Chairman's Column

 

Australian IEEE Information Theory Chapter

 

The future of the Information Theory Chapter has finally been resolved. Established in 1999 as a Chapter within the IEEE ACT Section, it has now been expanded to be a Chapter of the joint Sections SA/ACT reporting administratively through South Australia. There is provision within IEEE rules for this arrangement but it is the first time this mechanism has been employed within Australia. Further negotiations are underway to see if the remaining IEEE Sections are happy to join the coalition so that the Australian IT Society community can function as they always have, namely as a national group.

After a period of false starts and blind alleys this is an excellent result for the IEEE Information Theory community and an excellent result for South Australia. The IT Chapter now can get on with its business, and on behalf of the SA Section Committee I would like to welcome the new Chapter and its current chair Dr Alex Grant [Alex.Grant@unisa.edu.au].

 

IEEE SA Annual Distinguished Lecture

 

The addition of an IEEE SA Distinguished Lecture to the annual calendar of IEEE sponsored events has long been a "gleam in the eye" of the SA Section Committee. At the most recent meeting of the SA Section Committee it was agreed that the Section's financial position was such that it is now feasible to support such an activity into the longer term at a level which will enable the Section to invite a suitable speaker from anywhere in Australia.

Bruce Vyden has agreed to coordinate the arrangements and the event will be a lecture and dinner, on Friday 22 November 02, at the Boulevarde Room, Stamford Plaza on North Terrace. Negotiations with the speaker are at an advanced stage and the details of the speaker and topic will be released closer to the time. The event will be open to members and their partners in the first instance and invitations will be issued to representatives of some other professional associations.

Please remember the date ... Friday, 22 November 02. Put it in your diary now !!

 

IEE/IEEE/IEAust Memorandum of Understanding - "The Tri-Partite Agreement"

 

The IEEE Australia Council has agreed a revised MOU for the Tri-partite agreement (IEEE/IEAust/IEE MOU). All issues of concern previously reported have been addressed and resolved, and the MOU has been forwarded to IEEE for concurrence before being presented to the MOU partners for consideration.

 

Student Activities

 

A meeting and BBQ for students was organised at Flinders University on 8 August as part of a student membership drive to establish an IEEE Student Branch. meeting. Sherry Randhawa coordinated all the arrangements and numbers of students signed up for student membership.

 

Michael Evans

 

Section Committee Officers for 2002

 

Chair:         Dr Michael Evans

                      michael.evans@ieee.org

Vice Chair: Dr Miro Kraetzl 

                      miro.kraetzl@dsto.defence.gov.au

Secretary:                                                                                                                  Dr Tim Ferris

                      timferris@ieee.org

Treasurer:  Dr Andrew Piotrowski

                      andrew.piotrowski@ieee.org

 

Membership Development          Andrew Udina

                                andrew.udina@dsto.defence.gov.au

Awards                                           Dr Miro Kraetzl

Education                                       vacant

Technical Activities                     Dr Michael Evans

Publications                                   Dr Andrew Piotrowski

 

Chair SP/Comms Chapter:        Dr Peter Shoubridge

                          peter.shoubridge@dsto.defence.gov.au

Chair AP/MTT Chapter:           Dr Andy Kulessa

                          andy.kulessa@dsto.defence.gov.au

Chair C/AES Chapter:               Dr Mark Pszczel

                          mark.pszczel@dsto.defence.gov.au

Chair Computer Chapter:          Dr Thong Nguyen

                          thong.nguyen@dsto.defence.gov.au

Chair IT Chapter (SA/ACT)     Dr Alex Grant

                          alex.grant@unisa.edu.au

 

UofSA Student Branch:                     Nimrod.Lilith

                          nimrod.lilith@postgrads.unisa.edu.au

Branch Counsellor                              Dr Kutlu Dogancay

                          kutluyil.dogancay@unisa.edu.au

UofAdelaide Student Branch:           Leonard Hall

                          lthall@eleceng.adelaide.edu.au

Branch Cousellor                                Andrew Allison

                          aallison@eleceng.adelaide.edu.au

Membership

 

 

	7 Jul 01	7 Jul 02
Members (all grades)	316	322
Affiliates	50	52
Students	75	58
TOTAL	441	432

 

Senior Members

 

Have you reviewed the requirements for Senior Membership of IEEE recently? You may well qualify and it doesn't cost you anything to achieve this additional recognition of your seniority in the profession.

