The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

IEEE Baltimore Section

https://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/baltimore/

IEEE ExCom Section Meeting

Sept 13, 2004

 

Attendees

X Jeff Friedhoffer – Chair

    Brian Sequeira – Vice Chair

X Boris Gramatikov – Secretary

X Roberto Cuellar – Treasurer

X John Dentler  –  Continuing Education

    Christopher Nemarich  – Program Director

X  Neville Jacobs  – Student Activities

    Tom Patton – Awards

    Carole Carey – Professional Activities 1 / ESB Rep

    Hoosamuddin Bandukwalla –  Professional Activities 2

    Joseph Pollitt  – Audits & Bylaws

X Vil Arafiles – R2 Treasurer; Membership Development – Baltimore Section

X Ron Aloysius – Newsletter Editor

   Thad Welch – Communication Society

   Dave Boyd – Annapolis subsection

X Eric Henlon – PES Chair

X David Sherman – EMB

X  Mark Welsko – Chair, IAS

    Leonard Bathgate IAS Treasurer & Publications

    Walt Willing – Chair Reliability

X Garth McKenzie – Chair Computer Society

X Robert Berkovits – Chair EMC

   Doug Kremer – APS/MTT

   Wole Akpose – GOLD

   Domenic Georgantas – GOLD

   Tina Kohler – WIE

X Debi Siering – WIE, Greater Washington DC

X Tom Clark – Chair, LEOS

    Bill Dixon – Acting Chair AES

X  Jerry Gibbon -  R2 Chair, South Area         

X  Amarjeet Basra  - Chair, Northern Virginia Section

X  Jim Costabile – IEEE member 
 

 

Jeff Friedhoffer chaired the meeting and called it to order at 6:30 pm.

 

Executive Reports

Section Chair (Jeffrey Friedhoffer):  The Section should consider 2-year positions for some ExCom officers, in order to compensate for the learning curve that each position takes.

 

Section Vice-Chair (Brian Sequeira)

None

 

Secretary (Boris Gramatikov)

 

Treasurer (Bob Cuellar)

·        Presented a financial report. As of Sept 13, 2004, the balance with SunTrust was $3,339.94 and with Concentration Banking: $47,162.28

·        Needs to start preparation for the end-of-year summary report

 

Jeff Friedhoffer:   The Section’s Treasurer needs to work closely with the Secretary and former Treasurer Boris Gramatikov, as well as with the Chapters’ Treasurers for the preparation of the final L-50 report.

 

John Dentler: Will help the Treasurer with balancing the book and the methodology of collecting financial information from the Chapters.

 

Professional Activities (Carole Carey)

None

 

Vil Arafiles, as a Chair of the Nominating Committee: Bob Cuellar has volunteered to serve a second term as a Section Treasurer in 2004. Thank you, Bob!  

The 2005 candidates would be:

   Brian Sequeira, Chair

   Boris Gramatikov, Vice Chair

   Robert Cuellar, Treasurer

The Secretary position is still open. Jerry Gibbon noted that the Section should work with the 14 members who recently were elevated to Senior Members.

 

 

Old Business and Review of Action Items

 

1) Jeff Friedhoffer:  We need to consider our participation in the IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems in October with a table – Bob Berkovits and Jeff volunteered to participate – each on a different day.

 

 

Reports from IEEE Executives

 

Jerry Gibbon -  R2 Chair, South Area

1) The ballots are out for the National and Regional elections. There are three candidates for the position of IEEE Region 2 (Eastern USA) Delegate-Elect/Director-Elect, 2005-2006:

- John Dentler (nominated by Region 2)

- Parviz Famouri (nominated by Region 2)

- Satish K. Aggarwal (nominated by Petition)

No endorsement favoring one candidate over the others has been tendered or implied.

2) Jerry distributed 10 issues of the September-October SCANNER (The IEEE National Capital Area joint publication of the Northern Virginia and Washington Sections). The newspaper contains very useful information on upcoming events (“Diamond Stories”), people and courses. One whole page (p.6) is dedicates to the R2 candidates (see above).

3) The references for Senior Members are now online and can be easily completed and filed over the Internet

4) Jerry recently visited one of the new EE Schools in Salisbury. They would be interested in founding a Student IEEE Chapter.

