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Calendar of Events
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Tuesday, November 3, 2009
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 Metro Center (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: RSVP to Monica Taysing-Lara at m.taysinglara@ieee.org or 202-725-2225.
Sponsor: Communications Society (Washington Chapter)
Cosponsors: University of the District of Columbia IEEE Student Branch, Computer Society, Communications Society (Northern Virginia Chapter), Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Speaker: Dr. Paul Cotae
Time: Presentation at 10:30 am, lunch at 12:00 noon
Place: University of the District of Columbia, Learning Resources Division (LRD) Building 41, Auditorium A-03 (first floor), 4200 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC
More Info: See Diamond story below. Following the presentation, information and assistance will be available for guests interested in joining IEEE and members who want to upgrade to Senior Member or apply for Fellow status.
Contact: Please RSVP by 5:00 pm on Thursday, Nov. 5 to Roger Hardwicke at rogerchmd@gmail.com.
Sponsor: National Capital Area Consultants' Network
Cosponsor: Life Members
Speaker: Ron Paulson, SCORE Counselor
Time: 5:00-7:00 pm
Place: Olive Garden Restaurant, 8133 Leesburg Pike (Tysons Corner), Vienna, VA
Directions: From I-495, take Route 7 West (Exit 47A) toward Tysons Corner. Turn left at Gallows Road. Parking garage is behind the restaurant.
More Info: The Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) is a non-profit volunteer organization that provides free online and face-to-face business counseling, mentoring and training for small business and consultants. Mr. Paulson will give a presentation on SCORE and how it can help you succeed. See Diamond story below.
Cost: $25 cash includes dinner & beverage from fixed menu.
Contact: Monica Mallini at m.a.mallini@ieee.org. Preregister at
http://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/1233.
Monday, November 9, 2009
National Capital Area IEEE Officers "Lessons Learned"
Sponsors: Northern Virginia Section, Washington Section, Technology Management Council Chapter
Time: 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Place: NOAA National Weather Service, 1325 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD
Directions: The NOAA campus is located at the intersection of East-West Highway and Colesville Rd. NWS is the second building (SSMC2) from the corner of East-West Hwy. A public parking garage is beneath the third building (with hand).
From the Silver Spring metro station (Red line), exit the station and make an immediate left, go under the overpass and cross the plaza between buildings one and two.
More Info: Section, chapter and affiliate group officers are invited to a debriefing on how the lessons of the officer training program (Feb. 2009) have been effective in running your organization. This program will provide a feedback loop for the next officer training program in Spring 2010.
Contact: A list of all attendees must be submitted to building security in advance of the event. RSVP required at http://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/1271. For more information, contact Tim Weil, Washington Section Chair, at trweil@ieee.org or Doug Holly, Technology Management Council Chair, at dougholly@ieee.org or 240-404-1601.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
History at Speed: Operating and Maintaining the Dover Harbor in the 21st Century
Sponsor: Land Transportation Committee of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Speaker: Dean Edmonds, Director at Large, Washington DC Chapter, National Railway Historical Society (NRHS)
Time: 11:30 am
Place: Capitol City Brewing Company, 2 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, DC (in the old Post Office next to Union Station)
Directions: Take the Metro to Union Station (Red line). Use Mass. Ave. NE & 1st St. NE exit. Turn right at the front of Union Station, cross 1st St., and it is a short walk to the old Post Office.
More Info: The Dover Harbor luxury Pullman railroad car will be in Union Station on the day of our meeting, however, we cannot guarantee that it will be on a safely accessible track. NRHS will provide a guided tour of the car if possible. Be prepared to walk about two blocks from the restaurant to the car. The short ramp between the restaurant and station is outdoors; the path is otherwise covered.
Also at this meeting, Don Hendrickson, IEEE VTS Chair for Membership Development/Chapters, will present an award recognizing the National Capital Land Transportation Committee as the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society 2009 Chapter of the Year. For more infomation about the program, see Diamond story below or www.ieee.org/dc-ltc. 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: Free (advance reservations required)
Contact: Please make reservations by Wednesday, Nov. 4 with Karl Berger at karl.berger@dcm-va.com or 703-803-7901.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Northern Virginia Section Administrative Committee Meeting
Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Place: Olive Garden Restaurant, 8133 Leesburg Pike (Tysons Corner), Vienna, VA
Directions: From I-495, take Route 7 West (Exit 47A) toward Tysons Corner. Turn left at Gallows Road. Parking garage is behind the restaurant.
