The first training program for Region 2 for IEEE’s Teacher In-Service Program was held the weekend of 7-8 September 2007 at the BWI Marriott and the Historical Electronics Museum. The attendance over the two days was about 50 people spread among eight sections from Region 2, training people from the Educational Activities Board and educators.

The program included an overall description of IEEE for the educators in the room who were not familiar with the organization, a description of the program, two exercises to illustrate how the program would be run in schools and a panel of educators.

The two projects chosen were to build a small DC motor kit and the construction of a robot arm. These two projects spanned the range from the very structured (building a specific motor from a kit) to the unstructured (building a robot arm from cardboard and a bag of miscellaneous items). The feedback from the teachers in the room was that the latter exercise was the big hit. That program allowed for individual team creativity and ingenuity and illustrated that there were multiple solutions that all solved the problem at hand. Indeed, nearly all of the 20+ different designs were successful to some degree.

The next steps will be to plan for contacting schools. Baltimore Section has a leg up in that the representative from Baltimore County was especially enthusiastic. The volunteers who participated from the section can expect to be contacted shortly. Anyone else wishing to participate is still welcome to contact the section.

3. GLOBECOM 07

GLOBECOM 07 is being held in Washington November 26-30 at The Hilton Washington, 1919 Connecticut Avenue. There are hundreds of sessions covering all aspects of communications in the Technical Sessions, The Design and Developers Forum and the ACCESS 07 Executive Business Forum, as well as Tutorials, and Workshops. EntNet 2007 (Enterprise and Networking Services) is collocated with GLOBECOM and registration for GLOBECOM is valid for EntNet sessions.

GLOBECOM website:

http://www.ieee-globecom.org/2007/index.html

EntNet website:

http://www.ieee-entnet.org/2007/index.html

Help is needed for GLOBECOM. We are looking for volunteers to help on the ground. If you are willing to volunteer, contact Don Rickerson, don@skyhelp.net. Help is needed at the registration desk and for monitoring rooms (check that people coming in are registered). You will be able to attend sessions on the day you volunteer for free.

4. Senior Member Nomination Day

This will held at the Historical Electronics Museum in the library on November 3, 2007, 9AM-1PM. Bring your resume and a completed Senior Member Application in Word (soft and hard copy, no floppy disks) and we will have three references ready to submit your application on line. Snacks will be provided. Check the web site:

http://ieee.org/baltimore

for last minute updates.

The Senior Member Web site is at the following address:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/rab/md/smelev.htm

5. Upcoming Conferences in Maryland and DC

Baltimore Section members should be aware of the following conferences that will be coming to Maryland and DC. These are opportunities to learn and to network. They are also opportunities to volunteer. Many times conferences will offer free attendance to volunteers. We have seen this recently with the Biometrics Conference in Baltimore, and the Vehicular Technology Conference. The latter even offered a free tutorial for volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering, either wait for a call for volunteers or contact the committee via information on the conference web site.

2007 11th IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC 2007) 15 Oct - 19 Oct 2007 Annapolis Westin

2007 IEEE Industrial Energy Efficiency Workshop 22 Oct - 23 Oct 2007 Baltimore Sheraton

2007 IEEE/CPMT TC-7 Workshop on Accelerated Stress Testing & Reliability (ASTR) 31 Oct - 02 Nov 2007 Greenbelt Marriott

2007 IEEE/NIH Life Science Systems and Applications Workshop (LISA) 08 Nov - 09 Nov 2007 Bethesda, NIH

GLOBECOM 2007 - 2007 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference 25 Nov - 30 Nov 2007 Washington Hilton

2007 International Conference on Enterprise Networking and Services (EntNet 2006) (co-located with IEEE GLOBECOM 2007) 29 Nov - 30 Nov 2007 Washington Hilton

2007 Winter Simulation Conference - (WSC 2007) 09 Dec - 12 Dec 2007 Washington JW Marriott

2007 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) 10 Dec - 12 Dec 2007 Washington Hilton

2007 International Semiconductor Device Research Symposium (ISDRS) 12 Dec - 14 Dec 2007 UMCP Student Union

2008 IASTED International Conference on Antennas, Radar and Wave Propagation (ARP) 16 Apr - 18 Apr 2008 Baltimore Best Western

2008 IEEE 23rd Annual Conference on Computational Complexity (CCC) 22 Jun - 26 Jun 2008 UMCP

2008 IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis & Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS) 07 Sep - 10 Sep 2008 Baltimore Tremont Suites

6. UMBC Senior "Capstone" Course for Computer Engineers

The following is a note from John Pinkston.

“UMBC has a senior "capstone" course for the computer engineers, in which the students do some reasonably ambitious design and construction project, in teams, over two semesters. Last year, along with a faculty supervisor, we had external mentors for each of the student teams, many of them recruited through the good offices of the Baltimore IEEE chapter.

This was very successful from the university's and student's viewpoint, and the feedback from the mentors was also quite positive about the experience. We would like to do it again. While I will contact last year's mentors and hope many will be willing again, we will surely need some additional mentors.

The model is to find local experienced electrical engineers who would be willing to come to campus every so often to listen to the students' progress reports, offer advice, do some mentoring, and generally let the students see how professional engineers think and operate.

The time commitment is flexible. Last year it ranged from a minimum of 3 or 4 meetings with the students over the duration, to almost weekly interactions. Interactions can be face to face meetings on campus, but have also been by phone and email.

The student efforts are more engineering oriented than computer science, although there might be some embedded software in some projects. The work must include design and construction of some working circuitry.”

Responses and questions can be directed to:

John Pinkston

410-455-1338

pinkston@umbc.edu

7. 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