 

Amarjeet Basra  - Chair, Northern Virginia Section 

1) The Northern Virginia Section is interested in joint work with the Baltimore Section. 

2) The ballots for the election of Northern Virginia Section Officers and Directors for 2005 are out. Candidate bios are on the Internet.

3) The first meeting of the Industry Applications Society (IAS) was held on September 9, 2004. The topic was “Emerging Nano-Enabled Weapons”, presented by Forrest E. Waller Jr.

4) Arrangements have been completed to meet with a faculty member of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology at the start of the new school year to initiate establishment of an experimental student chapter as authorized by Region 2.

 

 

Report Highlights from Directors and Chapter Chairs

 

Newsletter (Ron Aloysius)

·        The September issue is out.

·        Ron is working on the October issue, and is inviting contributions.

 

Student Activities (Neville Jacobs):

KITS

We received 3 sample Robot kits from Kelvin of the batch of 50 basic kits they are preparing for us. Though they still have quality problems (this time with parts #8 and #17), they are better than usual, and parts #3 and #4 were fine. We expect the balance of the kits next week. The next batch of 50 kits is due in November. Kits have gone up about $2 this year, but as a result of material cost reductions  we will still be holding the price of the 2‑leg kits to $49, and the 4‑leg kits to $88. Jay Gammerman has been a big help going through some of last year's leftover kits and updating them.

 

The 20 Automation kits are due at the end of September from Morgan State University (Dr. Peter Anderson), and their price has increased about $1 for the 2‑leg kit and $2 for the 4‑leg kit. Our prices will remain at $69 and $98 for these kits as well. Note that all prices include the Manuals.

 

We are proposing the following changes to the rules for Automated Robots. They are as follows: "If a team has built a Manual Robot the previous year, and all members of the  team plan to participate again this year, they now have the option of retaining the same robot mechanism used last year, and move on to automating it. The effect would be to shorten the time the students would be working on an Automated Robot from about 4 months  to 2 1/2 months for a 2‑leg robot, and 6 months to 3 1/2 months for a 4‑leg robot. Students would need to build a new body for the robot and would still have to present a Written Report, but they could use last year's Written Report to cover the fabrication portion of the basic mechanism."

 

This saves the school the cost of paying for another basic Robot kit, and allows the money to be spent for an automated kit instead (which is more in line with IEEE objectives). Though the Automation kits are a little more expensive than the Manual kits, the Board agreed to let us give away, at no charge, the first Automation kit for each school, just as we do for the first 2‑leg manual kit. The Board voted to approve a budget increase of $750 for this item, plus another $750 to purchase prototypes of a wheeled robot that we might use to generate an interest in robotics and programming among Middle School students.

 

CONFERENCES and BOOTHS

As usual, we need to attract new schools and teams, and two conferences have been lined up for this purpose. We will have a booth at the Tech Expo which will be held at the Baltimore Museum of Industry on Friday, October 15.

There will be mostly etched teachers from Public Schools attending this function.

 

The second conference is called AIMS, and it will be held at the Convention Center on November 1, mostly for Private School teachers.

 

Our next Robot Workshop will be held Thursday, November 4, at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, from 4 to 7 PM. This is the opportunity to meet  with the teachers and deliver Robot Kits.

 

NEWS

‑ Loyola College has received  kits for a 4‑leg robot with Automation, and they are planning to learn to use them, and then mentor Poly.‑ The Programmable Controller from the Automation kit has increased in cost, and Peter Anderson is planning to switch to another supplier. This will require drawing, instruction and programming changes if we go along with the proposed devices (known as PICAXE‑28X) next year. We have enough old parts for the kits this year. In order to evaluate our choices, 4 kits with  the new devices have been ordered, and we'll try to set up a beta site to check them out (they could save us about $10 a kit).‑ One of the tasks we set for ourselves last year was updating and improving the format of the web‑page. Gary has done a great job here, but he would welcome some assistance and fresh ideas. Anyone willing to take an interest in this and do a little work with him, please e‑mail him at   gary@wieboldt.com.

‑ Next meeting will be Monday, October 18, at the Historic Electronic Museum, at 5 PM.

 

 

 

Chapter Chair Reports

PES (Eric Henlon)

 

Neville Jacobs responded to the issue Speakers issue – he will supply a list of teachers who would be potential speakers, or send out letters to all contacts, to provide some candidates.