More Info: All interested IEEE members are invited to attend.
Contact: Contact Jeff Poston at poston@ieee.org or 703-983-7020.
Sponsors: National Capital Area Consultants' Network, Women in Engineering, and Life Members
Time: 2:00-5:00 pm
Place: Chevy's Fresh Mex Restaurant, Ballston Common Mall, 4238 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA
Directions: Ballston Common is two blocks south of Ballston Metro station (Orange line). Turn right at top of Metro escalator, then left on the street, proceed two blocks toward Macy's, turn left and walk toward Ballston Common Mall. Look for Chevy's on the right. Street parking is limited, and underground parking typically costs $1 for 3 hours.
More Info: This is the fifth anniversary of the popular Fall Fiesta networking event! All IEEE members and guests are welcome. Bring business cards for networking. Refreshments will be provided.
Cost: $10 cash for IEEE members and guests, $5 for IEEE student members.
Contact: Preregister at
http://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/1235.
Sponsor: Society on Social Implications of Technology
Speaker: Russ Harrison, Legislative Coordinator, IEEE-USA
Time: 5:30-7:00 pm
Place: 5180 Parkstone Dr., Suite 210, Chantilly, VA
Contact: Barry Tilton, SSIT Chair, at barrytilton@ieee.org.
Sponsor: Women in Engineering
Speaker: Kathy Kelly, Director, NOAA Office of Satellite Operations
Time: Networking & food 6:30 pm; presentation 7:00 pm
Place: George Washington University, Phillips Hall, 6th Floor, 801 22nd Street NW, Washington, DC
Directions: Take the Metro to the Foggy Bottom GWU station (Blue and Orange lines).
See
www.gwu.edu/explore/visitingcampus/campusparkingdirections for driving and parking information.
Updated! Contact: RSVP by 12:00 noon on Nov. 17 to Varetta Huggins at vhuggins@ieee.org.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
An Evening with the Winners of the Autonomous Robot Speedway Competition
Sponsor: Robotics and Automation Society
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: University of Maryland, Kim Engineering Building, Kay Boardrooms, Rooms 1107 & 1111, College Park, MD
Directions: See
www.eng.umd.edu/visitus/visitus_directions.html and
www.parking.umd.edu/themap. Free parking after 4:00 pm in Lots T and XX.
From the College Park Metro Station (Green line), take the free UM campus shuttle, get off at the first stop, walk back a hundred yards to Paint Branch Drive and look for the Kim Engineering Building on the left. See shuttle schedule at
www.transportation.umd.edu/routes/schedules/CollegeParkMetro.pdf.
More Info: The winner and the first two runner-up teams of the Second Annual Autonomous Robot Speedway Competition will give demonstrations and technical talks. Refreshments will be provided. See Diamond story below.
Contact: Raj Madhavan at raj.madhavan@ieee.org.
Sponsors: Sponsors: Power and Energy Society, Industry Applications Society
Speakers: Stephanie de Garay, Technical Consultant, Rockwell Automation, and Brenden Dallas, Sales Trainee, Rockwell Automation
Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Place: Virginia Tech Advanced Research Institute, 4300 Wilson Blvd., Suite 750, Arlington, VA
Directions: From Ballston Metro Station (Orange Line), turn right at top of escalator then left on the street. Proceed two blocks towards Macy's, turn right and walk one block to Ballston Point at the intersection of Wilson Blvd. and Glebe Road. If driving, see www.ari.vt.edu/ari_directions.html. There is a parking garage in the building with a $1 charge for 3 hours. After 6:00 pm, there is limited street parking.
More Info: A light dinner buffet will be served, followed by the program. All interested persons are invited.
Cost: Free for IEEE members; $10 for non-members.
Contact: Susanne Dreier at
susanne.dreier@ieee.org or 703-267-9543.
Sponsor: Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society
Speaker: Dr. Neil Gehrels, NASA
Time: 6:00-7:30 pm
Location: The Keck Center of The National Academies, 500 Fifth Street NW, Room 105, Washington, DC
Directions: Take the Metro to the Judiciary Square station (Red line) or the Gallery Place-Chinatown station (Green and Yellow lines).
