Calendar Archive, June 2008

Monday, June 2, 2008
Peer-Assisted Delivery: The Way to Scale IPTV to the World

Sponsor: Signal Processing Society, Washington Chapter
Speaker: Dr. Jin Li, Microsoft
Time: Reception 4:15 pm, lecture at 4:30pm
Place: University of Maryland, 2460 A.V. Williams Bldg. (ECE Conference Room), College Park, MD
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. Park in Lot XX, which is free after 4:00 pm. (Read signs carefully!) See www.parking.umd.edu/themap.
From the south on Route 1, turn left onto Campus Drive, and follow above directions.
From the College Park Metro Station (Green line), take the free UM campus shuttle, get off at the first stop, walk back for a hundred yards, turn left onto Paint Branch Drive and look for the second building on the right. See shuttle schedule at www.transportation.umd.edu/routes/schedules/CollegeParkMetro.pdf.
More Info: See Diamond story below.
Contact: washington.sps@ieee.org.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
EMC Expo 2008: Electromagnetic Environments

Colloquium and Exhibition

Sponsor: Electromagnetic Compatibility Society (Annapolis, Baltimore, Washington, Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland chapters)
Speakers: Stephen Caine, Senior E3 Engineer, EG&G; Robert Bozarth, electrical engineer EG&G Technical Services; Kurt Sebacher, Integrated Combat Environments Deputy Division Head, NAVAIR; Walter J. Scott, senior scientist, Northrop Grumman Corporation; Dr. Brett D. Robinson , Engineering Director, EMI Solutions Inc.
Time: Registration 7:00 am, colloquium 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, reception 5:00 to 7:30 pm
Place: Waldorf Holiday Inn, 45 St. Patrick's Drive, Waldorf, MD
Directions: Take I-95 to Maryland Exit 7A Route 5 South. Drive south to Waldorf and merge with Route 301 South. Turn right on St. Patrick's Drive (before St. Charles Mall).
More Info: Attend a practical seminar designed to improve your efficiency as an engineer, product designer or technical manager where you'll learn where the DOD is going with high level Electromagnetic Environments. The speakers will provide insight to MIL-HDBK-235 updates and new U.S. Ship, EMP and HPM/UWB EME's. Concurrently the International Council on Systems Engineering will provide their Systems Engineering Certification Course.
Cost: IEEE Members: $175 postmark by May 23; $225 postmark after May 23 or at door. Non-members: $50 additional. Full-time students: $75 postmark by May 23, with copy of valid Student ID. Unemployed or retired attendees: 50 percent discount off IEEE Member fees. An online registration form is available at www.wll.com/EMCEXPO2008.shtml. Fees include refreshments, lunch, reception and speaker notes.
Contact: For registration, contact Joann Dorsey at 301-417-0220 or joannd@wll.com. For other questions, contact Fred Heather, EMC Expo Chair, at 240-924-8659 or heatherf@ieee.org.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Washington Section Administrative Committee Meeting

Time: 6:45 pm
Place: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Directions: Use the 12th Street entrance. The AAAS building is one block from the Metro Center station (Red, Orange and Blue lines).
Street parking is free after 6:30 pm (no parking 4:00-6:30 pm). There is a pay parking lot at the intersection of 9th St. and New York Ave., and an underground parking garage at 14th St. and New York Ave.
See map at www.aaas.org/dcwest.pdf.
More Info: All interested IEEE members are welcome.
Contact: Tim Weil at trweil@ieee.org or 301-452-3641.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Earth's Changing Climate

Sponsor: Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, Society on Social Implications of Technology
Speaker: Dr. Robert F. Cahalan, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Time: Refreshments 3:00 pm; seminar 3:30 pm
Place: Visitor Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Directions: See www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/directions/index.html.
More Info: See Diamond story below, and http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/no_virginia/grss for updated information.
Contact: RSVPs by Tuesday, June 3 are appreciated, but walk-ins are welcome. James Tilton at j.tilton@ieee.org.

