Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Washington Section Administrative Committee Meeting
Time: Dinner at 6:00 pm; meeting at 6:30 pm
Place: Allie's American Grill, Bethesda Marriott, 5151 Pooks Hill Rd., Bethesda, MD
Directions: From the north, take 270 South to Route 355 and exit at Wisconsin Ave. From the south, take 495 exit 34 (which is Wisconsin Ave.) to Pooks Hill Rd.
More Info: All interested IEEE members are welcome to attend.
Contact: Debra Meale at 703-492-0047 or nca-admin@ieee.org. Please include the term IEEE in the subject line of your e-mail.
Sponsor: Women in Engineering
Time: 7:00 pm
Place: Melting Pot Restaurant, 11400 Commerce Park Dr., Reston, VA
Directions: From Washington, take I-66 West to Exit 67 (Dulles Airport) and stay in right lanes to Dulles Toll Road (Rt. 267). Take Exit 13 (Wiehle Avenue) and turn left from exit ramp. Go to second traffic light and turn right onto Sunrise Valley Drive.
(Or, from points West, take the Dulles Toll Road to Exit 13 (Wiehle Avenue) and turn right from exit ramp. Go to next traffic light and turn right onto Sunrise Valley Drive.) Then, go about 100 yards and make first right onto Centennial Park Drive, into office complex. After The Business Bank (on your right), turn right, then take the first left into the first aisle of parking. The restaurant is on the left with purple awnings and french doors.
Contact: Debi Siering at siering@ieee.org.
Sponsors: Vehicular Technology Society, Land Transportation Committee; American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Speaker: Professor Martin Schroeder, American Public Transportation Association
Time: Lunch at 11:30 am; meeting at 12:00 pm
Place: American Public Transportation Association, Conference Room, 11th Floor,
1666 K Street NW, Washington, DC
Directions: Take the Metro to Farragut North station (Red Line, use K Street exit) or Farragut West station (Orange & Blue lines, use 17th Street exit).
More Info:All interested persons are invited to attend our monthly luncheon meeting.
Cost: $18 cash at door for lunch.
Contact: Please make reservations by 4:00 pm Friday, Jan. 6 by contacting Karl Berger at kwb@dcm-va.com or 703-803-9171.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Northern Virginia Section Administrative Committee Meeting
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: New Location! Wickers Cafe, Tysons Corner Holiday Inn, 1960 Chain Bridge Road, McLean, VA
Directions: From I-495 or I-66, take Route 267 West. Exit at Route 123 West (Chain Bridge Road). Turn right on International Drive, then left on Greensboro Drive. Look for the Holiday Inn entrance on the left. Free parking.
More Info: All interested IEEE members are invited to attend.
Contact: Debra Meale at 703-492-0047 or nca-admin@ieee.org. Please include the term IEEE in the subject line of your e-mail.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Photon Counting Micro-detectors and Their Applications
Sponsor: Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (W/NV)
Co-sponsor: Optical Society of America (National Capital Section)
Speaker: Dr. Sergio Cova, Politecnico di Milano, LEOS Distinguished Lecturer
Time: Reception at 6:00 pm; lecture at 6:30 pm; optional dinner at 7:45 pm with the speaker at a nearby restaurant. Reservation not necessary.
Place: University of Maryland, A.V. Williams Building, Room 2460, College Park, MD
Directions: From the north or I-495, take Route 1 South. Approx. 2 miles south of the Beltway, turn right onto Campus Drive, then immediately take Paint Branch Drive and the A.V. Williams Building will be on the right. From the south on Route 1, turn left onto Campus Drive, and follow above directions. Ample parking is available after 4:00 pm. See http://www.parking.umd.edu/themap.
More Info: See Diamond story, below.
Contact: Dominique Dagenais at 301-951-7095 or dominique_dagenais@avanex.com, or Lucy Zheng at 703-578-2721 or lzheng@ida.org.
Sponsor: Computer Society, Northern Virginia and Washington Chapter
Cosponsor: International Association of Software Architects
Speaker: Suvajit Gupta, Entrieva
Time: Networking and food 6:00 pm; technical presentation 7:00 pm
Place: 1910 Oracle Way, Reston, VA
More Info: See Diamond story, below.
Cost: Free for all IEEE members, $4 for all others.
Contact: Please register at least 48 hours in advance at
http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/wash_nova/computer/current.html. For more information, contact T.K. Ramesh at tkramesh@ieee.org.
Sponsor: Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society, Washington and Northern Virginia Chapter
Speaker: Virender Kumar, Counsellor (Space), Embassy of India, Washington, DC
Time: Dinner at 6:00 pm; speaker at 6:45 pm
Place: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Visitor Center, Greenbelt, MD
Directions: See
www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/directions/index.html
More Info: Virender Kumar, an experienced technologist in the field of space research, will present an overview of the Indian Space Research Organization, including a 30-minute video followed by questions and answers.
Cost: Free, including dinner (pizza).