See
http://www.nationalacademies.org/about/contact/nax.html for walking or driving directions.
More Info: Dr. Gehrels will present and discuss details on the operational Swift program, which observes gamma-ray bursts using specialized robotics. See http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/wash_nova/aess/Future.html or Diamond story below. Dinner at a local restaurant will follow the lecture. Guests are welcome.
Cost: Free (attendees pay for optional dinner)
Contact: Please RSVP by Friday, Nov. 20 to Dr. William Culver at wculver@alum.mit.edu or Mr. Eun Oh at eun.oh@nrl.navy.mil. Photo ID required to enter the building.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Professional and Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering
Sponsors: Computer Society, American Society for Quality (ASQ) Section 509 Software SIG, Society for Software Quality (SSQ)
Speaker: Brian Berenbach, Siemens Corporate Research
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: Video teleconference with sites in McLean and Silver Spring. Addresses are provided at the registration link below.
Updated! More Info: See Diamond story below. All interested IEEE members and guests are invited to attend. Pizza and soda will be served.
Cost: Free
Contact: Advance registration is required to enter the facilities. Please register online at
www.asq509.org/ht/d/sp/i/2499/pid/2499.
If your plans change, please email
ankums@mitre.org to cancel your reservation.
December
Sponsor: Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, George Washington University
Speaker: Dr. Andrew Cross, Advanced Systems and Technology Division, SAIC
Time: 12:00-1:00 pm
Place: Phillips Hall 640, George Washington University, Washington, DC
More Info: See Diamond story below.
Contact: Dr. Zderic at
zderic@gwu.edu.
The 9th International Workshop on Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications
Sponsors: University of Maryland, Transducer Research Foundation (TRF)
Place: The American Film Institute, Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, Silver Spring, MD, and additional venues
More Info: Detailed information and secure online registration are available on the conference website at www.powermems.org/venue.html.
Contact:
info@powermems.org or 619-232-9499.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
More than Just GPS: The Global Navigation Satellite System
Sponsor:Signal Processing Society, Northern Virginia chapter
Speaker: Dr. Christopher J. Hegarty
Time 6:30 pm
Place: MITRE Corp., Building 2, Conference Room 1N100, 7515 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA
GPS Coordinates: Latitude 38.92219 (+38° 55' 19.88")
Longitude -77.20561 (-77° 12' 20.20")
Directions: See
www.mitre.org/about/locations/va_mclean_mitre2.html. Free parking.
More Info: See http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/no_virginia/sps.
Contact: RSVPs by December 1 are appreciated, but walk-ins are welcome. Contact Jeff Poston at poston@ieee.org.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Improving the United States Bio-sensing Capabilities with Advanced Immunomolecules
Sponsor: Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Cosponsors: Robotics and Automation Society, Sensor Council, and Communications Society (Washington Chapter)
Speaker: Dr. Lynn Cooper, MITRE Corporation
Time: 6:30-8:00 pm
Place: MITRE Corp., Building 2, Conference Room 1N100, 7515 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA
Directions: See
www.mitre.org/about/locations/va_mclean_mitre2.html. Free parking.
More Info: See Diamond story below. Pizza and light refreshments will be served.
Contact: RSVP by Wednesday, Dec. 2 to Paul Otto at ottop@ieee.org.
Sponsor: Land Transportation Committee of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Speaker: TBA
Time: 11:30 am
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 and Blue lines, use 17th Street exit).
More Info: 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: $20 cash at the door for lunch.
Contact: Please make lunch reservations by 4:00 pm, Friday, Dec. 4 with Karl Berger at
karl.berger@dcm-va.com
or 703-803-7917, or Ken Briers at
ken.briers@parsons.com or 202-775-3397.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Undersea Exploration Technologies with Potential Aerospace Applications
Sponsor: Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society
Speaker: Karen Kohanowich, Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, NOAA
Time: 6:00-7:30 pm
Location: The Keck Center of The National Academies, 500 Fifth Street NW, Room 105, Washington, DC
Directions: Take the Metro to the Judiciary Square station (Red line) or the Gallery Place-Chinatown station (Green and Yellow lines).
