Those eligible to hold office are Fellows, Life Fellows, Senior members, Life Senior Members, Members and Life Members of IEEE of the Baltimore Section.

The election ballots should be received by the Nominations Committee no later than November 30, 2008.

The guidelines for the Section’s elections can be found in Article VIII - Nominations and Elections of the Elections of the Section's Bylaws:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/Bylaws/Final_Nov2001.pdf

Thank you for participating in the 2009 Elections.

Nominations Committee for 2009 Officers:

Boris Gramatikov (Chair) - bgramat@jhmi.edu

Jeff Friedhoffer (Principal Coordinator)

Vil P. Arafiles (Ballots, counting and stats)

Jay Gamerman (Member)

Alan Pressman (Member)

2. Celebrating 50 Years of NASA

We had 82 people pay for Saturday's event celebrating 50 years of NASA; 78 people showed up. The dinner was excellent. The talk was excellent.

Robert Zimmerman will be back in January to discuss the topic of his new book, the Hubble Space Telescope. I’m sure this talk will be as interesting as the one on Saturday.

3. Power Electronics Society Technical Talk

Topic:

Design and Implementation of Bi-Directional DC-DC Converter

Speaker:

Damian Urciuoli, US Army Research Laboratory

Date:

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Time:

Starting at 6 pm (Light fare, followed by technical talk and discussion)

Location:

Conference Room at the Historical Electronics Museum, Linthicum, MD

RSVP:

hobrien@arl.army.mil no later than Monday, November 3

Abstract:

In 2008 the ARL Directed Energy and Power Generation Division delivered a TRL 5 bi-directional DC-DC converter (BDC) for military hybrid ground vehicle test applications. The BDC is rated for up to 150 kW continuous operation with up to 97% efficiency using 80 ˚C engine coolant. With a displacement of only 40 liters, the ARL BDC achieves a volumetric power density of nearly 4 kW per liter; a 40% improvement over state of the art. The project was funded by the Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC). The converter was designed to meet or exceed the performance specifications of the Future Combat Systems (FCS) platform with a control interface designed for compatibility with the TARDEC System Integration Laboratory (SIL). The unit automatically operates as either a boost converter or buck converter based on power system parameter sensing and communication with the vehicle system controller. The role of the unit in boost mode is to provide power to a 600 V (nominal) vehicle propulsion bus from energy stored in a 300 V (nominal) vehicle battery pack. In buck mode, the unit moves power in the opposite direction by recharging the battery pack, using additional power generated on the propulsion bus.

Bio:

Damian Urciuoli received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2002 and 2003, respectively. While earning his degrees, he worked as a co-op student at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Philadelphia, PA. In 2003, he began work at the Army Research Lab in the field of power conversion system development. His present research focuses are on the development of power dense, high temperature silicon carbide power modules and inductors.

4. Communications Society Meeting for November

Title:

Navigating the Journey to the Network of the Future

Speaker:

Joseph Berthold

Date:

Monday, November 3, 2008

Time:

5:30 PM: social (sandwiches and drinks will be provided)

6:00 PM: seminar

Location:

Historical Electronics Museum

Directions can be found at the COMSOC web site:

http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/Chapter/Comm/

Please reply to g_tartanian@ieee.org if you are planning to attend, so that we can get a rough headcount.

Abstract

We are in the midst of a radical restructuring of our communications networks. New applications and increased customer access bandwidth have driven requirements for increased flexibility, scalability and efficiency in metro aggregation, metro core and national backbone networks. New generation networks must deliver dramatically lower capital and operations cost per bit than previous architectures were capable of. There is also a demand for applications that require orders of magnitude more bandwidth than we consume even in the video-intensive IPTV consumer application on today’s state-of-the-art networks. Exactly how to build future networks to support such high bandwidth applications, and at the same time improve network economics, has been a hotly contested issue for at least the past 10 years and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. While there is a general assumption in the community that applications will be built upon an IP network layer, the control and routing within that layer, as well as the composition and interworking of lower network layers, will be the subject of research for a long time to come. This talk will investigate two paths to the network of the future. One path is directed towards near-term commercial next-generation network evolution, where we will consider the roles that Ethernet, OTN and agile optical networking are taking on, and how they meet some of the challenges network operators face today. The second path follows the longer term research activities that are underway around the world to examine network architectures from a much more fundamental perspective. We will discuss a few examples of current networking research programs and initiatives including DRAGON, the Internet2 Dynamic Circuit Network, and the Global Environment for Network Innovation (GENI).