Contact: Please RSVP to Darrell Young at 703-560-5000 x4027 or dy@ieee.org.
Sponsors: Electron Devices Society, Northern Virginia and Washington Chapter; Atlantic Nano Forum
Speaker: Dr. Wasiq Bokhari, Managing Partner, Quantum Insight
Time: Registration 4:00 pm; program 4:30 pm
Place: Buchanan Ingersoll, 1737 King Street, Suite 500, Alexandria
Directions: See www.atlanticnanoforum.org.
More Info: See Diamond story, below.
Cost: Free
Contact: Please send RSVP to
nanotech@bipc.com.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
An Overview and History of Satellite Constellation Design
Sponsor: Communications Society, Northern Virginia Chapter and Washington Chapter
Speaker: Capt. John E. Draim, USN (Ret.), Aerospace Consultant
Time: Dinner at 6:00 pm; speaker at 6:45 pm
Place: Mitre Corporation, Building 2, 7515 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA
Directions: Off Route 123 in Tysons Corner. See
www.mitre.org/about/locations/mitre2_map.html.
More Info: See Diamond story, below.
Cost: Free, including dinner.
Contact: Please RSVP to Fred Seelig at fred.seelig@ieee.org.
Diamond Stories
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Photon Counting Micro-detectors and Their Applications
Photon counting is the technique of choice for attaining the ultimate sensitivity in measurements of optical signals. This essentially occurs because it is completely digital, starting from the photodetector, and therefore completely avoids the limitations set by the noise of electronic circuits in the analog measurements of light, carried out by measuring the output current of photodetectors. It requires, however, photodetectors with an internal amplification mechanism that generates in response to single optical photons macroscopic electrical signals, with amplitude well above the level of noise in circuits.
Photon counting was introduced and developed with photomultiplier tubes, but it received new impulse from the introduction of microelectronic detectors, called Single-Photon avalanche Diodes SPAD. These devices exploit the avalanche phenomenon in a junction with an approach conceptually similar to that of Geiger-Mueller counters of ionizing radiation. Besides the general advantages of semiconductor devices versus vacuum tube devices, such as reduced size and cost, higher reliability, ruggedness, suitability to integrated systems, SPADs offer remarkably improved basic performance in terms of higher photon detection efficiency, lower dark-counting rate, higher resolution in photon-timing, and capability of efficient operation up to very high photon counting rate.
This lecture will outline the evolution of the SPAD devices and of the associated electronics and point out the physical phenomena that underlay the detector operation. It will illustrate significant examples of recent applications of SPAD detectors, from the analysis of DNA and proteins to studies of single molecules and to adaptive optics systems in modern telescopes. It will finally discuss the prospect of further progress in this field.
Born in Rome, Italy, Sergio Cova received a doctorate degree in nuclear engineering in 1962 from Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI), Italy, where he has been a professor of electronics since 1976. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and the author of more than 170 papers in international refereed journals and conferences, and of 500 international patents (USA and Europe). He has made innovative contributions to research and development of detectors for optical and ionizing radiations and associated electronics, of microelectronic devices and circuits, and of electronic and optoelectronic measurement instrumentation and systems. He has collaborated with other researchers in physics, astronomy, cytology and molecular biology, carrying out interdisciplinary work and developing new dedicated techniques and devices.
Dr. Cova pioneered the development of Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPAD), inventing the active-quenching circuit (AQC), which opened the way to their application. His research group developed AQCs in successive generations and was the first (and so far is the only one) to develop monolithic integrated AQCs, hence miniaturized photon counting instrumentation and complete photon-counting modules in a chip. With his group he developed, in various generations and in CMOS compatible technology, new planar epitaxial silicon SPAD devices with picosecond photon-timing capability, working in collaboration with technological laboratories in industry and academia (STM, IMM-CNR, NMRC). He also pioneered the extension of single-photon techniques to the infrared spectral range with Germanium and InGaAs/InP avalanche diodes. He contributed to diversified applications of photon-counting detectors: fluorescence measurements for DNA and protein analysis and single-molecule studies; characterization of optical fibers and laser; adaptive optics systems in telescopes; non-invasive testing of ULSI circuits; and others.
In 2005, Dr. Cova established with other colleagues of Politecnico di Milano the university spin-off company MPD Micro-Photon-Devices, intended for producing industrially and making widely available to experimenters the photon counting microdetectors developed in the research at POLIMI.
Back to Calendar listing above.
Future enterprise applications demand complex software development with reduced time and cost. Specification of a software architecture is the key element in software development. The focal point of the architecting process is the architecture document and describing the structure of the software through various views. While there are established tools and standards for design and code, there is little agreement in the software industry on how to define and document architecture. In this talk, the presenter will give an overview of some practical techniques and templates for defining architecture and show samples of medium to large scale enterprise application architectures. As the talk is aimed as a very interactive session, audiences are encouraged to bring their ideas and suggestions for discussion. The focus of this session is to learn how to define this most critical artifact in the software development process and how to document it using simple diagramming tools and word processors.
