IEEE Region 3 Area 6

October 2000

Alabama Section

Major activities by the Alabama Section are as follows:


Huntsville Section

Revised bylaws a couple of years ago and are now on a calendar year basis. Reviewing them again in light of the new suggested bylaws sent out by IEEE HQ. The chairs of the two student branches are voting members of the section's ExCom, but they do not count in the pool that is used to determine how many people are needed for a quorum. This way the section is not penalized in getting a quorum during the summer when they are not in town.

Mr. Steven Johnson became a Fellow of the IEEE this year. He was officially inducted in May at the International Radar Conference. He was also recognized at the local Professional of the Year banquet where he received an Alabama Senate Citation, sponsored by Senator Jeff Enfinger. Dr. Bob McMillan, a Fellow of the IEEE, was Steve's main sponsor and and was thanked for all the work he put into the nomination process.

annual IEEE Computer Fair in August. As part of the Fair the section ran two very successful Linux seminars. Scott Trites and a small group of dedicated volunteers have handled this for the last eight years. They are owed a large debt of gratitude for all the work they have put in over the years and all the money they have raised for section activities.

Participated in the local Engineers Week Banquet. The following awards were presented:

  1. Outstanding Engineer to Mr. Larry Fullerton, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Time Domain Corporation.

  2. Outstanding Educator to Dr. Trent Montgomery of AA&MU.

  3. Outstanding Service to Scott Trites of Huntsville Utilities.

Millennium Medals were presented to the following 11 members for service to the section: Willy Albanes, Jim Anderson, Joe Bullington, Dr. Belur V. Dasarathy, Dr. Chih-Cheng Hung, Sonya Hutchinson, Jim Kennedy, Ivy Pinion, Will Preussel, Dr. Yuri B. Shtessel and Scott Trites. The medals and Alabama Senate Citations, sponsored by Senator Jeff Enfinger, were presented at the Professional of the Year Banquet on June 1. Mr. Roy Nichols, Founder and Vice Chairman of the Board of Nichols Research, was awarded our Professional of the Year award and a proclamation from Governor Don Siegelman. Section chairman, Jim Anderson, also received the Huntsville Association of Technical Societies' Professional of the Year award for his service as Finance Director (1997-1998) and Treasurer (1998-2000). The Awards Committee has sponsored a number of members for Senior Grade. At least three have been approved and several others have been submitted.

The section's Dr. Belur V. Dasarathy, of Dynetics, is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the new journal Information Fusion.

Section Secretary and GOLD Co-Chair, Sonya Hutchinson, is the Alabama Regional Coordinator for the 2000 Future City Competition.

The section continues with an internet based newsletter using a combination push-pull process. The section e-mails a brief summary of the newsletter with a link to the newsletter on it's web site (). Due to the relative ease of the electronic vs. the hardcopy newsletter, the section has gone from 9 to 12 issues per year. The electronic format continues to save the section a substantial amount in postage and printing costs, and allows it to communicate in a timelier manner. The section has recently added a humor section to the newsletter. Venkata Atluri, Willy Albanes and Merv Budge have put a lot of work into this project. Jim Kennedy donated a copy of Office 2000 Professional for use in preparing the HTML version of the newsletter.

Clay Durrett, the section's JECA representative, died on 5/1/2000. His knowledge and counsel has been sorely missed on the ExCom and the Computer Fair Committee. Major Ronald Hackett took over as our JECA representative in June.

The section is preparing to host AUTOTESTCON 2002 in Huntsville and Ms. Pat Griffin of ManTech Test Systems in Huntsville is the General Chair of the conference.

The section sponsored a number of the awards for engineering related projects at the North Alabama Science and Engineering Fair and the Alabama State Science and Engineering Fair. A number of these young people went on to the National Science Fair. A number of the students also gave presentations on their projects at the Computer Fair. The section supplied some of the judges for the local fairs. Eric Grigorian carried out this project.

The section has had more, better and better attended Section Meetings this year, also due to the hard work of Eric Grigorian. It has had better publicity for these meetings and technical society meetings in the paper, on the radio and the section's e-mail list and web site. Bill Barksdale has put a lot of work into publicizing activities. Bill recently retired from his publicity position after many years of service.

The section is having another active year with the Control Systems Society due to the hard work of Dr. Dave Hampton of UAH, who is conducting monthly meetings during the academic year. It is also revitalizing the Aerospace Electronics Society under the leadership of Dr. Kaveh Heidary of AAMU. The GOLD Committee continues under Co-Chairs Sonya Hutchinson and Rodney Fanner.

