Hampton Roads (VA) Section Report for April 2008 Region 3 Meeting 

To Whom It May Concern:

The Hampton Roads (VA) Section held eight section meetings in 2007.

  The January meeting was our annual student paper competition, where local
engineering students are provided the opportunity to present their work to
the chapter. Norfolk State University hosted the competition, which rotates
each year to include various local schools. In February we held a joint
meeting with INCOSE (systems engineers) to host Mr. Jim Lowe, General
Counsel for HSMM, Inc. Jim described the structure of Virginia's engineering
licensure requirements, currently a hot topic due to the new requirement for
continuing education for Virginia's licensed Professional Engineers. Trevor
Rice of Luna Innovations presented fiber optic sensors at our March meeting,
which featured new capabilities for sensing response and range. Luna is an
up-and-coming opto-electronic company based in Virginia, and several local
companies, universities and government laboratories are engaged in projects
with them. In April, Lawrence Salberg of NASA Langley gave a presentation on
electrical safety throughout the engineering design cycle. IEEE Hampton
Roads is very fortunate to have Lawrence join our section, as he has
recently relocated from the Florida area. We wrapped up our spring meetings
with a social event in May at the Williamsburg Winery.

  IEEE Hampton Roads began our fall meeting series with a presentation from
me on an engineering investigation and resolution of a product failure.
Stepping aside for the moment as chair, I described the shipboard failure of
a fiber optic cable, the contributing and root causes, the corrective
actions taken and the ultimate modifications to military specifications
based on the event. In October Dr. Leonard Winchester of CW Optics presented
his work in the use of photonics to assist in medical applications. While
this field is quite wide, his specific efforts to use photonics to determine
localized blood flow in exposed skin grafts was very fascinating in it's
implications to real-time surgical support. In November Jay McCollough
presented his work at Norfolk State University in examining the potential of
power transmission over fiber optic cables. Similar to the expanding use of
IEEE 802.3af Power-over-Ethernet common to copper cables, this technology
promises to further free communications devices such as cameras and embedded
computers from localized power requirements.

  IEEE Hampton Roads held Executive Committee meetings in June at Brutti's
in Old Town Portsmouth and in December at the Freemason Abbey in Norfolk.

The following are the current elected officers for 2008:

Kurt Clemente - Chair
James Bolitho - Vice Chair
Jim Childers - Treasurer
Giuliano Casale - Secretary 

Plans for 2008

  - Maintain a strong Dinner/Technical Program to provide topics of general
interest to our membership
  - Continue to monitor the emerging Virginia requirements for continuing
education for licensed Professional Engineers to ensure our members with
licensure can make use of section meetings
  - Continue to evaluate the desire and support for a Hampton Roads Power
Engineering Society chapter (note the name change to Power and Energy
Society is still out for ballot!)

Respectfully Submitted by:

Kurt Clemente, P.E.  
IEEE Hampton Roads (VA) Section, Chair