It has been longer than usual since our last LiveWire article, and we have lots of news to report. First, I invite all of our local IEEE members to join our IEEE Huntsville Section LinkedIn group. The group has been growing steadily since it was created by Past Chair Dr. Belur Dasarathy in December 2008. This is a great way to stay in touch with other members in the area, and to learn about upcoming events and opportunities to participate in our events.

We welcome Ed Worley to the Huntsville Section. Ed is an IEEE Life Member and former Programs Chair from Fort Worth, Texas. We hope that you find Huntsville a great place and help us make it better. On May 12^th and 13^th, the NASA ARMY Systems and Software Engineering Forum was hosted at Marshall Space Flight Center. This free conference was sponsored in part by the IEEE Computer Society. Bob Robinson was instrumental in providing support for this event on behalf of the Section.

May 16^th was the 125^th anniversary of IEEE, and the IEEE Huntsville Section celebrated with a free robotics demonstration at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. If you missed this event, be sure to catch up by reading the news article. Those of you who were able to attend got a chance to meet many of our volunteers, who facilitated this event. Thanks to Tommy McGuire, Doug Parker, Bob Robinson, Keith Jadus, John Grimm, Renee Coulter, Ed Worley, Eric Grigorian and Frank Parris, all of whom assisted at this event. And special thanks to the IEEE EMC Society, who made a very generous financial contribution to this event.

On May 21^st, the EMC Society hosted a technical lecture by Dr. Michael Hopkins, on the subject of ESD susceptibility and scanning. The EMC Society is one of our most active technical societies. Be sure to review Doug Parker’s summaries of their recent activities. In May the Control Systems Society also hosted a technical lecture, check out Wayne Kendrick’s meeting summary.

The annual Professional of the Year Banquet, hosted by the Huntsville Association of Technical Societies (HATS) was celebrated on June 11^th. This year, the IEEE Huntsville Section awarded this honor to Dr. Bill Seidler of The Boeing Company. Congratulations to Bill on this great accomplishment. Will Preussel, the Chair of our Awards Committee, along with Woody Williams, collected nominations and worked with the Awards Committee to select Dr. Seidler as this year’s honoree.

Tennessee Valley BEST is coming up this fall. We will be looking for volunteers to act as mentors to the competing students, and to assist with the event itself. This is an opportunity to share your knowledge and inspire some young minds! I hope to see you at some of our upcoming events. And thanks to all of our volunteers who have helped out these past few months. We have done some great work! Thank you all.