Friday, November 30, 2007

Free Course on Working with Pre-university Crowd

IEEE Educational Activities, a partner in the National Academy of Engineering’s Engineering Equity Extension Service, has developed a free, 30 minute online course that provides assistance and support for IEEE members interested in working with the pre-university community.

After completing the course, participants will be able to:
-discuss goals and needs associated with engineering outreach to pre-university students
- demonstrate an understanding of ideas for giving an effective outreach presentation
- effectively work with pre-university schools and teachers.

Extra features within the online course include a transcript, a handout of a sample activity, and a resources section. Visit http://www.ieee.org/web/education/preuniversity/EEES to take the course and go to http://www.grgsurvey.net/cgi-in/rws3.pl?FORM=NAE_IEEE_Outreach to complete the survey. For more information contact Yvonne Pelham, Educational Activities, at y.pelham@ieee.org or +1 732 562 5321.

Columbia Reverse Engineering: LCD 11-29-2007

Professor Kymissis and Columbia University IEEE student leaders relax after hosting another successful Reverse Engineering presentation, this time on LCDs.

For more photos of this and other student events, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ieee-upp/

Monday, November 26, 2007

Columbia Reverse Engineering Series: LCD

Columbia continues their successful reverse engineering series as Professor John Kymissis examines the high-definition world of LCD.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ieee/flyers/lcd.pdf

IEEE Announces 2008 Fellows

2008 IEEE Fellows at University Partnership Program Schools
Fellows must have "contributed importantly to the advancement or application of engineering, science and technology, bringing the realization of significant value to society."

MIT
~ Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande for contributions to the development of digital self-aligned gate technology and vacuum microelectronic devices

~ Emery Neal Brown for contributions to state-space algorithms for point processes and applications to neuroscience data

~ Judy L. Hoyt for contributions to silicon-based heterostructure devices and technology

~ Roger G. Mark for development of physiologic signal databases and automated arrhythmia analysis

~ Muriel Medard for contributions to wideband wireless fading channels and network coding

~ Jacob K. White for contributions to simulation tools for RF circuits, electrical interconnects, and micro machined devices

UCLA
~ Abeer Alwan
for contributions to speech perception and production modeling and their applications

~ Jia-Ming Liu for contributions to the control and applications of nonlinear dynamics of lasers

Mani Bhushan Srivastava for contributions to energy-aware wireless communications and sensor networking

University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
~ Peter M. Chen for contributions to fault-tolerant storage systems

UC San Diego
~ Pamela C. Cosman for contributions to image and video compression and wireless communications

~ Kit Lai Paul Yu for contributions to semiconductor waveguide modulators and detectors

Stanford
~ Martin M. Fejer
for contributions to nonlinear optical materials and guided wave optics

~ Oyekunle A. Olukotun for contributions to multiprocessors on a chip and multi-threaded processor design

Virginia Tech
~ Dong Sam Ha for leadership in VLSI design and test

Caltech
~ Steven H. Low
for contributions to internet congestion control

Berkeley
~ Andrew K. Packard for contributions to robust control

Drexel University
~ Athina P. Petropulu for contributions to signal processing for communications, networking and ultrasound imaging

Columbia University
~ Ken Shepard for contributions to computer-aided design of digital integrated circuits

~ Xiaodong Wang for contributions to signal processing for wireless communications

Texas A&M University
~ Hamid A. Toliyat
for contributions to the design, analysis and control of multi-phase fault tolerant electric machines

For a complete list of the 2008 Fellow Class, see: http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/fellows/2008fellowclass.html

Stanford's Internet Month Series: Google's Next Gen Search Technology


Friday, November 23, 2007

WPI Spark Party Photos














Professor Emanuel ignites the night



The making of the coil...



















For more photos, see: http://grimlock.ind.wpi.edu/~ieee/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=Spark2007HEAD

For a great article about all that's going on at WPI's IEEE Student Branch, see: http://www.ece.wpi.edu/News/briana735.html

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

UCSD/SDSU Rock (pun intended)


IEEE Student Branch leaders from both schools, and a special keynote speaker, celebrate an outstanding joint Student Professional Awareness Conference.
One presenter captured the spirit: "it is a thrill to see this kind of entrepreneurial effort and leadership among such a large group of young, wickedly smart students...."