IEEE is currently encouraging MIEEE's to review their elibility for SMIEEE. In fact there is a bounty !!! It is known as the "2002 Nominate a Senior Member Initiative " and each successful elevation is worth USD10 to the Section. If you are interested in following this up, please start at http://www.ieee.org/ra/md/sminitiative.html.

 

Awards

 

IEEESA Travel Grant

 

The Section has already provided two awards (of $1000) this year under this "Travel Grant" program intended to assist students and others to deliver conference publications at overseas venues.

Julija Tovirac attended WOC2002, held in Banff (Alberta Canada), 17-19 July 2002, and delivered her paper, "A Simulation Study of P_Mul Multicasting Protocol Enhanced by Ideal FEC Code", co-authored with W. Zhang.

Lei Chen will attend the 11th IEEE Conference on Control Applications (CCA2002) to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, 18-20 September 2002, and will deliver two papers,

"Nonlinear Active Vibration Absorber Design for Flexible Structures", co-authored with F. He, K. Sammut, T. Cao

"Variable Structure Observer Design in Matrix Second-Order Formulation for Linear & Nonlinear Vibrating Systems using Velocity Measurements", co-authored with T. Cao, F. He, K. Sammut

 

Technical Activities

 

Joint Technical Program 2002

 

The IEEE SA Section shares the responsibility for a Joint Technical Program with the Institution of Engineers Australia (IEAust), the ITEE Society of IEAust, and the Institution of Electrical Engineers. The program consists of monthly meetings and visits on a range of topics. IEEE is hosting the 17 September meeting:

RESEARCH DIRECTIONS IN THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED INTELLIGENT ENGINEERING SYSTEMS CENTRE

Dr Noel Martin, Adjunct Professor KES Centre, University of SA.

Research and projects undertaken by the KES Centre using hybrid intelligent techniques.

 

The Student Paper Night, has been delayed by one week and will now be held on 29 Oct 02.

The JTP program is available on the SA Section website at http://ewh.ieee.org/r10/s_australia/ .

 

Asian Control Conference 2004

 

Prof. Iven Mareels FIEEE, U. of Melbourne (together with Prof. Rob Evans) has successfully bid for AsCC 2004 (Asian Control Conference). This is a biennial 500+ delegate event and IEEE SA has been invited to co-sponsor the event.

The usual timing of the event is July and it is unlikely to be held in either Adelaide or Melbourne because of the weather!! There is a good chance that Brisbane or the Gold Coast will be the preferred venue.

There is a Chapter of the Control Society
(Control Robotics and Automation) in the Queensland Section (Ljubo Vlacic, founding Chair) Likewise SA has a Control Chapter (with Aerospace&Electronic Systems). These are the only chapters of the Control Society in Australia.

For the event to be held within the IEEE Queensland Section (and under IEEE co-sponsorship) it is formally necessary for the IEEE Queensland Section to
endorse this, regardless of whether the Section has a financial interest.

Michael Evans

Finance Chair AsCC 2004

 

Information Theory Conference 2005

 

The Australian Information Theory Chapter has successfully bid for the major annual IEEE conference in Information Theory. The conference will be held in Adelaide and attracts 700+ delegates. It will be the largest event of its kind that the IEEE SA Section will have been involved with since ICASSP 94. For such a small community this is an outstanding accomplishment.

 

IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer Prof. Lajos Hanzo, University of Southampton   ADAPTIVE CODING AND TRANSMISSION PARADIGMS FOR WIRELESS CHANNELS: TURBO CODING, TURBO EQUALISATION AND SPACE-TIME CODING   Wednesday 4th September 2.50pm Room GP1-08 Building GP University of South Australia Mawson Lakes   Contact: P. Shoubridge [peter.shoubridge@dsto.defence.gov.au]

 

HyShot: The Australian Scramjet

Dr Allan Paull, University of Queensland

 

In the first public presentation since the recent successful Hyshot launch, Dr Allan Paull, gave an outstanding presentation of the Hyshot program to a capacity audience in the Scot Allison Theatrette at DSTO. 40 latecomers were disappointed to be turned away! Dr Sook-Ying Ho, WSD, chaired the meeting and Dr Paull provided an entertaining and informative review of both the failed Hyshot launch in 2001 and the successful recent firing. Very high quality data was obtained from both launches and the scientific output of the recent firing significantly exceeded expectations.

WSD staff carried out the role of capturing telemetry data from the scramjet payload during flight. DSTO also lent its support to the Hyshot program through CWSD's interaction with Senior Defence staff and appraisal of the defence's interest of this work when the program sought governmental and Defence assistance. WSD is currently developing a detailed 3-5 year plan to further hypersonics research.

