The Electronic Newsletter of the IEEE Toronto Section - the latest news
about upcoming events and the people that make them happen - Section and
Chapter meetings, workshops, conferences, and other events of interest
occuring in Toronto and surounding areas. Posted every month.
Happy New Year
Kostas Plataniotis, and your 2004 Section executive committee - Dennis, Al,
Pelle, Randy, Bruno, Bob, Wai Tung, Aleksandra, Emanuel, Alagan, Xavier,
George, Robert, Jody, George, Walter, Ed, Vince, Rong-Liang, Sridar,
Karl, Raymond, Wallas, and Bob wish you a prosperous new year!
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Profile on Kostas Plataniotis
We welcome Kostas as our Section Chair for 2004 and 2005. Kostas is
an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
at the University of Toronto where he is concurrently an associate in the
Nortel Institute for Telecommunications with responsibility for the project
"Mobile Position Location in Third Generation Cellular Networks". He is
also an adjunct professor in the Department of Mathematics, Physics and
Computer Science at Ryerson University.
Kostas was born in Greece, attended the University of Patras where he
earned his B. Eng degree, then moved to the United States where he
obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the Florida Institute of
Technology. He was awarded a post doctoral fellowship at U of T before
becoming a member of their full time staff. Dr. Plataniotis is a member of
the Technical Chamber of Greece, and a senior member of IEEE.
Kostas was our Section Vice Chair in 2002 and 2003, and chair of our
Signals and Applications Chapter in 2001 and 2002.
You can read the biographies of any of our volunteer
leaders on our web site by visiting our executive page.
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Upcoming Chapter Activities
January 8 Professor Jacob Klapper of the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in
University Heights, Newark, NJ will present a seminar on "The interaction of
theory and intuition in the development of FM" organized by our
Communications chapter . Click for details.
January 16 Professor Alex Adronov of the Department of
Chemistry at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario will present a
seminar on "Polymerization from the Surface of Single-Walled Carbon
Nanotubes - Synthesis, Characterization, and Properties" organized by our
Circuits and Devices chapter . Click for details.
Upcoming Conferences
PQ Logic is pleased to announce 2 new
professional level seminars
- full details [PDF]
For more information and registration, please visit the PQLogic web site.
3 Day Power Quality Seminar
March 22-24, 2004 -- Niagara Falls, Ontario
This 3-day course will equip the participants with the "right"
train-of-thought needed to identify the Root-Cause of Power Quality problems.
Participants will be able to establish the basic analysis criteria and learn
proven mitigation techniques. The third day will consist of sessions
delivered by industrial specialists.
2 Day Short Circuit Analysis Seminar
March 25-26, 2004 -- Niagara Falls, Ontario
Based on "A Practical Guide to Short Circuit-Calculations" by Conrad St.
Pierre, two-day course has been designed as a step-by-step reference for
engineers planning on calculating short-circuits currents in electrical
power systems. The course deals exclusively with ANSI guidelines.
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RWL04 Real World Linux 2004 Conference & Expo,
April 13 - 15, 2004,
Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto, Ontario.
Your Connection to Today's Applications and Solutions
- overview [PDF]
Attend Real World Linux Conference & Expo, April 13-15, 2004 Canada's
only national comprehensive event focusing on Linux and Open Source operating
systems for business, government and education users, resellers and
developers. For more information and registration, please visit the conference web site. IEEE members - free pre-registration for
trade show, 25% discount for conference/tutorials.
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2004 Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer
Engineering, May 2 - 5, 2004, Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Response to this conference has been fantastic !
Over a thousand abstracts have been received and are now being reviewed.
A combination of author interest and a delightful location make this conference
one to attend - so plan to make that short drive from Toronto to Niagara Falls,
attend the technical sessions that interest you, start with a Sunday workshop,
enjoy the Monday evening awards banquet which will be a formal and fun affair,
and take in the Niagara area attractions - browse the
conference web site for lots of ideas, specific information and
links.
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2004 RTAS Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Application
Symposium, May 25 - 28, 2004, Le Royal Meridien - King Edward Hotel, Toronto,
Ontario. Submission deadline is January 12, 2004.
For more information, please visit the conference web site.
You Asked !
the following information is in response to a question I received - the editor
Restrictions Imposed by U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control
(OFAC) Members residing in several 'sanctioned' countries are not
able to take advantage of IEEE member benefits and services except for print
subscriptions to IEEE publications. In addition, when authors from 'sanctioned'
countries submit papers to conferences or publications, these papers can be
reviewed and either accepted without change or rejected, they can not be edited
nor can suggestions for improvement be made. IEEE is trying to obtain a
licence to be able to edit such papers. These restrictions apply to any IEEE
organization in any country because the IEEE corporate office is in the U.S.
For more information, please use the following two links:
U.S. Department of the Treasury - OFAC Sanctions Program and Country Summaries
IEEE web page IEEE & OFAC - Info Update
A Challenge for "Long Time Members of this Section"
This photo was taken 25 years ago at the Golden Jubilee Dinner of the IEEE
Toronto Section. Ian Dutton, who sent me this photo, and I have identified
the folks we remember. Two are former professors of mine, and one was a fellow
graduate student. If you click on the photo, you can view a full size
image with the names of the people we have identified. If you can identify
anyone else or confirm a name with a question mark beside, please email me
at newsletter.toronto@ieee.org. (repeated from last month - since I am
still hoping to hear from you)
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More about SPAM
I get a lot of SPAM - about 200 messages a day - and I hear a lot of bad advice
about what to do about it. Here are a couple of personal suggestions...
1 - never respond to any spam message - you only confirm that your e-mail
address is valid, you may even have told the recipient your real mailbox
address if you use an alias for any reason, and your chances of being removed
from the list are somewhat less that being struck by lightning while you are
typing your response.
2 - use a SPAM filter if your internet service provider (ISP) offers
such a service, I pay an extra C$1/month for mine and it is a real time saver
for me.
Membership Services
Here is a practical New Year's Resolution for each of us - to ensure we stay
well connected to IEEE. Three aspects are involved:
- IEEE Web Account - do you have one? if not please get one - you do
need it
- Manage your IEEE Membership - is the info about you up to date in the
IEEE membership database?
- IEEE E-mail Alias - do you have one? if not please get one - it is
really useful
Please check out our Membership page, find out more about these
important aspects of your IEEE membership and how to go on-line directly
and bring yourself up to date and ready to take maximum advantage of what
IEEE offers.
Obituary
Power Systems legend, Dr. Charles Concordia, died in Venice, Florida on
Dec 24, 2003 after a short illness. He was 95 years young. His obituary was published in the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union.
Charlie was still active during the past year, attending the IEEE Power
Engineering Society Conference held in Toronto this past Summer, July 13
- 17, 2003. Please see this Section's report (bottom of linked page) on that meeting where the "Charles
Concordia Power Systems Engineering Award" was first presented.
The photo shows John Undrill (General Electric), Dr. Concordia (honoree), and
Paul de Mello (the first recipient) - please click
to view larger photo.
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Advertising
The IEEE Toronto Section accepts advertising for items deemed to be of
interest to our members. If you would like to advertisze in our newsletter,
please contact the editor.
Thanks For Reading
That's all for now, hope to have you visit again next month ..... Bob Alden,
Editor
Please send any news item submissions, comments, suggestions, concerns to newsletter.toronto@ieee.org.
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