Wednesday
February
26th, 2020 Topic:
Navigating A
Career in
Aerospace:
From Jetliners
to Satellites
& Rockets
Ms. Tamaira
Ross, Blue
Orgin's
Configuration
Design
Engineer and
Manager
On Wednesday February 26th, 2020 the Daytona Section's
meeting was
held in
conjunction
with
Embry-Riddle's
celebration of
Engineers
Week.
The keynote
address at
this meeting
was delivered
by Tamaira
Ross.
Ms. Ross is
Blue Origin's
Configuration
Design
Engineer and
Manager.
The
presentation
was sponsored
by the College
of Engineering
and the Honors
Program at
ERAU.
In her presentation, Ms. Ross discussed the parallels
between
commercial
aviation and
commercial
space as she
reflected on
her extensive
career at
Boeing and
Blue
Origin.
According to
Ross, the
commercial
space industry
aims to
emulate the
arc of the
commercial
airline
industry by
increasing the
life of
vehicles,
reducing
operations and
maintenance
cost, and
increasing the
number and
types of
customers.
The drive to
reduce cost
influences the
design of both
aircraft and
launch
vehicles and
the systems in
which they
operate.
Thursday
January 23rd,
2020
26th, 2020 Topic:
The Use of
Artificial
Intelligence
in Halifax Health
Information
Tecnology Tom
Stafford, Vice
President and
Chief
Information Officer
at Halifax
Health
On Thursday January 23, 2020 Tom Stafford discussed the
architecture
of Al-powered
documentation
with its
time-saving
components and
how it has
contributed on
other levels,
including its
positive
impact toward
the prevention
of physician
burnout.
The AI-powered
solution uses
cloud-based
speech
recognition
with the aim
to make
documentation
more
clinically
focused,
improve
physican
engagement
with quality
initiatives
(e.g., the
CMS-mandated
Merit-based
incentive
Payment
System), and
bring Halifax
Health closer
to their goal
to achieved
clinical
documentation
excellence.
Thursday
November 21st,
2019
Topic:
The Use of
Technology and
AI in the
Power Grid Michael
Putt PE
- Florida
Power and
Light
On Thursday November 20, 2019 Michael Putt, PE, from the
Florida Power
and Light
Company,
presented a
general
overview of
the smart
grid, the
power grid and
the deployment
of
drones.
Mr. Putt has
30 years of
experience in
innovating
solutions for
the Power
Grid. He
started with
the Commercial
Industrial
Branch, moved
to utility
Substation
Automation,
then the Smart
Grid.
Today he is
studying the
application of
Artificial
Intelligence,
Machine
Learning and
Drones to the
Electric Power
Industry. Mr.
Putt graduated
from Penn
State with a
BS in
Electrical and
Electronic
Engineering
and is a
member of the
IEEE.
Thursday October 24th, 2019
Topic: The Role of Drones in Law Enforcement
Detective
Alexander
Manjasek -
Daytona Beach
Police
Department
On
Thursday October 24th, a presentation on the role of
Drones in Law Enforcement was presented by
Detective Alexander Manjasek of the Daytona Beach Police
Department.The Daytona Beach Police
Department (DBPD) entered into unmanned aviation in June
2017, with an initial staffing of five pilots.
These pilots underwent training through
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and received
certification as unmanned remote pilots through
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The unit
currently has nine pilots assigned, and five drones of
differing sizes and capabilities.
DBPD drones have been deployed for
hostage negotiations, searches for missing people and
fleeing felons, high risk warrant services, and traffic
assessment operations.
The pilots are trained and tasked to conduct counter
drone investigations, to ensure that private remote
pilots adhere to regulations governing drone flights for
both commerical purposes and hobby enjoyment, especially
during special events in the city.
Thursday
September
26th, 2019
Topic;
Age of Urban
Air Mobility
Dr. Pat
Anderson,
Professor of
Aerospace
Engineering at
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical
University
The
subject of the
evening was
the Age of
Urban Air
Mobility
presented by
Dr. Pat
Anderson. He
presented
background
information on
how the future
of urban air
mobility is
expected to
unfold.
To follow
through with
this concept
will required
us to "think
differenty,"
as Dr.
Anderson aptly
put it at a
recent speaker
series during
Engineer's
week at ERAU.
Urban air
vehicles are
envisioned to
assume the
role of
commercial
on-demand ride
sharing
enterprises,
such as Uber
or Lyft.