Dr Paull also spoke to a second audience (in excess of 80 attendees) at the University of Adelaide, which included a number of leading figures of South Australia's aerospace activity. Dr Ian Tuohy, Chair IEAust NC Space Engineering, Michael Davis who chaired the successful bid to secure for Adelaide the 2004 International Space University(ISU), and John Hisco of DECS who runs the Space School for secondary school students attended and all of the professional associations were well represented. The meeting was chaired by Les Sheppard, formerly RL of WSD, on behalf of the AIAA Adelaide Section Steering Committee.

Both meetings were co-sponsored and financially supported by IEEE CAES Chapter (Dr Mark Pszczel, WSD, Chair) and both occasions were used to announce the recent decision by the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Adelaide to establish an Aerospace Engineering degree program to commence in line with the 2004 ISU. The ISU is an intensive 9 week residential course and this will be the first course to be held in the southern hemisphere.

This was the third occasion since 1999 on which Dr Paull has provided progress reports on the Hyshot program in Adelaide under the joint sponsorship of IEEE/CAES and AIAA, and this latest jointly sponsored lecture represents a continuation of a longstanding and fruitful collaboration in South Australia between IEEE and AIAA in the aerospace area.

 

Mark Pszczel

Chair, IEEE CAES Chapter

 

 

 

                  ANNOUNCEMENTS

			Tel no: 080-3942509     Email-id: tencon@ee.iisc.ernet.in     Fax: 91-080-3600444, 3600683

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australian International Conference on Radar Adelaide, Australia, 3-5 September 2003

Sponsored by CSSIP and IEEE SA Section

Call for Papers

 

Australia has now joined the five-nation series of annual international radar conferences.  This series involves the US, UK, China, France and now, Australia.  The conference for 2002 is being hosted by the UK in Edinburgh over the period 15-17 October 2002 and the Australian conference will continue the annual series with its event 3-5 September 2003, to be held in Adelaide, South Australia. 

Radar 2003 will cover all aspects of radar systems for civil, security and defence applications. Tutorials are being planned in a number of fields of radar technology.

Topics to be covered at Radar 2003 include (but are not confined to):

Radar Systems, Dual-Use/Civil Applications, Antenna and Component Technology, Radar EW, Environment and phenomonology, Processing Techniques, Emerging Technologies, Computer Modelling, Radar Simulation, Electromagnetics

Conference Organising Committee

Appointments are currently being made to the organising committee.  Current appointments are as follows.

Professor Don. Sinnott, CSSIP (General Chairman)

Dr Bevan Bates, DSTO (Technical Program Chairman)

Dr Michael Evans, DSTO (Finance Chair)

Dr Kutlu Dogancay, U of SA (Publication)

Dr Anthony Szabo (Local Arrangements)

For initial inquiries and to register for receipt of the call for papers refer to the Conference General Chairman, Professor Don Sinnott, e-mail don.sinnott@ieee.org, The website is www.cssip.edu.au/conferences/radar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

           UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

 

POSTGRADUATE  RESEARCH  SCHOLARSHIPS

 

INSTITUTE FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH

EXPLORE THE CUTTING EDGE OF COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH

 

The Institute for Telecommunications Research (ITR) is one of Australia's foremost research organisations specialising in world class research and postgraduate studies in the applications of coding, signal processing and protocol engineering in the areas of satellite communications, mobile radio systems and networks.  ITR is a core partner in the CRC for Satellite Systems, and leads the Satellite Communications Research Program in that CRC.

 

We are currently inviting applications for postgraduate scholarships, leading to the award of MEng or PhD, from bright, highly motivated students who expect to obtain a 1st Class Honours degree in 2002, or persons who have previously completed an honours degree and have some work experience.

 

Women are encouraged to apply.

 

Visit our website on: 

http://www.itr.unisa.edu.au/

 

For further information contact Ms Sonia Watts: Student Support Officer, on telephone: +61 8 8302 3890, facsimile: +61 8 8302 3873,

email: sonia.watts@unisa.edu.au

 

Closing dates:

Applications for Australian students will be received up to 28th October 2002

	ADVANCE NOTICE IEEE-SA ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING   The South Australia Section of the IEEE will be holding its Annual General Meeting on Friday, 22 November 2002, at Stamford Plaza North Terace.   The AGM will commence promptly at 6:00pm and will precede the inaugural IEEE SA Distinguished Lecture and Dinner to be held in the Boulevarde Room, Stamford Plaza.