See
http://www.nationalacademies.org/about/contact/nax.html for walking or driving directions.
More Info: Ms. Kohanowich will present and discuss advanced undersea capabilities with potential aerospace dual-use applications. See Diamond story below or http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/wash_nova/aess/Future.html for more information about the topic and speaker. Dinner at a local restaurant will follow the lecture. Guests are welcome.
Cost: Free (attendees pay for optional dinner)
Contact: Please RSVP by Friday, Dec. 4 to Dr. William Culver at wculver@alum.mit.edu or Mr. Eun Oh at eun.oh@nrl.navy.mil. Photo ID required to enter the building.
Sponsors: Northern Virginia Section, Washington Section
Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Place: Olive Garden Restaurant, 8133 Leesburg Pike (Tysons Corner), Vienna, VA
Directions: From I-495, take Route 7 West (Exit 47A) toward Tysons Corner. Turn left at Gallows Road. Parking garage is behind the restaurant.
More Info: This planning meeting is for Executive Committee members only.
Contact: Contact Jeff Poston at
poston@ieee.org or 703-983-7020, or Monica Taysing-Lara at
m.taysinglara@ieee.org or 202-725-2225.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Communications Society Washington Chapter
Officer Election & Holiday Social Event
Time: 11:00 am to 2:00 pm
Place: Epicurean and Company, 4250 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC
Directions: The restaurant is located next to the University of District of Columbia. Take the Metro to the Van Ness-UDC station (Red line) and walk north on Connecticut Ave.
More Info: All Washington section members of the Communications Society are invited to participate in the officer election and holiday social event. A description of the roles and responsibilities of each officer of the chapter's Executive Committee is available at www.ieee.org/escanner/cec.pdf (PDF file, 83k). Please send nominations for the desired position, along with a curriculum vitae, to Debi Siering by December 9 at siering@ieee.org. For more information on the restaurant, see www.epicureanandcompany.com.
Contact: Debi Siering at siering@ieee.org.
Sponsors: Computer Society, American Society for Quality (ASQ) Section 509 Software SIG, Society for Software Quality (SSQ)
Speakers: Jack Olivieri, MITRE (Bedford); and Abhaya Asthana, Alcatel-Lucent
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: Video teleconference with sites in McLean and Silver Spring. Addresses are provided at the registration link below.
More Info: All interested IEEE members and guests are invited to attend. Pizza and soda will be served.
Cost: Free
Contact: Advance registration is required to enter the facilities. Please register online at
www.asq509.org/ht/d/sp/i/2499/pid/2499.
If your plans change, please email
ankums@mitre.org to cancel your reservation.
Sponsor: National Capital Area Consultants' Network
Speaker: Sai Chiang, Creative System Solutions
Time: 6:00 pm
Place: Northern Virginia venue TBD
More Info: The banquet is open to all IEEE members and guests. Mr. Chiang, a past chair of the NCA Consultants' Network, will talk about the deployment of military applications of electrotechnology to save lives in Afghanistan. He frequently travels overseas to train soldiers in the use of the technology.
Cost: Registration through Dec. 5: $37.50 (advance payment); Late registration, Dec. 6-15: $40 (cash at door).
Contact: Register online at
http://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_view/list_meeting/1243 and follow instructions for mailing payment. For questions, contact Monica Mallini at m.a.mallini@ieee.org.
Sponsor: Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society
Speaker: Mr. Jason Crusan, NASA
Time: 6:00-7:30 pm
Location: The Keck Center of The National Academies, 500 Fifth Street NW, Room 105, Washington, DC
Directions: Take the Metro to the Judiciary Square station (Red line) or the Gallery Place-Chinatown station (Green and Yellow lines).
See
http://www.nationalacademies.org/about/contact/nax.html for walking or driving directions.
More Info: See http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/wash_nova/aess/Future.html for more information about this meeting as it becomes available. Dinner at a local restaurant will follow the lecture. Guests are welcome.
Cost: Free (attendees pay for optional dinner)
Contact: Please RSVP by Friday, Dec. 18 to Dr. William Culver at wculver@alum.mit.edu or Mr. Eun Oh at eun.oh@nrl.navy.mil. Photo ID required to enter the building.