IEEE-USA Online Engineering Video Scholarship Competition

In October, IEEE-USA launched an online video competition for undergraduate engineering students calling on participants to create 90-second video clips, aimed at 11-13 year-olds, that reinforce engineers' contributions to the quality of life and help debunk engineering stereotypes. IEEE-USA will award seven scholarship prizes totaling $10,000 to the most creative and effective video clips highlighting the theme "How Engineers Make a World of Difference." The competition is open to all U.S. undergraduate students in engineering and computer science. All entries must be submitted through YouTube by midnight (Eastern Time) on Friday, 18 January 2008. For more information on how to enter the IEEE-USA Online Engineering Video Scholarship Competition, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org/communications/video_competition; or e-mail p.mccarter@ieee.org.

For a pdf of a flyer announcing this, and also, the IEEE-USA Mass Media Fellow Fellows Program, see
http://www.ieeeusa.org/communications/files/potentialsad_novdec07.pdf

Monday, November 19, 2007

Stanford: Small Stuff in Search of Big Bucks

Announcing the IEEE SFBA December 18th noontime seminar.
Again this year we welcome Lux Research who will give us a peek at their work compiling the current state of nanotechnology commercialization. These are the folks who know and you will get it before it goes to press.
Small Stuff in Search of the Big Bucks: Nanotechnology Commercialization by Sector
Speaker: Kristin Abkemeier, Ph.D., Analyst at Lux Research, Inc.
Date: Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Time: Registration & light lunch 11:30am. Presentation & Q/A 12:00 to 1pm
Location: National Semiconductor Bldg E-1 CMA Room. 2900 Semiconductor Drive, Santa Clara, CA
Cost: IEEE Members and Students $5. Non-Members $10 at the door.
Please RSVP at our web site: www.ieee.org/nano

Talk Abstract:
Nanotechnology is shifting from research labs to markets, as world investments reached $12.6 billion in 2006. With the first applications in-market in the materials, electronics and energy, and life science sectors, the impact of nanotechnology in different industries varies from broad and incremental in nature, to high and narrow in scope. While material performance has already been transformed, disruptive technologies are still in development. Successful commercialization of nanotechnology applications depends on executing, finding market pull, and partnering.

Speaker Biography:
Dr. Abkemeier is an Analyst at Lux Research where she covers a broad range of emerging technologies including nanotechnology, semiconductor memory, solar power, and alternative power and energy storage. Her research and analysis help Lux Research clients to form strategic decisions by providing information that expands upon traditional business metrics. Her scientific research experience includes experimental and computational investigations of phenomena in several different semiconductor systems of interest to the field of fundamental physics. Kristin has published several articles in leading physics journals and has also worked as an information technology software developer and science communicator. She holds a Ph.D. in experimental condensed matter physics from the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Columbia Presents Motorola and Mobile Devices

Come see how a cell phone is designed by one of the industry's top companies!

Lead engineers from managers from Motorola Mobile Devices business will host an engineering discussion on how mobile devices are built from the perspective of Electrical, RF, Mechanical and Software engineering disciplines. A Speaker from each discipline will talk about the work they do toward building cell phones using examples of past and current projects.

For a flyer of this event see: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ieee/flyers/motorola.pdf

MIT HALO3 Tournament

HALO TOURNAMENT with FOOD and PRIZES
What are you willing to do for a FREE copy of Halo 3? Gears of War? ForzaMotorsports?Well, what are you willing to do for Humanity?If you answered take on the Covenant, then come to the Halo 3 Tournament, aspecial Course VI social hour sponsored by MIT ACM/IEEE

Date: Thursday, October 25, 2007Time: 8:00 PM (after the Microsoft Tech-Talk)
Free Prizes? Yes! Free Food? Yes! (Pizza, drinks, other tasty treats)

What's more? A Microsoft Tech Talk at 6:30 PM in 32-123 by Senior Architect JimMiller sponsored by HKN preceding the tournament, that's what!

Stanford Presents Riya



Riya - Visual Search and Its Applications on the Web
Date: Friday, Nov. 2nd
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Lunch Provided
Please join the Stanford IEEE community in welcoming our very own EE alum, Dr. Burak Gokturk, who has gone on and started exciting online search companies! =========================================
Abstract:
Search has been proven to be a powerful tool and been the most used application in the web. Visual search is a recently developing application of computer vision and machine learning. Several applications have already shown new ways of traversing and searching the web via visual search. This talk describes the meaning of visual search and demonstrates why we need it for the next generation of image search on the web. The talk also discusses several problems in computer vision that are commonly seen in visual search. Web demonstrations will be provided during the talk.


Speaker Bio:
Burak is the 'brain' behind Riya's photo recognition technology, and leads the research team. It is Burak's desire to bring the usefulness of the computer vision science to human attention in this exciting venture. His team's current work aligns with this goal and includes detection and recognition of faces, text and objects from photos taken under uncontrolled conditions.