Thursday, June 5, 2008
Acela and High Speed Rail Operation and Maintenance

Sponsor: Land Transportation Committee of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Speaker: Rudy Vazquez, Amtrak
Time: Lunch 11:30 am, presentation 12 noon
Place: American Public Transportation Association, 11th Floor Conference Room, 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: See Diamond story below. The National Capital Land Transportation Committee (LTC) holds monthly lunch meetings from September though June. The LTC is jointly sponsored by the ASME Rail Transportation Division and the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society of the Washington and Northern Virginia Sections. All interested persons are invited. Membership in ASME or IEEE is not required.
Cost: $15 cash at the door for lunch.
Contact: Please make reservations by 4:00 pm on Monday, May 12 by contacting Karl Berger at karl.berger@dcm-va.com or 703-803-7917 or Ken Briers at ken.briers@parsons.com or 202-775-3397.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Allocation vs. Diversification: Managing Your Portfolio for Success

Sponsor: Graduates of the Last Decade (Northern Virginia and Washington chapters), Women in Engineering
Speaker: Larry Grogan, Grogan Advisory Services
Time: Light dinner and networking 6:30 pm, presentation 7:00 pm
Place: Export Import Bank of the United States, 800 Vermont Ave. NW, Washington, DC
Directions: Convenient to the McPherson Square Metro station (Blue, Orange Lines).
More info: Investing requires a practical and manageable approach in order to accomplish your goals and to achieve success. Because the site is on U.S. Government property, advance registration and picture ID are required. All are welcome to attend. See Diamond story below.
Cost: Free
Contact: Pre-registration is required by Monday, June 9. Send an email to Kerry Hartman at khartman@ieee.org.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Candidates Forum and Northern Virginia Section Administrative Committee Meeting

Time: Food 6:30-7:00 pm, Candidates Forum 7:00-8:00, Administrative Committee meeting 8:00 pm
Updated! Place: Mitre Corporation, Building 2, Conference Room 1N100, 7515 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA
Directions: See www.mitre.org/about/locations/mitre2_map.html. The walkway to Building 2 is accessible from level 2 of the parking garage. Free parking.
Cost: Free
Updated! More Info: The June Northern Virginia Administrative Committee Meeting is expanded to give all interested Washington and Northern Virginia Section members an opportunity to meet the candidates for IEEE Region 2 Director-Elect. Ralph Ford from the Erie Section and Murty Polavarapu from the Northern Virginia Section will make opening statements and take questions from the audience. Doug Holly of the Washington Section will moderate the forum.
Cost: Free
Contact: Please RSVP so we can plan for the food, to Chuck Baldi at cbaldi@ieee.org or 703-675-0678.

Thursday, June 12, 2008
Applications and Demonstration of Lightglove,
a New User Interface

Sponsor: Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Cosponsors: Antennas and Propagation Society, Computer Society, Graduates of the Last Decade, Signal Processing Society (Northern Virginia chapter)
Speaker: Bruce Howard, Chief Technical Officer, Lightglove Corporation
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Mitre Corporation, Building 2, Conference Room 1N100, 7515 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA
Directions: See www.mitre.org/about/locations/mitre2_map.html.
More Info: This presentation will feature a hands-on demonstration and a discussion of medical applications. See Diamond story below. Pizza and light refreshments will be served.
Contact: Please RSVP by Wednesday, June 11 to Paul Otto at ottop@saic.com.

Saturday, June 14, 2008
D.C. United Soccer Game

Sponsors: Women in Engineering, Graduates of the Last Decade (Northern Virginia and Washington chapters).
Time: 7:30 pm
Place: RFK Stadium, Washington, DC
Directions: Take Metro to the Stadium-Armory station (Orange, Blue lines). See http://web.mlsnet.com/t103/stadium/directions.
More Info: See the D.C. United vs. New York Red Bulls game with WIE and GOLD members. We will be getting the premium seats. All are welcome to attend!
Cost: $14 for IEEE members; $22 for non-members. Advance payment required.
Contact: If interested, please contact Katie Schaffold at katie.schaffold@ieee.org by May 25. Payments must be received by June 2.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Theory of Fast and Robust Adaptation

Sponsors: Control Systems Society (Northern Virginia and Washington chapters)
Speaker: Dr. Naira Hovakimyan, Virginia Tech
Time: Reception 5:30-6:00 pm, presentation 6:00-6:30 pm, discussion 6:30-7:00 pm
Place: DeVry University, Room 232, 2450 Crystal Drive, Arlington, VA
More Info: See Diamond story below. Pizza and soda will be provided.
Contact: Please RSVP to Haik Biglari at 240-626-9205.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The NIST Trustworthy Software Program

Sponsors: IEEE Computer Society; American Society for Quality (ASQ) Section 509 Software SIG; and the Society for Software Quality (SSQ)
Time: 6:30 pm
Speakers: Tom Rhodes, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Place: Video teleconference with sites in McLean, Silver Spring and Gaithersburg. Addresses are provided at the registration link below.
More Info: All interested IEEE members and guests are invited to attend. Pizza will be served. Advance registration is required to enter the facilities. After the May 27 meeting, see www.asq509.org/ht/d/sp/i/2499/pid/2499 for details and to register.
Cost: Free
Contact: Tom Starai at starai@ieee.org.

Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Current State of IEEE in Region 2 & the National Capital Area

Sponsor: Life Members
Speaker: Murty Polavarapu
Time: 12:00 noon
Place: Dolley Madison Library, 1244 Oak Ridge Ave, McLean, VA
Directions: Take Exit 46 from the Beltway and proceed on Route 123 North to McLean, VA, about 2 miles. After crossing Old Dominion Dr., turn left at the next street, Ingleside Ave., and then left on Oak Ridge Ave. The library is on the left.
More Info: Refreshments will be served. The next Life Members meeting will be in the Fall.
Contact: Amarjeet Basra at 703-324-2821 or amarjeet.basra@ieee.org.

Diamond Stories

Monday, June 2, 2008
Peer-Assisted Delivery: The Way to Scale IPTV to the World

IPTV is one of the fast growing Internet services. Dr. Li will survey the operation and the infrastructure that supports IPTV: the data center, the Internet and the end user, and discuss issues that affect the global scalability of IPTV. The client-server model cannot support large scale IPTV delivery, and the peer-assisted IPTV service without locality awareness will quickly overrun the Internet backbone when the number of subscribers increases. Peer-assisted delivery with locality is the only way to scale IPTV to the world.

Dr. Li quantified the benefit of peer-assisted IPTV, using a nine-month trace from a client-server IPTV deployment for MSN Video and showing that peer-assistance IPTV can dramatically reduce server bandwidth costs, particularly if peers prefetch content when there is spare upload capacity in the system. He will discuss the impact of peer-assisted VoD on the cross-traffic among ISPs, and the development of a simple analytical model which captures many of the critical features of peer-assisted VoD, including its operational modes.

Dr. Jin Li is a principal researcher managing the communication system subgroup at Microsoft Research Redmond. He has worked in a diversified research field, including audio/image/video compression, virtual environment and graphic compression, audio/video streaming, realtime audio/video conferencing, peer-to-peer content delivery, and distributed storage.

He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) in 1994. From 1994 to 1996, he served as a research associate at the University of Southern California (USC). From 1996 to 1999, he was a member of the technical staff at the Sharp Laboratories of America, and represented the interests of the company in the JPEG2000 and MPEG4 standardization efforts. He was a researcher/project leader at Microsoft Research Asia (Beijing, China) from 1999 to 2000.

Dr. Li has more than 90 refereed conference and journal papers. He is an area editor for the Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation (Academic Press) and the Journal of P2P Networking Applications, and previously served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. Dr. Li is a senior member of IEEE. He was the recipient of the 1994 Ph.D. thesis award from Tsinghua University and the 1998 Young Investigator Award from SPIE Visual Communication and Image Processing.

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Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Earth's Changing Climate

Dr. Cahalan will consider the data that was used by the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with Albert Gore, Jr. He will primarily focus on the scientific basis of the IPCC report from Working Group 1 (WG1), and emphasize the primary uncertainties that limit our capability to predict the timing of changes in the polar icecaps, in rainfall, and in other key climate variables. These include uncertainties due to aerosols and clouds that are the main focus of the Climate and Radiation Branch at Goddard, and also a priority of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program that coordinates the research of NASA with 12 other federal agencies. Dr. Cahalan will also consider the other two IPCC reports, on adapting to climate change (WG2) and on mitigating climate change (WG3), and give his opinion of a likely scenario in which we may begin to meet the challenge of 21st century climate change.