January
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Technical Aspects of the International Space Station
Sponsor: Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society
Speaker: Ron Ticker, NASA
Time: 6:00-7:30 pm
Location: The Keck Center of The National Academies, 500 Fifth Street NW, Room 105, Washington, DC
Directions: Take the Metro to the Judiciary Square station (Red line) or the Gallery Place-Chinatown station (Green and Yellow lines).
See
http://www.nationalacademies.org/about/contact/nax.html for walking or driving directions.
More Info: Dinner at a local restaurant will follow the lecture. See http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/wash_nova/aess/Future.html or Diamond story below, for more information about the topic and speaker. Guests are welcome.
Cost: Free (attendees pay for optional dinner)
Contact: Please RSVP by Thursday, Dec. 31 to Dr. William Culver at wculver@alum.mit.edu or Mr. Eun Oh at eun.oh@nrl.navy.mil. Photo ID required to enter the building.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
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 Metro Center (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: RSVP to Monica Taysing-Lara at m.taysinglara@ieee.org or 202-725-2225.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Northern Virginia Section Administrative Committee Meeting
Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Place: Olive Garden Restaurant, 8133 Leesburg Pike (Tysons Corner), Vienna, VA
Directions: From I-495, take Route 7 West (Exit 47A) toward Tysons Corner. Turn left at Gallows Road. Parking garage is behind the restaurant.
More Info: All interested IEEE members are invited to attend.
Contact: Contact Jeff Poston at poston@ieee.org or 703-983-7020.
Diamond Stories
Dr. Cotae will discuss a multi-hop distributed and scalable wireless sensor acoustic network in water space where each sensor (node) can monitor and detect environmental events locally. This underwater network is connected with the monitoring center through a high-speed optical fiber by using multiple access techniques and low power underwater acoustic modems. Located at the sea floor, the densely deployed sensor network, where the nodes are organized in clusters, covers acoustic communication distances between 50-500m with an expected transfer data rate up to 20kbps using currently available sensors. The projects' objective is to enable applications in oceanographic data collection on pollution monitoring, offshore exploration, seismic monitoring, disaster prevention, assisted navigation, mine reconnaissance and distributed tactical surveillance.
Dr. Cotae will describe the project's design rationale, hardware and software design, proposed architectures, security issues and comparisons with traditional approaches. In addition, he will provide a comparison with terrestrial wireless sensor networks and current underwater networks systems and their limitations. For a better design it was necessary to analyze first the basic factors that influence the underwater network design. The bandwidth of underwater acoustic channels operating over several kilometers is about several tens of kbps, while short-range systems over several tens of meters can reach hundreds of kbps. These inherent properties of underwater acoustic communication channels are affected by many factors such as path loss, noise, multi path, and Doppler spread. All these factors cause high bit error and delay variance.
Paul Cotae is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, at University of the District of Columbia. Dr. Cotae received his Ph.D. in electronics and telecommunication from the Politehnica University, Bucharest, Romania, in 1992, and did his post-doctoral work at Istanbul Technical University. He received his M.S. in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder (1998), and a M.S. in electronics and telecommunication from the Technical University "Gh. Asachi" in Iassy, Romania (1980). In 1994-95, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In addition, he has held various research and design engineering positions with companies in the U.S. and Romania.
Dr. Cotae's research interests include digital communications, wireless sensor networks, wireless communications for biomedical applications, information theory, and numerical analysis and statistics. He has published more than 100 papers and is the author of several books on communications systems published by Technical University "Gh Asachi" Publishing House.
Dr. Cotae is the vice chair of the Washington chapter of the Communications Society and serves as associate editor for IEEE Communications Letters. Previously he was active in the IEEE Central Texas Section's Joint Communications and Signal Processing Chapter. He received the IEEE Central Texas Section Volunteer Recognition Award in 2007.
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Ron Paulson runs his own advisory and consulting company, Technical Management & Leadership, LLC. He has been a SCORE Counselor since April 2008 with background and experience in technology, management, planning, government contracting, finance and acquisitions. Technology, management and planning are his primary SCORE counseling areas.
Paulson retired as vice president of engineering at Lockheed Martin (LM) corporate headquarters in Bethesda, MD in 2008. He was responsible for coordinating all corporate engineering activities, including evaluating business unit programs and proposals for engineering problems and providing recommended corrective actions, leading the corporate engineering process improvement center, overseeing the implementation of the corporate integrated engineering process, and serving as the corporate focal point for engineering training and development.