Biography:

Joseph Berthold is Vice President, Network Architecture at Ciena, where he has worked since 1997. There he contributes to the understanding of future network architecture directions, the definition of Ciena’s networking products, and is responsible for coordination of Ciena's work in industry standards. He is a member of the Board of Directors of ATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions) and a member of the Science Council for the National Science Foundation’s GENI (Global Environment for Networking Solutions) Program. He chaired the Technical Committee of the Optical Internetworking Forum from 1998-2001, and was its’ President from 2002-2007. Prior to Ciena he held various research and development positions at Bell Labs and Bellcore from 1977-1997. He received a PhD in Physics from Brown University in 1976, and did postdoctoral research at Cornell University from 1975-1977.

5. Communications Society Meeting for December

Title:

Some Implications of Memory and Processor Improvements on Data Networks

Speaker:

Timothy (Tim) J. Gibson, Ph.D.

DARPA Program Manager

Date:

Monday, December 1, 2008

Time:

5:30 PM: social (sandwiches and drinks will be provided)

6:00 PM: seminar

Location:

Historical Electronics Museum

Directions can be found at the COMSOC web site:

http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/Chapter/Comm/

Please reply to g_tartanian@ieee.org if you are planning to attend, so that we can get a rough headcount.

Abstract

The abstract for this talk will be published in the December newsletter.

Biography:

Dr. Gibson joined DARPA in June 2003 as a Program Manager in the Strategic Technologies Office. Dr. Gibson’s main interests lie in the areas of computer architecture and computer networks. His current networking programs focus on improving network performance, new transport and routing protocols, network security, and efficiently distributing content to deployed units.

Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Gibson was a Computer Systems Engineering Officer in the U.S. Army, retiring as a Colonel in 2005. He spent ten years away from the Army in Joint and Combined assignments at the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Operations; as the Chief of Network Security for the Pacific Theater at U.S. Pacific Command; and at Combined Forces Command, Seoul, Korea. His Army assignments include planning, installing, and maintaining the Army’s first wartime Echelon Above Corps TCP/IP data network during Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM.

Dr. Gibson was commissioned into the U.S. Army in 1979 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY. He was originally an Infantry officer and served in tactical infantry units for six years before becoming a Computer Systems Officer.

Dr. Gibson holds Masters Degrees in both Computer Science and History from the University of Kansas. He completed his Doctorate in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His doctoral research focused on data networks and storage systems. He has published in IEEE Spectrum, Networks, Communications, and others.

6. Computer Society Meeting for December

The Baltimore Computer Society will have their next Tech Talk Dec 3, 2008 at the Historical Electronics Museum (HEM) at 6pm.

A notice will be sent out on the Topic and Speaker soon.

7. Professional Development Seminar

This is a reminder for those who signed up to attend the Professional Development Seminar on 2008 November 1, 9:00 am – 1:00 pm at the Historical Electronics Museum.

The Historical Electronics Museum is located at:

1745 West Nursery Road, Linthicum, Maryland

http://www.hem-usa.org/

This event is sponsored by the IEEE Baltimore Section under the Professional Development Seminar (PDS) program and Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) Chapter.

8. Senior Member Nomination Event

A Senior Member nomination event will be held at the Historical Electronics Museum on Saturday November 8, 2008 from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. Those wishing to become senior members should bring their resumes and application forms.

An announcement of this event has been posted on the Section's web page.

9. Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AES)

We are pleased to announce that someone has volunteered to take over the chair of the AES society Baltimore chapter. You can contact him, Dave Price, at dl.price@ngc.com for more information.

10. Robot Challenge

The IEEE has received a request to provide Parkville High School students with engineering assistance in developing their Robot for the FIRST competition. The period of activity is from the beginning of January, 2009 to mid-February, and it’s pretty intense, something like 2 to 4 times a week. The event changes every year, but the robots get pretty sophisticated, and a lot of money is spent. There will typically be about 3 mechanical engineering advisors, and 1 or 2 electrical engineers - that's where you come in.