Dr. Robert Cahalan is Head of the Climate and Radiation Branch at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which he joined in 1979, coming from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He is also Visiting Senior Research Scientist at UMCP/ESSIC, Adjunct Professor of Physics at UMBC, Lead Scientist for THOR lidar, Chair of the 3DRT Working Group of the International Radiation Commission, NASA Project Scientist for the EOS SORCE mission that launched in January 2003, Project Scientist of the International Intercomparison of 3D Radiation Codes (I3RC), and NASA representative to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, where he chaired the Observations Working Group. He is a member of the DoE ARM Science Team, and the NASA EOS-Landsat Science Team. Dr. Cahalan has been a graduate advisor at universities in the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands, and Visiting Scientist at NCAR, Aspen Center for Physics, Institute of Theoretical Physics in Warsaw, and ECMWF in Reading, England.

Dr. Cahalan's research focuses on climate and cloud structure, developing retrieval techniques that extend the "independent pixel approximation" (IPA) by use of 3D transfer methods, and parameterizations such as the "effective thickness approximation" (ETA) that relate cloud optical properties to cloud structure. With colleagues at NASA Goddard and LANL Dr. Cahalan led development of a new measurement approach, "Thickness from Offbeam Returns," realized in Goddard's innovative THOR lidar system that combines a multiple field-of-view wide-angle receiver with 3D retrieval methods to determine the thickness of optically thick cloud layers. THOR is now being adapted to measure thickness of snow and sea ice layers. Dr. Cahalan directs the Intercomparison of 3D Radiative Codes (I3RC) that has developed a set of benchmarks used to certify 3D radiative transfer codes, and is now coordinating a community 3D coding effort.

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Thursday, June 5, 2008
Acela and High Speed Rail Operation and Maintenance

Rudy Vazquez, Senior Director, High Speed Rail Equipment Engineering, Amtrak Mechanical Department, will share his knowledge and insight of the Amtrak Acela high speed rail service in the Northeast Corridor. He will present some marketing statistics showing impressive ridership gains as a result of improving on-time performance and passenger amenities. Amtrak is investigating other corridors as candidates for high speed rail service. Lessons learned from the design, operation, and maintenance of the Acela trainsets will be invaluable in assessing the challenges of introducing high speed rail to mixed-use corridors.

Mr. Vazquez's railroad industry career has encompassed 30 years of managerial expertise. Prior to joining Amtrak, his positions included EMD District Service Engineer on national (AMTRAK, NJT, MARC, SEPTA, MBTA and Metrolink) and international passenger railroads (GO Transit, VIA Rail and BC Transit in Canada, SNCF in Morocco, SATS in South Africa and Irish Rail in Ireland) and Deputy General Manager of Equipment Analysis and Test for the Long Island RR Maintenance of Equipment Fleet Engineering Department.

He holds a B.S.E.E.T. degree from the University of Dayton, an M.B.A. from Wilmington College, and a Graduate Certificate, Intermodal Transportation from Dowling College on Long Island. He is a member of IEEE, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Locomotive Maintenance Officers Association (LMOA).

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Allocation vs. Diversification: Managing Your Portfolio for Success

Investing requires a practical and manageable approach in order to accomplish your goals and to achieve success. Allocation and diversification are key aspects that all experts say you need in your portfolio. But what exactly are these principles? How do they differ? What can you do to make your portfolio practical and manageable? This presentation will discuss these aspects and include a demonstration of successfully implementing allocation and diversification in your portfolio.

Larry N. Grogan is president of Grogan Advisory Services, an independent financial services firm focusing on planning to strategically guide clients through life stages. The company offers complete financial planning, asset management, insurance, analytical portfolio analysis, and consultation. Grogan Advisory Services was established in 2001, determined to provide clients unbiased opinions and recommendations. The company's research comes from multiple sources in order to present a scope of intelligent opinions, and it offers over 11,000 mutual funds, unlimited stocks and bonds.

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Thursday, June 12, 2008
Applications and Demonstration of Lightglove,
a New User Interface

Lightglove is a new technology worn underneath the wrist that optically images the shape of the hand in real time. Narrow IR beams scan the hand, and reflections are sensed in the Lightglove. Solid state accelerometers and gyroscopes track hand motion, completing a virtual reality glove function without a physical glove. The resulting data sets are transmitted wirelessly via Bluetooth to a host computer, entertainment center or smart-home controller. A device driver synthesizes user actions from glove-hand emulations of mouse, joystick, gaming controller and keyboard functions.