He has 35 years of experience in aerospace management, engineering and R&D. He began his career designing munitions at Honeywell Systems and Research. He then held a series of positions in which he led electro-optics development in the avionics lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; managed commercial instruments business and aerospace products development at the Barnes Division of EDO Corp.; managed the electronics, optics and physics organization of the Lockheed Research and Development Division (now ATC) in Palo Alto, CA; was the vice president for programs and technology for the LM Space Sector; managed the civil space line of business for LM Space Systems Company (SSC-Sunnyvale, CA); and most recently functioned as vice president for technical operations for SSC (Denver, CO).
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
History at Speed: Operating and Maintaining the Dover Harbor in the 21st Century
Dean Edmonds of the National Railway Historical Society will give a presentation about the Dover Harbor, the last Pullman passenger car operating on American mainline railroads. He will describe the challenges and rewards of operating and maintaining an 86-year old railroad car at current Amtrak standards. If the car is on accessible track, he will walk us to the Dover Harbor and give a tour of this unique and beautiful railroad car.
The Dover Harbor, a restored classic American sleeper-lounge-buffet railroad car, is the only heavy-weight Pullman revenue passenger car still operating in unrestricted train service on the main lines of America. The Dover Harbor is completely Amtrak compatible and is available for lease and charter service, mobile and stationary, at locations anywhere in the U.S. and parts of Canada. The car is rich in history, tradition, and elegance, yet it provides the comforts, convenience, and service you would expect from a fine hotel. It is beautifully restored to its authentic 1930s appearance and meets all current mechanical and safety requirements.
The Dover Harbor was constructed by the Pullman Company of Chicago in July 1923 as a combined baggage-library car named the Maple Shade. The 81 foot car weighed 80 tons and had a four section, twelve-seat lounge, a barber shop, and a twenty-eight foot baggage area. Painted in the Pennsylvania Railroad's standard colors (Tuscan red), it operated in service at the head of that railroad's name trains, including the Broadway Limited and the Spirit of St. Louis for eleven years.
In March, 1934, the Maple Shade was recalled into the Pullman Company Shops and rebuilt into six double bedrooms, a buffet, and a lounge, and was renamed the Dover Harbor. Air conditioning, which was new to railroad cars at that time, was also installed. After rebuilding it was repainted in the standard Pullman green and gold livery that it wears today.
The Pullman Company assigned the car to service on a succession of railroads until it was retired on October 18, 1965. After passing through a series of private owners, the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society purchased the Dover Harbor on November 30, 1979.
The chapter placed great emphasis on retaining as much of the car's 1934 appearance as possible. The exterior of the Dover Harbor is repainted in Pullman green complete with authentic gold lettering. The beautiful interior of the car appears much as it did in the 1930s, complete with period carpet and furnishings. While maintaining its period appearance, the chapter instituted mechanical improvements which enable the car to meet current standards. Since restoration began, the car has received high-speed roller-bearing trucks and wheel sets, new controlled-slack couplers, retention-toilets, upgraded brake system with anti-lock mechanism, and a self-contained 60 kW diesel generator. The car's electrical system has also been replaced. The Dover Harbor became Amtrak certified on May 21, 1986. It is now the only heavy weight Pullman revenue car fully operational for private use on Amtrak passenger trains.
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
An Evening with the Winners of the Autonomous Robot Speedway Competition
The second annual autonomous robot speedway competition was held at the University of Maryland College Park campus on October 24, 2009. The event was a joint activity between the Washington and Northern Virginia Chapter of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (IEEE-RAS) and UMD's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Ten teams competed and they came from from the Robotics@Maryland student organization and Prof. Gil Blankenship's 408I Autonomous Robotics Capstone Design Course. This systems engineering exercise provided students engaged in the competition with an opportunity to practice an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to solving problems and optimizing performance.
Due to inclement weather, the competition was held indoors at the Kim Engineering Building rotunda. Competing teams were required to autonomously traverse two laps of a circular track outlined with orange cones. The teams were then scored on both speed and distance traversed (best lap out of three runs).