Special
lemphasis was
given
regarding the
engineering of
electrified
propulsion for
these new
flying
machines,
improved
safety over
commercial
aircraft, the
capability of
autonomous
operations,
reduction of
noise, and
efficient
movement to
its
prospective
passengers.
Other aspects,
such as market
considerations,
regulatory
concerns and
logistics
for
launch site
configurations
were
addressed.
Our speaker,
for the
evening was
Richard Pat
Anderson,
Ph.D. a
professor of
Aerospace
Engineering at
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical
University
(ERAU) in
Dayton Beach,
where he
teaches flight
dynamics and
control He
holds a Master
of Science
Degree in
Aerospace,
Aeronautical
and
Astronautical
Engineering
from Penn
State
University,
and a Ph.D. in
Mechanical
Materials and
Aerospace
Engineering
from the
University of
Central
Florida.
In addition,
he is as
certified
airline
transport
pilot (ATP),
an
FAA-certified
flight
instructor,
and an FAA
certified
aircraft
mechanic
(A&P).
Thursday March
28th, 2019
Topic;
A Fun Night
with the Old
Professor
Dr. Helfrick,
Professor
Emeritus,
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical
University
Dr.
Helfrick's
presentation
was his usual
eclectic mix,
was
unscripted and
cannot be
repeated.
March's
presentation
was about our
Country's
President's,
politicians
and famous
people who
either were
engineers or
non-engineers
who discovered
or were
credited with
making
engineering
innovations.
It was
truly
and
interesting
and
informative
pressentation.
Thursday
February 21st,
2019
Topic:Why We
Need A Social
Engineering
Exposure Index
(SEXI)
W.
Shawn
Wilkerson
Sanity,
LLC
For the Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University Engineer's Week
(February 2019), the IEEE Daytona Section
will host a discussion concerning the
intersection of social engineering and
personal information. A presentation
of the difficulty associated with the
classification and regulation of personal
information, the methods used by social
engineers to interfere with academia and
research, as well as the process use by
attackers on a key individual in the
United States government.
Research,
security bulletins, and the news media
continue to warn of an increase of
publicly available personal information.
While social network sites and data
breaches receive much of the blame,
personal information
provided by users has grown exponentially
over recent years via social media.Website customization , online
surveys, smartphones,
fitness trackers, smart residential
products and a plethora of other
venues. From January 2005 through
January 2019, data breaches provided 11/6
billion records of personal information
made available via public disclosure,
Website distribution, and underground
hacker markets for trade as well as
purchase.
Publicly
available personal information often
facilitates the success of social
engineering attacks on organizations,
compromise of academic facilities and
theft of research. Little is known
as to what personal information is
available or potential for use in a social
engineering attack. Even less is known as
to the level of harm an organization can
endure due to personal information
exposure.
Our Speaker - W. Shawn
Wilkerson has over three decades working
with information security for client
ranging from cellular provider startup to
the world's largest notebook ring metals
manufacturer. Shawn is the founder of
Sanity, LLC, a company focused on
integrating privacy and information
security into a framework merging
intellectual property, business rules, as
well as daily operations into database
abstraction layers and access control
lists. In 2012, Shawn self-published
MODX Revolution: Building the Web Your
Way for an open source, content
management system platform. In 2015, he
completed his three years of
solo-development for the entire backen for
a pay-as-you-go cellular company. In
2018, Shawn created the Hacker Eyes TM startup to assess personal
information exposure. Currently, Shawn is
finalizing his PhD. in information Systems
with a Concentration in Information
Security advancing three decades of
information systems/security experience
into academia. His research interest
is the intersection of Social engineering
and privacy.
Thursday January 24th,
2019
Topic:Digital
Marketing
Gary
Vela
Daytona Internet Marketing
There
are a number of powerful way for business of all
sizes to reach prospects and customers on the
Internet, one of which is Search engine Optimization
(SEO). It is considered the single most
effective way of driving traffic to a website. SEO
helps to improve rank in Google search results,
generates leads and sales at the lowest costs, and
boosts local search ranking. Analysis and
thorough testing is required to ensure that
techniques and products are always on the cutting
edge.
If you are not using social media marketing for
business and not speaking directly to your audience
through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, and Pinterest, you're missing out!
Great Marketing on social media can bring remarkable
success to a business, creating devoted brand
advocates and even driving leads and sales. To
create social media marketing campaigns, you
need to consider your business goals and use
them to map your social strategy to attract
audiences and get noticed!