Advantages of a virtual (non-contact) controller result from Lightglove’s action sensing any size or shape hand comfortably and basing inputs on changes in the hand shape to detect natural intuitive gestures as though there were a physical device in or below the hand. Examples include dropping a finger down to press a mouse or keyboard button, operating the thumb as a joystick or moving the hand to direct cursor motion. Intuitive gestures may be extended to include raising or lowering the hand to raise or lower TV volume or a light dimmer. The hands may operate in any comfortable position or orientation, which may change over time to mitigate repetitive stress injury. Action trigger points may be adjusted to offer tight, fast dexterous control for 3D drawing or flight stick operation, or loose, slower input for hand-challenged or tired users. Advanced features include processing out tremors.

Bruce Howard is the co-founder and chief technical officer of Lightglove Corporation. He designed and prototyped all of the Lightglove hardware and has written and debugged all the software and firmware for it. He also wrote all four patents for Lightglove technology. He has been involved with optical design since his undergraduate work at Virginia Tech, where he earned a B.S. in electrical engineering.

Howard has more than 22 years experience in hardware systems design and support for several prominent manufacturers. His technical expertise is concentrated in the areas of radio communications and electromagnetic interference. As an electrical engineering manager, he oversaw the design and testing of various pieces of equipment for the military, NASA and other federal agencies. In addition to his hardware expertise, he was responsible for both product-embedded and test software. Having established himself as an effective leader, Howard spearheaded numerous successful teams during his career. Notable contributions include planning and execution of an EMI program for air traffic controller terminals for the FAA at Harris Electronics, and establishing and maintaining electromagnetic compliance for Space Shuttle communication and telemetry modules at TRW.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Theory of Fast and Robust Adaptation

The history of adaptive control systems dates back to the early 1950s, when the aeronautical community was struggling to advance aircraft speeds to higher Mach numbers. In November 1967, the X-15 launched on what was planned to be a routine research flight to evaluate a boost guidance system, but it went into a spin and eventually broke up at 65,000 feet, killing the pilot, Michael Adams. The onboard adaptive control system was blamed for this incident.

Exactly 30 years later, fueled by advances in the theory of nonlinear control, the U.S. Air Force successfully flight-tested the unmanned, unstable, tailless X-36 aircraft with an onboard adaptive flight control system. This was a landmark achievement that dispelled some of the misgivings that had arisen from the X-15 crash in 1967. Since then, numerous flight tests of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) weapon retrofitted with adaptive element have met with great success and have proven the benefits of the adaptation in the presence of component failures and aerodynamic uncertainties. However, the major challenge related to stability and robustness assessment of adaptive systems is still being resolved based on testing the closed-loop system for all possible variations of uncertainties in Monte Carlo simulations, the cost of which increases with the growing complexity of the systems.

This presentation will give an overview of the limitations inherent to the conventional adaptive controllers and will introduce a new thinking for adaptive control that leads to fast and robust adaptation with provable control specifications and guaranteed stability and robustness margins. Various applications will be discussed during the presentation to demonstrate the tools and the concepts.

Naira Hovakimyan received her Ph.D. in physics and mathematics in 1992, in Moscow, from the Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences. Upon receiving her Ph.D. she joined the Institute of Mechanics, Armenian Academy of Sciences, as a research scientist, where she worked until 1997, when she has been awarded a governmental postdoctoral scholarship to work in INRIA, France. In 1998 she was invited to the School of Aerospace Engineering of Georgia Tech, where she worked until 2003 as a research faculty member. In 2003, she joined Virginia Tech's Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, where she is currently a professor.

Dr. Hovakimyan is the recipient of the SICE International scholarship for the best paper of a young investigator in the VII ISDG Symposium (Japan, 1996). The subject areas in which she has published include differential pursuit-evasion games, optimal control of robotic manipulators, robust control, adaptive estimation and control. She is the author of over 180 refereed publications. She is senior member of the IEEE, Associate Fellow of AIAA, member of AMS, ISDG, and is serving as Associate Editor for the IEEE Control Systems Society, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, Computational Management Science of Springer, International Journal of Control, Systems and Automation. She is the 2004, 2005 and 2007 recipient of Pride@Boeing award and the 2008 recipient of Dean's Award for Research Excellence. Her current interests are in the theory of adaptive control and estimation with an emphasis on aerospace applications, and are supported by AFOSR, ARO, AFRL, ONR, NASA and The Boeing Co.

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Updated 11/26/08