Suvajit Gupta is the vice president of engineering at Entrieva and is responsible for managing their engineering team and software products/tools. Entrieva’s flagship product, ClickSense, delivers rapid and scalable contextual analysis of Web pages, search queries, and RSS feeds for accurate targeting of online ads and sponsored content.
Prior to joining Entrieva, Gupta was the product development director at TEOCO's Telecom line of business. As part of the Telecom leadership team, he helped manage a profitable, rapidly growing, $20M/year line-of-business with more than 100 people, driving the definition and execution of annual business strategy, financial plan, and organizational design. At TEOCO, Gupta managed a development team of 18 people to extend, maintain, and customize BTP (BillTrak Pro), a market-leading telecom cost and revenue management product. Before TEOCO, he managed the development of and architected complex enterprise applications for healthcare, EAI, publishing, and wireless markets in companies such as Focus Technologies, SAGA Software, Thomson Technology Services Group, and LCC.
Gupta has a M.S. in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer and an undergraduate degree in engineering from IIT Kharagpur in India. He has previously presented at IEEE on software development methodologies.
Back to Calendar listing above.
Solar energy has long been proposed as a long-term renewable and environmentally friendly solution to our growing energy needs. However, there has been slow progress towards the realization of that vision. New materials and processing technologies, particularly nanotechnology, are now enabling the possible creation of low cost photovoltaics. These new solutions may find use in niche applications in the near term and over time may become cost competitive enough to become a leading source for primary power generation. This forum will review some of the nanotechnology based approaches in photovoltaic devices. In addition, the cost competitiveness of these technologies to incumbent and other emerging technologies will be discussed.
Wasiq Bokhari is the co-founder and managing partner of Quantum Insight, a business consulting and strategy firm focused on the applications of new materials and nanotechnology. He works with Molecular Diamond Technologies, a business unit of Chevron and also with Hitachi on the adoption and commercialization of nanotechnology with applications in energy, IT and medicine. Dr. Bokhari also works with entrepreneurs, early-stage startups and multiple venture funds in to help emerging nanotechnologies cross the "valley of death."
Before Quantum Insight, Dr. Bokhari was part of the founding team and senior vice president of Products of Clickmarks, an enterprise infrastructure software company, subsequently acquired by Semotus Solutions. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked in the group headed by Nobel laureate Jerome Friedman. He was part of the team that discovered a fundamental particle called the top quark at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in 1995, one of the most prominent physics results of the decade. He is the author of more than 50 scientific and technical publications, and is cited as an inventor on 8 US patents, granted and applied. He co-authored a widely recognized report on the potential of nanotechnology for the California Commission for Science and Technology (CCST). He is also the cofounder and Steering Committee Chair of the MIT Stanford UC Berkeley Nanotechnology Forum. He currently works with PCAST (Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) on issues related to energy.
Back to Calendar listing above.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
An Overview and History of Satellite Constellation Design
Captain Draim will present an overview of the field of satellite constellations, also referred to in the literature as satellite arrays. The first satellites placed into orbit were mostly single, unique, and independent. As satellite earth coverage and performance requirements grew, the need for multiple satellite constellations followed. A number of space scientists and engineers strived to optimize the arrangement and phasing of such constellations to meet requirements with the minimum number of satellites and launch vehicles (primarily to reduce system cost). Captain Draim was fortunate in having had contact with many of these early pioneers in constellation design. Lessons learned from them facilitated the invention and optimization of new constellations on which patents have been granted. Captain Draim will discuss the contributions of these early constellation designers, along with some personal recollections regarding these pioneers.
The field of constellation design is still in its infancy, and areas for improvement are almost without limit. The need for innovation and invention is vital, in this as in many other fields. Some thoughts on the process of invention are presented in hopes that they will be found useful in creating a new concept, device or process beneficial to mankind.
John E. Draim received a B.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, a B.S. (aero) degree from the Navy Postgraduate School Monterey, an M.S. (aero) from MIT, and an E.A.A. (aero/astro) from MIT. He holds over 40 patents in the fields of rocket propulsion, floating launch of rockets, EVA space-walk systems and satellite constellations.
Captain Draim was a naval carrier aviator, flying jet fighters and attack aircraft. He was also a test pilot assisting in the Fleet Introduction Programs for new Carrier aircraft including the F9F-6 Cougar, the FJ-3M Fury, and the RA5C Vigilante jets, as well as the NATO Maritime Patrol Aircraft-the Breguet Atlantic.
He also served as director of the Space Research Division at Naval Missile Center (NMC) Point Mugu, director of the Naval Armaments Division, U.S. NATO, deputy director of the Navy Space Program, and director of programs for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). At Point Mugu, he invented the HYDRA concept and managed the HYDRA Program, conducting basic research on the vertical floating launch (including more than 50 actual floating launches). Subsequent to his retirement from the Navy, he designed the ELLIPSO, VIRGO, and COBRA communications satellite constellations.
Back to Calendar listing above.
|