Our Speaker-
Gary Vela is a Peru-born successful American
businessman and self-made entrepreneur. With
over 15 years of experience in web development and
online marketing, he founded Daytona Internet
Marketing - Web Daytona in the year 2008 with
the philosophy of forming partnerships rather than
becoming another online marketing service
provider. Gary holds a degree from Daytona
State College in Computer Science and Business
Management and is a member of the Daytona Chamber of
Commerce. His firm works with clients from
different industries to create proven online
marketing strategies for their online success.
Thursday
November 25th, 2018
Topic:IEEE-USA in Government Policy Lee Stogner President of Vincula Group
This presentation wase a Web
Cast discussing the current activities of the
IEEE-USA in Government Relations and our
Public Policy. The web cast will include a
discussion session where Members can voice
their opinions and find out how they can
become involved at the National, State and
local level.
Our Speaker -
Lee Stogner, PMP, Chair Region 3 IEEE
Government Relations Committee Member, IEEE
Internet of Things Committee, Past Region 3
Director, IEEE Board of Directors and
President of Vincula Group. Throughout his
working career, Lee has been active in both
local and international professional
activities. Lee is the Chair of the
Carolinas' Engineering Cluster and a past
Director of the IEEE Board of
Directors. Today, Lee is active in
promoting the development of the Internet of
Things through his participation in the IEEE
Smart Grid Initiative, the IEEE
Transportation Electrification Committee and
as a Member of the IEEE Internet of Things
Initative.
.
Throughout his
working career, Lee has been active in both
local and international professional
activities. Lee is the Chair of the
Carolinas' Engineering Cluster and a past
Director of the IEEE Board of
Directors. Today, Lee is active in
promoting the development of the Internet of
Things through his participation in the IEEE
Smart Grid Initiative, the IEEE
Transportation Electrification Committee and
as a Member of the IEEE Internet of Things
Imitative.
Thursday
September 25th, 2018
Topic:Cybersecurity Threats Justin Yapp/ Josh Gordon White
Hat Eagles Cybersecurity Club
Cybersecurity threats are evolving as attackers
develop more subtle social engineering traps and takes
advantage of new Cloud and Internet of Things technology.
The talk will focus on current cyber threats
and provide practical advice on how to protect your data
and identity. The White Hat Eagles Cybersecurity
Club is a student organization that focuses on
information and network security. They practice
both offensive and defensive cybersecurity concepts and
techniques, Using cutting edge methods of
attacking and defending networking assets. They
conduct research and security analysis on commercial
available, off-the-shelf equipment such as Smart Home
appliances, wearables and much more.
Our Speaker-
Justin Yapp and Josh Gordon of the White Hat
Eagles Cybersecurity Club.
Thursday September
27th, 2018
Topic:A
Bioremediation Sohayla Eldeeb
Spruce Creek High School, Port Orange, FL
Effectiveness of Nitrogen,
Phosphorus, and Sulfur Compoinds on Bioremediation
of Oil
Spills by Psudomonas Fluorescens and Bacillus
wiith the Aid of Ferrofluid
The enormous
task of cleaning up oil spills has
burdened industry, government,
and environmentalists for
years. The clean-up is very
time consuming, expensive, and
slow. Bioremediation involves
microbial metabolism of harmful
substances, but with a huge length
of time.
This study
was undertaken to enhance to
bioremediation through the addition of
sodium sulfate, sodium nitrate and
sodium phosphate to samples containing
Pseudomonas fluorescens and Bacillius
subtilis. These bacteria utilize
nitrates during cellular respiration
and nitrate ammonification. Therefore,
it was hypothesized that sodium
nitrate would increase the amount of
hydrocarbon metabolites present in
samples more that sodium sulfate or
sodium phosphate. Samples
containing different combinations of
bacteria, .1 and .01 molar solutions
of the above nutrients, salt water and
crude-oil-substitute hexadecane
(utilized to replicate the long
hydrocarbon chains found in petroleum)
where shaken at 27 degrees Celsius for
seven to 14 days. Bacterial
concentration was estimated by
turbidity measurements. Each
organic layer was analyzed with gas
chromatography to identify any smaller
hydrocarbons.The data from
two trials partially
disproves the
hypothesis.
While the
treatment of .1 M sodium nitrate
caused one of the greatest increases
in bacterial concentration with P.
fluorescens and B. subtills, the
chromatograhic data from these
treatments differed only marginally
from the positive controls and other
treatments.