If you think you may be able to help, please let Neville Jacobs know as soon as possible, and he'll provide further information and put you in touch with the teachers working on the project. His contact information is Nevilleed@aol.com or 410-653-4176.

In running Automation for the Robot Challenge, we find ourselves needing old laptops with DOS, an RS232 serial interface, and a floppy disk drive. If you have any old working units you would like to loan or donate, please contact Neville Jacobs at Nevilleed@aol.com or 410-653-4176. Please erase your personal files if you are planning to donate it.

11. Notes from the Chair of Baltimore Section

The following are notes from Bill Semancik, the Chair of the Baltimore Section of the IEEE.

“Chapter news:

First news is that a person has stepped forward to take on leading the Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society chapter in Baltimore. I would like to welcome David Price as Chapter Chair and as a member of the Executive Committee of Baltimore Section. Stay tuned for announcements of future chapter meetings. AESS was at one time represented a very large component of the technical health of Baltimore Section. It is great to have the chapter becoming active again.

Second, there is a joint chapter of Professional Communications Society being formed among the three sections of South Area of Region 2 – D.C., Northern Virginia, and Baltimore. The leaders have discussed having events in each of the three sections rather than concentrating on a single section. Given the role that engineers have in expressing their analysis and conclusions as well as writing proposals, this new chapter can have a very positive effect on the careers of our members.

Thanks to Carole Carey and Boris Gramatikov for their professional development activities.

These notes are being prepared in advance of a professional development seminar being arranged by Carole Carey for Saturday 1 November. It is likely that by the time that you read these notes the event will have concluded. You will still have time to participate in the Senior Member Drive scheduled for 8 November at the Historical Electronics Museum. If you have 10 years or more in the profession of which at least 5 years can be considered significant achievement, you ought to consider applying for advancement to Senior Member status. You will get a letter of recognition that can be sent to your employer, discounts on certain development opportunities, and you help increase the ability of IEEE-USA to represent the needs of the profession when dealing with lawmakers. For purposes of the advancement committee, significant achievement can be summarized as original research documented through publications or responsibility for a large project brought to successful conclusion.

Bill Semancik

Chair, Baltimore Section IEEE”

12. Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose: His Legacy and Pioneering Works

“The whole world is a living laboratory in which the most wonderful experiments are constantly being performed. We should indeed be fascinated if only we had eyes to see them.”

- Sir J. C. Bose-

In honor of the sesquicentennial of the birth of Sir J. C. Bose the Historical Electronics Museum is proud to present a special program honoring Sir Bose’s pioneering work in communication, physics, and the experimental sciences and how his legacy lives on in the continuing contribution of Indian scientist and engineers to the advancement of science. Join special guest speakers in a lively discussion on the life and scientific work of Sir J.C. Bose and their impact on the future of science in India and the world.

Special Guest Speakers:

His Excellency Ronen Sen

Ambassador of India to the United States (Chief Guest)

Dr. Raj Mittra

Professor

Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Peter Siegel

Senior Scientist

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Date:

November 15, 2008

Time:

4:00 to 5:00 PM: Museum tours

5:00 to 9:30 PM: Reception, Dinner, Presentations

Location:

Historical Electronics Museum

1745 West Nursery Road

Linthicum , Maryland 21090

Tickets are $50.00 and must be purchased; deadline is November 12.

Become a corporate sponsor and receive tickets and promotion during event:

Platinum $1,000.00 includes 8 tickets

Gold $500.00 includes 4 tickets

Silver $300.00 includes 2 tickets

To register e-mail:

specialevents.hem@gmail.com

For More Information Contact:

Anne Mech

410-765-0230

anne.mech@ngc.com

Proceeds benefit the Historical Electronics Museum (501(c)(3)

Catering by Bharat Cuisine (Vegetarian Meals on Request)

13. Lunch at the Engineer's Club with the Director

Come join us for lunch and meet recently appointed Director David E. Scott, P.E. (B.S. '85, CivE, and M.Eng. '00) - City of Baltimore, Department of Public Works. Dir. Scott will speak on the City's efforts to develop a renewable energy portfolio, possibly building green offices, and other green projects.