The Autonomous Systems Lab teams placed first and second followed by an undergraduate team as the second runner-up. The teams will be awarded $250, $150 and $100 (provided by the RAS Chapter), respectively, at the November 17 meeting, where they will demonstrate their robots and will give technical talks on the underlying algorithms and design of their entries.
About 70 people attended the competition. For photos and movies from the event, please visit the RAS Chapter website at http://ewh.ieee.org/r2/washsec/ras/.
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Swift is a first-of-its-kind multi-wavelength observatory dedicated to the study of gamma-ray burst (GRB) science. Its three instruments work together to observe GRBs and afterglows in the gamma-ray, X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical wavebands.
Neil Gehrels has been interested in astronomy since spending his youth as a "night assistant" for his father at various mountain-top telescopes. He did his graduate research at Caltech with Professor Ed Stone working on the Voyager data from the Jovian magnetosphere. He has been at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center since 1981, developing instruments for gamma-ray astronomy. Dr. Gehrels was the Project Scientist for the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory in the 1990's. In 1998 he led an international team to propose the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission to NASA as part of the Explorer program. It was selected and launched in 2004, and has made amazing discoveries about gamma-ray bursts and the distant universe. He has over 300 scientific papers, has edited seven books and has won numerous awards including, recently, the Henry Draper medal of the National Academy of Science and the SPIE George W. Goddard Award. Dr. Gehrels is Chief of the Astroparticle Laboratory at NASA Goddard and has adjunct professorships at the University of Maryland and Penn State.
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Professional and Ethical Dilemmas in Software Engineering
A name is a powerful thing. Naming a disease, for example allows doctors to identify and share information about it, hopefully leading to a cure, and even better, prevention. In the field of philosophy, certain behaviors are named to better identify them, e.g. “bandwagon effect.” In software engineering, no such names exist for cases of unprofessional behavior or ethical dilemmas. Even worse, practitioners sometimes engage in unprofessional or unethical behavior without realizing it. Unethical and unprofessional actions can perturb the software lifecycle, resulting in additional downstream unethical or unprofessional behavior. Propagated unprofessional or unethical behavior may occasionally have catastrophic consequences. In this talk, nine specific ethical and professional dilemmas in software engineering will be identified, categorized and named, with the hope that giving such behavior a name will increase awareness and decrease the frequency of occurrences. These dilemmas will be placed in the context of the IEEE code of conduct.
Brian Berenbach is the technical manager of the requirements engineering competency center at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton and is an ACM distinguished engineer. His book, Software And Systems Requirements Engineering: In Practice, has recently been published by McGraw-Hill. Mr. Berenbach has been involved, in various capacities, with the execution of very large industrial projects for over 35 years, and has taught computer science as an adjunct professor at several universities.
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The strong Church-Turing thesis states that any function that can be computed efficiently in the physical world can be computed efficiently by a modern digital computer (Turing machine). Surprisingly, quantum computers challenge this thesis because they can solve some problems exponentially faster than the best known algorithm running on a classical computer. However, quantum computers are difficult to physically implement, despite rapid experimental progress, because decoherence and systematic errors limit the quality of quantum gates and memories. The theory of quantum error-correction and fault-tolerant quantum computation provides a remarkable solution to the problem of noise: if the error rate is less than a constant accuracy threshold, then arbitrarily reliable, efficient quantum computation is possible. Dr. Cross will give an overview of the role of fault-tolerance in quantum computation and illustrate some of the main ideas by way of examples.
Andrew Cross obtained his Ph.D. and S.M. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 2008 and 2005, respectively, and his B.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Case Western University in 2002. Dr. Cross has published over 20 papers, and he serves as a reviewer for Quantum Information and Computation, Physical Review A, ACM Journal of Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems, and Journal of Physics B.
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Thursday, December 3, 2009
Improving the United States Bio-sensing Capabilities with Advanced Immunomolecules
Many biosensor platforms use immunomolecules called antibodies to detect microbial pathogens and toxins. Standard, reagent-grade antibodies are not heat stable and can degrade quickly under harsh environmental conditions. Replacing these temperature-sensitive reagents with a new type of immunomolecule that is environmentally stable could greatly increase the country's bio-sensing capabilities.
