engineering firm must coordinate with the appropriate Engineering society to submit the nomination to the Awards & Recognition Committee. Each member society may make two nominations for each award. A list of ESB member societies is available at http://www.esb.org, through the "Baltimore Engineer" tab.
The forms are relatively simple, requesting primarily contact information and basic background information about the candidate. The forms use MSWord's form fill-in feature which allows you to tab to each field that requires information (you may also point and click). The nomination form for each award clearly specifies the eligibility requirements. When you open the form, you will need to scroll up to review the Eligibility Requirements and Evaluation Criteria, as the form opens at the first field.
The postmark deadline for submitting nominations is Wednesday, February 7, 2006.
If you have any questions, please feel free to telephone me at (410)-780-9663 or contact me via email at wildwoodenvironmental@comcast.net.
The forms are also available (including a pdf version) through my company website, http://www.wildwoodenvironmentalengineering.com and will be available shortly on the ESB website.
The Awards Ceremony will be held in conjunction with
MSPE's Reception for Newly Licensed Engineers on Friday, February 23, 2007, at
the
8. GLOBECOM 07
GLOBECOM 07 will be held in
Jeff Friedhoffer (jafried@ieee.org) is chair of the Design and Developers Forum. The design and developer forum is aimed at communications practitioners vs. academics and the papers should reflect topics of interest to these practitioners. These session might include talks on emerging technologies that will lead to new products, new products to help designers.
Suggestions for Topics for this year include, but are not limited to:
Cognitive Radio
Communication Standards
-IEEE
-IETF
-ITU
Delay Tolerant Network Applications
E911
-Wireless VoIP
-Wired VoIP
Instrumentation
-RF
-Network protocols
-Optical Networks
IPTV
IPv6 status
Network Security
Quality
-QOE (Quality of Experience)
-QOS (Quality of Service)
Quantum Communications
Regulation and Communications
RFID
Software development tools
VoIP and applications
-Presence
-SBC
Wireless technologies
-3G
-4G
-WiMax
Help is needed as follows:
Expanding on the above list of Topics for the Sessions/Panels
Reviewing proposals
Chairing Sessions
For more information on Globecom 07 see:
http://www.ieee-globecom.org/2007
Topics at the 06 conference can bee seen at:
http://www.ieee-globecom.org/2006
Click on Design & Developers Forum on the left side.
For those interested in presenting a paper the deadline is 15 March for abstracts.
Please pass this on to your colleagues.
9. IEEE EDOC Conference
The Eleventh International IEEE EDOC Conference (EDOC
2007) “The Enterprise Computing Conference” will be held in
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
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
-
- 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. 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
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
11.
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