Valet parking will be provided free of charge.

The Engineers Club At The Garret-Jacobs Mansion

11 West Mount Vernon Place

Baltimore, MD 21201

Phone: 410.539.6914

Email: J@esb.org

Tuesday, November 18

11:30 am - 1:30 pm

$25 Members

$35 Guests

Contact Patti @ 410.539.6914 to make reservations.

14. IEEE memberNet

Two recent upgrades to memberNet, IEEE’s new online community, have made it easier to share information about yourself with other members. Launched in June [“New Online Directory Opens Doors to Networking,” p. 13], memberNet is available to IEEE members at no charge. It’s similar to other online communities like LinkedIn—members who have submitted a profile can search for others who have similar technical interests, for example. More than 2500 IEEE members had joined by August.

EASIER ACCESS: When members create their profile, they choose what to include from a list of personal information, such as technical interests, society memberships, the name of their employer, and their phone, address, and e-mail. They do this by checking boxes to “opt in” to each of these categories, known as preferences. Only the information checked may be viewed by others.

One of the upgrades reduces the number of times a member must log in to the page for managing preferences. Previously, users had to log in to memberNet from the myIEEE site using their IEEE Web account. From there, users would click on the “My opt-in preferences” link, which took them to yet another log-in page.

Now that superfluous log-in page has been eliminated and the “Manage my opt-in preferences” link on memberNet takes them straight to the list of personal information.

OPTIMIZED OPT IN: In addition, the process of sharing opt-in information once on the personal info page has gotten less tedious. Previously, when members checked or unchecked the box next to each category of information, they would be redirected to a Web page for that specific category. Thus, a user could not opt-in to multiple categories from one page.

Now when members click the new “Edit preferences” icon on the personal info page, they are taken to a single Web page that contains the list of preferences, and they are able to check multiple categories.

For more information and to sign up for memberNet, visit:

http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/memberNet.html

15. IEEE Launches New Version of myIEEE

Personalization Features and Resources Significantly Enhanced in Release 1.2 of Members-only portal

Piscataway, N.J., 1 Sept. 2005 -- The IEEE today launched a new version of its members-only Web portal that includes significantly improved usability and functionality.

The new features in myIEEE Release 1.2 enable IEEE members to connect with their local section, access online benefits, and manage various aspects of their membership from one location.

“Our goal with this release of myIEEE was to build on existing personalization capabilities, and provide a direct link to IEEE’s 300 sections worldwide and their officers,” said Marc Apter, Vice President of IEEE Regional Activities. “We have also begun to remove the barriers to seamless integration across IEEE’s online applications.”

myIEEE was initially introduced in January along with a public IEEE membership site.

With Release 1.2, IEEE members who sign into myIEEE are no longer required to re-enter their Web Account name and password to access their membership account.

In addition, various tools and utilities used to access IEEE member benefits online have been grouped into "desktops" on myIEEE's left navigation.

- The Knowledge Desktop is a consolidated area for research and subscription-related benefits. It contains modules for personalized subscription information,, searching the IEEE online collection database , an RSS feed citing the 10 most downloaded articles from the IEEE Xplore® online delivery system, and a file-cabinet link for subscribers of the IEEE Member Digital Library.

- The Community Desktop provides access to information on local and worldwide networking opportunities, as well as IEEE member grade elevation. This desktop also contains the “mySection” module, which connects members to information on their local section, its officers and its technical chapters. In addition, the “IEEE Worldwide” module sorts and presents global IEEE activities and contacts by country or IEEE region. A listing of upcoming IEEE conferences is updated daily, with reference links to conference sponsors and contacts.

- The Profession Desktop enables direct searches of the IEEE Job Site and IEEE-USA Consultants Database, as well as timely announcements on IEEE awards and scholarship opportunities.

- The Volunteer Desktop will appear in myIEEE for those IEEE members who also serve as an IEEE volunteer. Initial features include volunteer resource links, volunteer news and updates, and a personalized listing of the volunteer’s positions.