The Chair represented the section at SoutheastCon 2000. There were many good workshops and he got to meet most of the Region 3 volunteers. The UAH Student Branch won first place in the Student Hardware Competition. The branch faculty advisor is Dr. Laurie Joiner. Dr. John Piccirillo taught the design class that developed the student branch's entry for the contest.

The Nominations Committee has posted the following slate for 2001:

Sonya Hutchinson - Vice Chair

Leigh Anne McMahon - Secretary

Jim Kennedy - Member at Large

Wayne Wolf - Member at Large

Mobile

Mobile Section - R3 00 41

The section has just returned from summer break. Over the summer President, Greg Gayowski, and Vice-President, Dr. William Stapleton, left the area and, therefore, resigned from their positions.

The had a social meeting in September to welcome new members attending from the University of South Alabama IEEE student branch. The first technical meeting will be October 17th when Dr. Mazen Al-Khatib will speak on wireless data communication.

Montgomery Subsection

The Montgomery IEEE Subsection has three officers , is meeting on a regular schedule and plans are in place for meetings thru June of next year. Like other sections and subsections we are adjusting to the new business year starting in Jan versus June . Our challenge is to make this adjustment within the currently programmed events year. Therefore we are behind the schedule for nomination of officers but expect to make up this event with no loss activity. We meet one a month except for the Months of July and August. With the month of June being the month where we plan out the programs for the entire next year. One meeting a year is spent with the Auburn Student chapter and one is a meeting where the spouse are encouraged to attend.

Mississippi Section

The IEEE Mississippi Section held the April meeting on the evening of 20 April 2000 at the US Army Corps of Engineers ERDC Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, MS. Participating on the program were Dr. Charles "Bob" Welch, Instrumentation Systems Development Division-Chief, and Dr. Ernesto "Ernie" Cespedes of the Environmental Laboratory (both are IEEE members). Also participating were Dr. Kent Eschenberg and Dr. Arthur Cullati of the DOD High Performance Computing Center. A tour was conducted of one of our Hydraulic Laboratory models, Niagara Falls, NY. The Corps' Public Affairs Office helped by showing the 3-screen media show "The WES Story" in the auditorium. Member's spouses and children were invited to attend this meeting.

The Mississippi Section held the May meeting on 23 May 2000 evening at the Cooper Lighting Plant here in Vicksburg, MS (see photo). The section had a good attendance and saw new IEEE people......and got some "old" IEEE members to attend and renew their membership......and made some new membership contacts.

The section had a volunteer to start the Mississippi Section Web Page, on the national IEEE server, this summer, but he was unable to start. The section continues to look for a "new" volunteer. The Web Page is registered with IEEE-USA and has the authority to proceed. The Section is looking at other section's web pages and newsletters.

The section does not "normally" hold meetings in June, July, and August but some special opportunities presented themselves this summer. On 13 July 2000, IEEE participated in a recruiting drive of the employees at the US Army Corps of Engineers. Membership Development Co-Chairs Ms. Dorothy Boswell and Dr. Cary Cox participated. As did Dr. Ray Franco, Section Vice-Chair and myself. (see photo).

The Mississippi Legislature and the MS BD of Professional Registration made changes to the state P.E. rules..........to include "educational credit hours" per year to hold a P.E. license. This should increase meeting attendance. On 20 July 2000, the past President of the Mississippi Engineering Society, Mr. Phil Gee, from Vicksburg, MS, spoke to a joint meeting of IEEE, ASCE, ASME, SAME, and MES. The program was held at US Army Corps of Engineers ERDC Waterways Experiment Station and was about the new MS Engineering Board of Registration Continuing Professional Development Requirements.

The section has the SAMIEEE membership listing running and have the Secretary and the Membership Development Co-Chairs involved. An interesting question was asked at the last dinner/general meeting..........can lists of members in a particular city/county be provided so that IEEE members can car-pool to monthly meetings? The answer was yes. The chairman has an "ieee.org" e-mail address now. A Section Executive Committee meeting was held on 23 May 2000, and reviewed the Mississippi Section Bylaws and agreed to make changes to bring our "year" to a calendar year. The section is continuing to review the bylaws guidelines provided and are getting the bylaws re-typed to start them on the "review process".

The section's Fall 2000 meetings began on 3 OCT 2000 evening by having a presentation by Mr. Bill Hays of AIR2LAN, Co. of Jackson, MS, who presented a program on "AIR2LAN Wireless LANs and IEEE Wireless Standards". The presentation was held at the offices of Cadence Systems Design in Ridgeland, MS. The next meeting consisted of a plant tour of the Raytheon Electronic Systems plant in Forest, MS. This was a joint meeting with the ASME Mississippi Section.

The section is beginning to seek members for 2001 Section officers and should hold elections in DEC 2000 with installation in JAN 2001.

Northeast

Mississippi Subsection