 

IAS (Mark Welsko)

 

EMC (Robert Berkovits)

Bob will attend the IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems in October for one day.

 

 

EMB (David Sherman) 

·        Chapter has scheduled a technical meeting on Oct 21. The speaker will be Dr. Joel Bader, who will talk on Bioinformatics.

·        Further, David is planning a meeting with David Bader as a Distinguished Lecturer from the Computer Society. The November talk will be on Statistical Signal Processing.

 

Computer Society (McKenzie)

·        The Chapter is planning one technical meeting on modern software

 

 

 

Affinity Groups

WIE (Debi Siering – WIE, Greater Washington DC)

 

 

NEW Business

 

Lasers and Electrooptics Society/LEOS ( presented by Tom Clark)

·        Chapter was approved on Sept 1 by IEEE. Had their first administrative meeting on August 19 at APL. Has 56 members. Email:  Baltimore.LEOS@ieee.org  .  Presently working on their new website. The 5 officers nominated are:

                        Tom Clark – Chair

                        Paul Matthew – Vice Chair

                        Richard Madonna – Secretary

                        Ray Sova – Treasurer

                        Harshad Sardesai – Education Outreach

·        Four meetings per year are being planned. Lecture series will be coordinated by Bob Berkovits and member field coordinators. Topics will include Nanophotonics, Communications, Microwaves, Biophotonics, Remote Sensing, Integrated Optics etc.

 

WIE Baltimore Chapter issues

There are ongoing discussions as to whether a separate and independent Baltimore WIE (Women in Engineering) Affinity Group should be formed, for the approximately 60 Baltimore members. At present Baltimore is included in the Greater Washington WIE Affinity Group, which includes Washington DC, Northern VA, and Baltimore. A special meeting is being planned to resolve this.   The sense of the board was that Baltimore should have its own WIE chapter.   Cooperation with the DC/NoVA chapter will be at the discretion of the local WIE chapter.  Funding of current WIE chapter has been, NoVA $250, DC $400 and Baltimore $700. The sense of the board was that if Baltimore has its own chapter, funding would continue at the $700 level with the local chapter determining how much to fund joint efforts with the DC/NoVA chapter.  If Baltimore does not have a chapter, funding would be reduced to the same a NoVA, $250.

  

A General Section Meeting is being planned for April 2005. Different topics will be considered (Bob Berkovits is coordinating this at present). Please suggest your topic at the next ExCom meeting.

 

Mentors are needed for the Boy Scouts Electronics Merit Badge.

 

Stephan Bren is interested in setting up an Education Society Chapter.

 

Volunteers are needed for setting up a Life Member Chapter.

 

Based on his meetings with the Student Chapters lately (Johns Hopkins, UMBC, Loyola), Jeff Friedhoffer suggested the establishment of a substantial cash award for a Senior Student Project, to be paid from the Section’s budget. David Sherman noted that Student Paper Competitions do exist on Regional level. Jerry confirmed. Jeff emphasized that this should be a local ExCom issue and all agreed that it would be a great initiative, aimed at attracting more young people. Two options for 1st, 2nd and 3rd Prize were considered: $5,000 / $2000/ $1000, and  $2,000 / $1000/ $500.  A motion for $2,000 / $1000/ $500 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd Prize was made by Vil Arafiles, seconded by Jeff, and carried unanimously.

 

 

The meeting adjourned at 8:10 pm. 

 

The next meeting will be on Oct 18, 2004, 6-8 pm at HEM

 

 

Action Items
 

Number

Action/Disposition

03.4

Compile a history of the section over the past 100 years (Chris Nemarich)./Open

10.3

Present action taken with proposal on History of Electronics in Flight (Carole Carey).

10.10

Provide PR paragraph about robots for Newsletter (John Dentler).

10.14

Arrange for web training (Jeffrey Friedhoffer)

03.1

Jeff Friedhoffer to get together with IAS

03.2

Organize a general Section meeting which would be of technical character and would be open to a broader membership i. e. “Nanotechnology” or “Big Blackout”.  (Bob Berkovits) 

 

 

 

 

Minutes were prepared by Boris Gramatikov, Secretary.