The objective of this work is to develop and test prototype immunoassays that are based on environmentally stable molecules. Our research hypothesis is that small, toxin-specific immunomolecules derived from camelid species, specifically llamas, can be efficiently produced and applied to the next generation of field-deployable biosensors and detection/diagnostic platforms.
Our research investigates the in vivo and in vitro properties of heavy-chain antibodies produced by llamas. In short, toxin-specific antibodies will be isolated from llamas, characterized, and then incorporated into an existing hand-held assay format for comparison with standard antibody-based assays.
This work fills a critical need for robust field-deployable reagents for antibody-based biosensor technologies. Its direct application is to biosensors designed to detect microbial threat agents or their toxins. It has broader importance for the fields of immuno-detection and immuno-diagnostics because it demonstrates the feasibility of improving the basic component common to all platform and assay types: the immunomolecule.
Lynn Cooper received her Ph.D. in medical entomology from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1997. She is currently employed as a Multi-Discipline Lead Systems Engineer for MITRE Corporation, where she is a subject matter expert in biosecurity and public heath research. Previously she served as a chief of virology and senior scientist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, DC, where she researched micro array-based technology for rapid identification of infectious agents.
Dr. Cooper has received the People’s Choice Award for work on the new MITRE bio-nano laboratory start up and the National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Recognition Award for Research, Epidemiology and Laboratory Group, presented to the Influenza Branch for participation in the Hong Kong avian influenza (H5N1) outbreak investigation.
Her research interests include camelid immunomolecules for advanced biosensing, GIS modeling and simulation, and multiple biosecurity topics.
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Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Undersea Exploration Technologies with Potential Aerospace Applications
NOAA has a long history of undersea exploration and research using traditional and advanced technologies. Manned capabilities, such as shallow saturation diving, advanced technical diving and submersibles, compliment unmanned, remotely operated and autonomous underwater vehicles to unlock the secrets of the sea. The promise of telepresence and new ocean sensor capabilities has excited the ocean community about the potential for observing and predicting the marine environment, and relaying that excitement and knowledge to scientists and the public. This talk will touch on the spectrum of undersea technology that has been and will be used to address the oceanic scientific and management challenges faced by the nation.
Karen Kohanowich is the Extramural and Technology Coordinator for the Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) at NOAA. She oversees cooperative agreements with several universities to conduct research with advanced undersea technologies such as autonomous undersea vehicles, submersibles, remotely operated vehicles, and NOAA’s Aquarius undersea laboratory. As the Chair of NOAA's Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) Working Group, Ms. Kohanowich is leading the agency's efforts towards cross-NOAA coordination and enterprise solutions for the use and procurement of AUVs for the agency.
Prior to joining NOAA, Ms. Kohanowich completed a 23-year career as an oceanographer, ocean policy expert, and salvage diver in the U.S. Navy. She served as liaison between the Navy and NOAA, addressed marine mammal and sonar issues, and coordinated international ocean agreements. Her operational experience includes numerous shipboard deployments, deep diving operations, and qualification as a submersible pilot.
Ms. Kohanowich holds a B.S. in geology from Vanderbilt University (1982), an M.S. in air ocean sciences from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (1995), and an M.S. in environmental science and policy from Johns Hopkins University (2005).
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Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Technical Aspects of the International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is a collaboration of five space agencies from Russia, Europe, Japan, Canada, and the U.S. It is a unique multifaceted orbiting laboratory supporting research, development, test and evaluation of new innovative space and earth based applications. Assembly of the space station is on track for completion in September 2010. While NASA-sponsored investigations on the ISS have been focused largely on enabling future long duration human space exploration missions, Congress designated the U.S. portion of the space station as a National Laboratory, making its facilities available to other Federal agencies and private entities for non-exploration related ventures. Engineering RDT&E activities on the ISS encompass a wide range of technical areas including environmental control and life support, communications, materials science, guidance, navigation and control, propulsion, electrical power, thermal control systems, robotics, and sensor and instruments for Earth and space science.
Ron Ticker earned an M.B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, an M.S. in electrical engineering from George Washington University and B.S. degrees in physics and astronomy from the University of Maryland College Park. He is a senior member of IEEE, past-chair of the IEEE Washington Section, and a former member of the Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society Board of Governors.
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Updated 11/19/09
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