Additionally, the data suggested that
substantial metabolite formation
occurred only in P. florescens samples
with .1 M and .01 M treatments of
sodium phosphate. However, the .1 M
nutrient combination and .01 M sodium
sulfate treatments caused the greatest
hexadecane disappearance.
These 'results are relevant to the
enhancement of bioremediation
techniques; a need exemplified by the
Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
Our Speaker-
Sohayla Eldeeb is a senior at Spruce
Creek High School who has been
involved in science research since she
was 11. Her research has evolved
into a focus on the environment,
specifically oil spills. Her
novel method of magnetizing the
oil using ferrofluid
nanotechnology has gained attention
and recognition both on the regional
and state level. She has been
recognized for developing her research
in improving the bioremediation
process (of Pseudomonas Flurorescens
and Bacillus) by using natural
compounds. She's been honored by
prestigious associations including The
Institute of Electrical Engineers,
Florida Association of Water Control,
DaVinci Branch of Engineers and the
Army of Engineers.
Thursday March 22nd, 2018
Topic:
A Fun Night with the Old Professor Dr. Al Helfrick -
Professor Emeritus at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University
For our March Meeting Dr. Helfrick gave
another interesting "Night of
Potpourri." He discussed the
contributions of the "Ham" radio
community and the ARRL to the
communications industry during times of
war, conflict and peace. Of
course, he presented the topic with The
Old Professor's usual whimsy.
Our speaker
for the meeting will be Dr. Al Helfrick
Professor Emeritus at Embry Riddle
Aeronautical University. He started his
career in radiation hardening of
military systems, then after a stint in
the military (including a tour of duty
in Vietnam), continued in the fields of
cable television, test and measurement,
avionics and finally as an independent
consultant. Dr. Helfrick joined
ERAU in 1991 and retired in 2015 after
serving as both a professor and
department chairman. He is still
active in academia, continues to publish
and present papers at conferences, and
occasionally regales audiences with
reminiscences from his career.
Thursday January 25th, 2018
Topic:
Artificial Intelligence Dr. Masood
Towhidnejed
Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and autonomy are becoming
a major component of our day-to-day
life. In this talk, we will first look
at how intentionally or unintentionally we
are interacting with the different
applications of AI, then we briefly
took at some of the different
techniques and methods that are used in
different AI applications. Finally, we
take a look at some of the myths and
aspirations of what AI can do for us now or
in the future.
Our speaker for the
meeting will be Dr. Masood Towhidnejad. He is
a Professor of Software Engineering at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Dr
Towhidnejad received his Ph.D. in Computer
Engineering from the University of Central
Florida in 1990. His teaching and
research interests include STEM education,
software engineering, software quality
assurance and testing, autonomous systems, and
Air Traffic Management. He has also served as
a Faculty Fellow at the NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center, and a Visiting Research
Associate at the Federal Aviation
Administration.
Thursday
October 26th, 2017
Topic:
The Burns Science & Technology Charter School: A
Success Story Luis Zengotta and
Dana Greatrex
Why
are parents driving to Burns Science & Technology
Charter School in Oak Hill? This month's presentation
will show how a unique culture of hands-on learning,
kindness, an involved parents and community, have
successfully developed a "High Performing", STEM
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) driven
education for Kindergarten though 8th grade.
The innovative ways software, hardware, CNC machines,
laser cutters, 3D printers, robots, drones and basic
electronics can be used to inspire creativity will be
described. Plans for the future will be
discussed.be
Our speaker for the meeting will be Dana Greatrex is a
founder and currently Student and Community Coordinator
and Librarian at the Burns K-8 STEM School. With a B.A.
in Social Sciences, and an M.A. in Media &
Technology. Ms. Greatrex has been a teacher in
Volusia County for 48 years. Luis Zengotta teaches
technology from kindergarten to 8th grade at
Burns. He has taught students of all ages at the
Museum of Arts and Sciences, Florida International
Museum and the Smithsonian Institution. He has a
B.S. in Business Management.
Thursday
October 26th, 2017
Topic: Customer
Relationship Management Mr. Brian,
B.S. Electrical Engineering, M.S. Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
The topic for
the evening will be Customer Management;
How Software can improve the Customer
Interface. This talk will define Customer
Relationship Management and discuss its
supporting software. Mr. Michael Baran
will explain what it is, and how it
interacts with different people based on
their roles and what benefits it brings to
those who use it. He will also show
why some systems are very successful while
others failed to be implemented properly
and thereby did not produce the desired
results.