Prior to Riya, he developed computer vision algorithms at Canesta,Intel and BEKO. He has been in the vision field for more than 8 years, published more than 30 papers, and holds more than 15 patent applications. His computer vision algorithms have been prototyped and/or implemented in various computer vision products. He developed a 3D shape representation scheme, called "Random Orthogonal Shape Sections", which achieved one of the best recognition rates for the
detection of colon cancer. His other research concentrated on tracking, detection and recognition of 3D shapes and faces, medical imaging and 3D image compression. Burak received a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science form Bogazici University, and MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.


Burak is also one helluva soccer player.

Berkeley Undergraduate Research Seminar

IEEE Student Branch is hosting an Undergraduate Research Seminar [2nd part of Student Professional Awareness Venture (SPAVe)]

Unlike the usual undergraduate research workshop, we will focus on various projects that are seeking new undergraduate researchers for the upcoming Spring of 2008.

At this event, we will have two important speakers who can bring you valuable information and insights regarding undergraduate research opportunities:
1) Greg Gibling
- Part of Research Accelerator for Multiple Processors (RAMP)
- Head TA for CS61C;
2) Professor Ruzena Bajcsy
- Professor of the EECS department
- Research focus includes Artificial Intelligence, Biosystems, Control, Intelligent Systems, and Robotics (CIR), Graphics and Human-Computer Interaction (GHCI), and Security.

Come to support IEEE, and discover new and exciting research opportunities.

CHECK OUT BERKELEY'S MOST RECENT NEWSLETTER:
http://www-ieee.eecs.berkeley.edu/newsletter/vol2issue1.pdf

WPI Spark Party

From Briana Morey, Student Chair, WPI

The Spark Party will be occurring on November 15th at 6pm. The original Spark Party was thrown in comemeration of the 100th anniversary of the construction of Atwater-Kent, the electrical engineering building at WPI. A professor here, Professor Alex Emanuel was essential in helping us to hold the first Spark Party on November 9th, 2006, as well as in the Spark Party that will be thrown this year. Over 200 people attended last year (we think it was close to 250) which, to my knowledge, was a new record for an event run by the WPI Student Branch of IEEE. It was named the Spark Party because of the stories of the old Spark Parties from when our oldest professor was a student. Apparently, they would assemble collections of power equipment to scare their friends and have a good time.

Today the Spark Party represents all of the best things about electrical engineering, specifically at WPI. It is a strong community effort that brings students and professors together to put on a show for the rest of the professors and the student body. There are power demonstrations, which last year included a pair of Giant Tesla Coils, a Plasma Thruster, a piece of equipment that provided what we dubbed "an Electromagnetic Karate Chop", and many more contributions from students and professors alike. There were also performances by student bands, an electrical engineering rap performed by a student in a giant capacitor costume, a comedy act, and a variety of other types of entertainment. Last year, we had borrowed the Tesla coils from a generous individual, Rick Ladroga, who has provided time and expertise, as well as equipment.
This year, we are building our own. We have a team of students, led by Mike Leferman, who have put no small amount of time and effort into this Tesla coil and it will be unveiled at the Spark Party this year.

The program this year also includes:
~ Demonstrations from Professors Emanuel, Duckworth, Pedersen, Bitar that will demonstrate the most exciting aspects of electrical engineering
~ A demonstration that will produce some impressive sparks from Jim O'Rourke using Van De Graaf and Whimshurst generators
~ An instrumental selection by Professor McNeill
~ The Mario theme song played on an accordion that was modified by a student to contain a synthesizer
~ A few selections from Copper Tree, a student band that was aptly named for a group of electrical engineers
~ The WPI Alma Mater, led by Brenda McDonald, the ECE secretary
~ A student demonstration of a fire fighting robot that he designed and constructed
~ Sketch Comedy by the "Eclectic Comedy Engineers (ECE)" (This is appropriate because of the department's official name: Electrical and Computer Engineering - ECE)

The evening will conclude with a demonstration of the Tesla Coil that we have constructed, and will involve some of the more interesting feats that such a coil is capable of. We expect the program to last between 2.5 and 3 hours.

If you are interested in pictures of last year's Spark Party, they are
available here: http://grimlock.ind.wpi.edu/~ieee/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=SparkParty%21B2006

The photos from this year's Spark Party will be posted here after the event:
http://www.ieee.wpi.edu/pictures/

UCSD and SDSU S-PAC November 16, 2007