Please join us at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at La Madeline in Columbia, MD for our next networking event and to hold elections for the Baltimore IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) committee. Attendees will receive 1 drink ticket each, and a variety of heavy hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served.

Hope to see you there!

Warmly,

Andrea Kraay

IEEE WIE Baltimore

akraay@alum.mit.edu”

2. INCOSE Meeting

Topic:

“The Art of the Trade Study”

Speaker:

Mark Wilson

CEO, Strategy Bridge International, Inc.

Date:

Wednesday 18 April

Time:

Dinner: 6 PM

Presentation: 7 PM

Location:

Applied Physics Laboratory,

Johns Hopkins University, Laurel MD.

For detailed information about the April meeting, go to:

http://www.incose.org/chesapek

3. Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society

The Baltimore chapter of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems (AES) society is recruiting for membership and speakers. The following is a note from Brian Womack, chapter chair of AES:

“The IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems (AES) society wants you! We are creating a community of defense and aerospace engineers in the greater Baltimore area. We want you to share your ideas about engineering and learn about new trends in a range of technology areas including data fusion, sensors, data alignment, control, and general defense topics.

We will have monthly meetings that alternate between Owings Mills and Westminster, Maryland since most of our members live or work somewhere between the two. We plan to have at least a third of the meetings as dinner meetings, so that we can socialize in an informal setting. The rest of the time, we hope that we can help each other learn more about the latest and greatest in engineering. For example, we would like volunteers to summarize interesting research papers or magazine articles that we can include on our website. Speaking of the website, please visit http://ieeeaes.com to register. You will be added to our mailing list and be able to participate in our member-only forums, where things like career opportunities, article summaries, and conference information will be posted. If you need help, feel free to email me. Our next meeting time and location will be posted on the home page, so please stop by regularly!”

If you are interested, please contact:

Brian Womack, PhD

Brian.Womack@ieee.org

4. Robot Challenge Judges

Volunteers are needed for Judges for the High School Robot Challenge, which will be held this year on April 28 and 29 at the Baltimore Museum on Industry. Judges are needed for the Track events and for the Oral Presentations, when the students will be presenting their projects to a panel of judges. Saturday's activity is from 8:45 AM to 1 PM, and the Sunday activity is from 12:30 PM to 4 PM. After a brief training session, you will be paired off with an experienced judge for the next couple of events, and then you're on your own!

If you would like to work with our up-and-coming budding engineers, please contact Neville Jacobs at Nevilleed@aol.com, or call him at 410-653-4176. You'll enjoy it!

5. Robot Challenge Alumni Win FIRST Robotics Regionals

Students from Dulaney High School, Team 1727 competed with 57 teams from Maryland, Washington DC, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and the United Kingdom in the Chesapeake Regional FIRST Robotics Competition at the Naval Academy from March 12-15. They won the top prize, the Chairman's Award, for the team that best exemplifies the spirit of FIRST and spreads interest in science, math, and technology, in the team, school, and community. One of the team's students as well as one mentor participated in the Robot Challenge for two years before joining the FIRST team.

Woodlawn High School, which has also done the Robot Challenge in the past, competed with Team 768, and they received the Engineering Inspiration Award. Congratulations to both teams, who now go on to the finals at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta in April.

FIRST is an acronym, which means For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. While a good challenge, FIRST requires each team to cover the $10,000 cost through fund raising, and though this is out of reach for many of the high schools that participate in the IEEE Robot Challenge, we're proud of those that tried and have been successful.

6. 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.

7. Member Interviewed for IEEE Institute

One of our members, Carole Carey, was interviewed by Kathy Kowalenko of The Institute last December about the MPAC-WIE Conference last Oct ("Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century").

The article is titled, “Region 2, Women in Engineering Partner to Hold Conference”. To view this article, go to:

http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/site/tionline/menuitem.130a3558587d56e8fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=institute_level1_article&TheCat=2201&article=tionline/legacy/inst2007/jan07/wie.xml&

Released: 05 January 2007

Posted on: The Institute Online

8. Volunteers Needed for Formation of a VT Chapter

Volunteers are needed for the formation of a local chapter of the Vehicular Technology Society. If you are interested, contact ronald_aloysius@ieee.org and I will forward your name to the local officers.

9. Educational Activities Board 2007 Call for Nominations

The IEEE Educational Activities Board is seeking nominations for its 2007 Education Awards. In addition to its seven existing recognitions, a newly-established annual award for Meritorious Achievement in Informal Education will be presented this year. The Meritorious Achievement in Informal Education award recognizes IEEE members who volunteer as librarians, docents, tour guides, or curators; or who act as technical advisors to or serve as board members of aquariums, museums, parks, zoos or similar settings where teachers, students, and the public benefit from their professional expertise in science and technology. The deadline for all nominations is 30 April.

For descriptions of the full list of the awards, visit:

http://www.ieee.org/web/education/EABAwards/index.html

For access to nomination packets, visit:

http://www.ieee.org/web/education/EABAwards/calls.html

Click on the award for which you would like to submit a nomination. Questions can be sent to eab-awards@ieee.org.

10. Petition Candidate for the IEEE 2008 President-Elect

The following is a note from Dr. Ralph W. Wyndrum Jr.:

“I need your help to become a petition candidate for the IEEE 2008 President-Elect position. I will need 3000+ signatures to appear on the ballot. Not only are IEEE Members, Senior Members, Life Members and Fellows eligible to sign, but also the newly dedicated class of Graduate Student Members.

You and your colleagues may individually petition by logging on to www.ieee.org/petition; you will need your member number and pin, OR your IEEE user name and password (i.e., IEEE web account information). This will take you to my petition which you can sign electronically. For more information on my qualifications, I invite you to visit my personal website at www.wyndrum.com/election. I have served as TAB VP, IEEE-USA President, and earlier as Publications VP.

Please remember that by signing the petition, you are not voting for me as President, nor are you obligated to vote for me in the election. By signing the petition, you are simply making me eligible to be a candidate in the election. Please sign the petition as soon as possible, since I cannot officially campaign until I gain the required support of 3000+ signatures.

Thank you for entertaining this request, and I will surely appreciate your support.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ralph W. Wyndrum Jr., F.IEEE

2006 President, IEEE-USA

CEO, Executive Engineering Consultants”

11. GLOBECOM 07

GLOBECOM 07 will be held in Washington DC 26‑30 November 07. This is one of the two annual premier IEEE Communications Society conferences.

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.

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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.

The URL to the CEEE home page is:

http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/continuing_education/CEEE.htm

There is also a link to it from the Section's web page.

Boris Gramatikov

Baltimore Section

Bgramat@jhmi.edu