“This first iteration of the Volunteer Desktop begins bringing together tools commonly used by IEEE volunteers,” comments Ron Jensen, the midwest U.S. regional director of IEEE. “Our goal is to save time for volunteers and provide a straightforward navigation to locate contacts and resources.”

According to Jensen, plans are underway to incorporate additional modules and enhance the personalization based on volunteer roles.

A context-sensitive "Help" feature is included in each module header, providing additional information on reference links and related topics.

“The development of myIEEE is evolutionary,” says Apter. “We have made significant progress, and are already planning for improvements.”

Apter cites the need to incorporate events sponsored by IEEE sections, and the integration of a new online member directory being developed by IEEE’s membership development committee. According to Apter, these enhancements should debut in 2006, along with additional improvements to application integration.

myIEEE is an exclusive benefit of IEEE membership, and is available to all active IEEE members with an IEEE Web account. Visit myIEEE at:

http://www.ieee.org/myieee.

16. IEEE Sections Congress 2008

The Baltimore Section is part of the IEEE Region 2, which includes Southern NJ, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. The Region has two meetings a year. Information about the most recent meeting is located at:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/reg/2/R2M/2008/September_2008/index_meeting_0809.html

The IEEE Sections Congress is held every three years. Presentations from the Sections Congress are located at:

http://www.ieee.org/web/services/mps/sc08/index.html

And finally information about Region 2 can be found at:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/reg/2/

17. Baltimore Region Conferences

The following conferences are planned for Maryland, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia. This list can be used for planning purposes and also represents potential volunteering opportunities.

2008 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference - Intelligent Biomedical Systems (BioCAS)

20 Nov - 22 Nov 2008

*Location:* TBD

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://www.biocas2008.org

2009 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition - APEC 2009

15 Feb - 19 Feb 2009

Marriott Wardman Park Hotel

Washington, DC, USA

http://www.apec-conf.org

2009 43rd Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS)

18 Mar - 20 Mar 2009

The Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://ciss.jhu.edu

2009 5th International Conf. on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks & Communities (TridentCom)

06 Apr - 08 Apr 2009

TBD

Washington, DC, USA

http://www.tridentcom.org

2009 IEEE/NIH Life Science Systems and Applications Workshop (LiSSA) Formerly known as LSSA and LISA

09 Apr - 10 Apr 2009

NIH Campus, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

Bethesda, MD, USA

http://lissa.wustl.edu

2009 Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS)

13 May - 15 May 2009

TBD

Crystal City, VA, USA

http://i-cns.org/

2009 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO)

02 Jun - 04 Jun 2009

Baltimore Convention Center

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://www.i-leos.org

2009 International Quantum Electronics Conference (IQEC)

June 2-4, 2009

Baltimore Convention Center

Baltimore, MD, USA

http://www.i-leos.org

2009 IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (PPC)

28 Jun - 02 Jul 2009

Renaissance Mayflower Hotel

Washington, DC, USA

http://web.ece.missouri.edu/ppc2009

2009 IEEE Workshop on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Enterprise: Economics Measures and Indicators (STEM Measures)

15 Sep - 18 Sep 2009

TBD

Washington, DC, USA

2011 IEEE AUTOTESTCON

September 19-22, 2011

Baltimore Convention Center

Baltimore, MD, USA **

http://www.autotestcon.com

2009 IEEE 59th Annual Broadcast Symposium (BTS)

14 Oct - 16 Oct 2009

The Westin Hotel

Alexandria, VA, USA

http://www.ieee.org/bts/symposium

2009 IEEE Conference on Electrical Insulation and Dielectric Phenomena - (CEIDP 2009)

18 Oct - 21 Oct 2009

Virginia Beach Resort Hotel

Virginia Beach, VA, USA

http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/dei/ceidp/ <http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/dei/ceidp/>

18. Continuing Education Contacts

In relationship to making plans for new CEEE courses in Baltimore, the program organizers are looking for contacts to the local reps for Texas Instruments and Analog Devices in the Baltimore area. If you know some, please email to Boris Gramatikov at bgramat@jhmi.edu. Thanks a lot for your cooperation.

19. 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