The Alabama Section is making good progress on the goals outlined in the Area 6 Report dated October 22, 1998. They have had a good variety of very interesting and timely topics. The attendance is growing at these meetings, as is the support of other activities

The Alabama Section has a very successful Engineers Week in conjunction with the Engineering Council of Birmingham. The Section has nominated the slate of officers for the 1999-2000 year and these will be voted on at the May meeting.

From an awards point of view the Alabama Section is please that their efforts in the Region 3 Awards process has resulted in four selections:

Dr. Greg Vaughn – Joseph M. Biedenbach Outstanding Engineering Educator Award

Mr. David Green – Professional Leadership Award

Mr. Darrell Piatt – Outstanding Engineer Award

Alabama Power Company – Professional Development Award

For more information about the Alabama Section, visit their web site at www.eng.uab.ieeea/

The new 1999 officers are as follows:

Jim Anderson, Chair

Eric Grigorian, Vice Chair

Sonya Hutchinson, Secretary

Matt Vega, Treasurer

Willy Albanes, Member at Large

Jim Kennedy, Member at Large

The Section, GOLD Committee, Control Systems Society, Aerospace and Electronics Society, and Computer Society held 24 meetings plus the annual Computer Fair in 1998.

At the 1999 Engineers Week Banquet three awards were presented:

The Outstanding Engineer of the Year - Michael J. Moody of Dynetics.

Outstanding Service - Dr. Haik Biglari of Fairchild Controls.

Outstanding Educator - Dr. Yuri B. Shtessel of UAH

At the 1999 Professional of the Year (PoY) Banquet, sponsored by the Huntsville Association of Technical Societies, James W. Anderson of Wyle Laboratories, will be recognized as the Huntsville Section's PoY.

The Section supports the North Alabama Science Fair and the Alabama State Science Fair by supplying judges, certificates and monetary awards for engineering related categories. Due to budget constraints this year only $500 in prize money was provided. The Section also subsidizes part of the Student Branches expenses to attend Southeastcon.

An effort is underway to convert from a paper-based newsletter to an Internet newsletter and the Section is hoping to get a lot of suggestions in accomplishing the transition. It is desired to improve communications and reduce costs. Additional ways to increase publicity are being researched..

Like most sections, problems getting the members to participate are being experienced. With the down sizing and re-engineering of companies, the engineers have less discretionary time. A series of articles is being run in the newsletter on the activities of the section and inviting members to volunteer their services.

The Section is looking at a number of ways to open up the awards process and solicit nominations from a larger portion of the membership and their employers.

In order to streamline Section operations, formulation of a Yearly Planning Calendar listing yearly activities, is being developed. Additionally a monthly calendar and a long-range calendar is being prepared.

The Section will be co-sponsoring AUTOTESTCON 2002.

The IEEE-Mobile Section held its first meeting of the year in September 1998, to introduce the new officers and discuss the events for the year. Mr. Emad Sakla is the current chairman for the 1998-1999 season. We have seen an increase in participation over the past year. Our section is averaging around 35 people per meeting.

The second meeting was held on October 22, 1998, Dr. Tom G. Thomas, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of South Alabama, gave a presentation on the "Design of a Low-level Chemical Warfare Agent Monitoring System." This project, carried out in behalf of the US Army, resulted in the design of a low-level chemical warfare agent monitoring system. The monitoring system was field tested in Kuwait during operation "Desert Storm" and is currently in use as a safety monitoring system in chemical warfare agent disposal plants in the United States.

On November 19, 1998 the giant FPGA/CPLD manufacture Xilinx gave a presentation on a design process from the conceptual stage to the full realization of the design. The presentation focused on design tools used in the process as well as the proper choice of programmable logic devices for the desired application.

There was no meeting during the month of December. As part of the January 19, 1999 meeting, Mr. Brandon Reese Gee gave a presentation on protective relaying in power distribution systems. Mr. Gee, a graduate of the University of South Alabama, and has been employed by Alabama Power since 1986. He discussed the application and performance of protective relaying, control apparatus, and fault recorders in generating plants, distribution substations and transmission substations. His presentation included an overview of relaying, Supervisor Control and Data Acquisition (S.C.A.D.A.) and their applications in system operations and equipment protection.

For the month of February 1999, the IEEE-Mobile Section will participate in the activities with the Mobile Area Council of Engineers (MACE), to celebrate the National Engineering Week on February 21-27, 1999. During this week, MACE has planned a variety of activities including visiting speakers at local schools, a MATHCOUNTS competition, and scholarship awards.

This year the Mobile Section of IEEE will bestow its Engineer of the Year award at the banquet to Mr. Leigh Santos, former chairman of the Mobile Section. He has been actively involved with the IEEE for several years. The banquet will also honor the 1999 Engineer of the year and young Engineer of the year.

For the month of March 1999, the senior students of the University of South Alabama’s Electrical Engineering Department will give a presentation on their "car" designs that will participate in the SoutheastCon 99 competition.

Other topic such as digital television and HDTV applications, industrial programmable logic controllers (PLC's), and power distribution on large sea-going vessels are of great interest to the Mobile Section members.

This subsection has been meeting on a regular basis and with reasonable attendance. The Subsection is seeking ways to make the meetings more meaningful such as having a training session with course material and a good instructor. New ideas are welcome and will be appreciated.

The Mississippi section has held one meeting this year and we have two scheduled in the next month. We still need people to serve as officers. There has been mention of an S-PAC conference at MSU and some discussions of reviving the Northeast Subsection. Attendance is growing again though slowly.

The Subsection is attempting to get organized and more forward with an agenda of activities.