Our speaker
for the meeting will be Mr. Baran who has
a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an
M.S. in EE and Computer Science. In
addition to working as a design engineer,
he has had a number of jobs in managements
and sales, consulting for many well-known
companies, such as Intel, IBM, Citibank,
Nissan, etc. Currently semi-retired, Mr.
Baran is doing consulting work primarily
for Colorado State University in
Salesforce Customer Relationship
Management.
Thursday
September 23rd, 2017
Topic:
Designer Drugs Dr. Kristen Kent,
MD, FAAEM board-certified emergency physician
The topic for
the evening was Designer Drugs. Designer drugs are
synthesized to chemically and psychoactively mimic
known illict drugs, made to avoid the law, and are
skillfully marketed. Using opioids as an example, our
speaker Dr. Kent, discussed advances in chemistry and
medicine over the past several hundred years
that evolved natural plants into the first designer
drugs. She discussed advances in pharmaceutics,
genetics, information technology in recent decades
that contributed to proliferation and popularity of
designer drugs causing a global public health crisis.
Our speaker for the meeting was Kristen Kent, MD,
FAAEM a board-certified emergency physician. She
received a B.S. in Exercise Science and M.D. from the
University of Iowa. She graduated from the
Emergency Medicine Residency Program at the University
of Massachusetts and trained in medical toxicology for
an additional year after residency.
Over the past ten years, Dr. Kent has worked in
various emergency departments from small hospitals in
rural areas to urban level-one trauma centers.
Thursday
March 23rd, 2017
Topic:
A Night of Potpourri With The Old Professor Dr. Al Helfrick,
Professor Emeritus at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University
The Old
Professor is back again this year for our March Meeting
with another "Night of Potpourri with the Old
Professor." Al Helrick has not divulged exactly what
the subjects will be, but promises it will be about
technology, engineering, a bit of history, national ,
international and local. In other Words, potpourri
and, of course, presented with The Old Professor's usual
whimsy. If's its like last year, it promises to be a
good night.
Our
Speaker: Dr. Al Helfrick is Professor Emeritus of Embry
Riddle Aeronautical University. He started his career in
radiation hardening of military systems, then after a
military stint (including a tour of duty in Vietnam),
continued in the fields of cable television, test and
measurement, avionics and finally as an independent
consultant. Dr. Helfrick joined ERAU in 1991 and
retired in 2015 after serving as both a professor and
department chair. He is still active in academia,
continues to publish and present papers at conference,
and occasionally regales audiences with reminiscences
from his career.
Thursday
February 23rd 2017
Topic:
Nextgen Inventing the Next Generation Airspace Kristen Kasper,
Project Manager, Florida NextGen Test Bed (FTB)
The global aviation
community is involved in a monumental effort to
incorporate new technologies into air traffic control.
The development of ubiquitous Networking, global
positioning systems, air traffic growth, and the
introduction of unmanned aerial vehicles requires that
new policies and systems be developed to handle these
new features efficiently and safely. This talk
will present how the FAA and global partners are
modernizing our airspace and will provide examples of
specific activities taking place at ERAU and the
ERAU-managed Florida Test Bed.
Our Speaker:
Kisten Kasper works at the Florida NextGen Test Bed
(FTB) as a Project Manager. The FTB is a
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initiative,
manged by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU),
being used to integrate and demonstrate NextGen and
legacy technologies into existing and planed
enhancements for the National Airspace System
(NAS). The FTB is designed to provide
stakeholders with a rapid integration capability for
testing Operational Improvements and enablers by
leveraging the National Airspace System (NAS) using
protype capabilities. It utilizes a
cost-effective and scalable architecture to allow for
new growth as the Operational improvements and
enablers evolve. She enjoys the interaction
between government, academic, and and industry in the
position and the many challenges and opportunities it
brings.
Thursday
January 26th 2017
Topic:
The Food and Drug Administration as it Relates to the
Medical Device Industry James H. Brown,
President of Caird Technology Inc.
As it
is generally understood that the Food and Drug
Administration's responsibilities are to approve and
regulate foods and drugs available to the public.
However, among its responsibilities is also to regulate
and control medical devices. January's
presentation will discuss the role of the FDA including:
What the FDA is responsible for, what the FDA is NOT
responsible for, devices classification, the medical
device approval and inspection process, lobbying the FDA
and the speaker's personnel experiences with the FDA.
Our Speaker:
James H. Brown is President of Caird Technology, Inc.,
which is a developer of medical devices for the
physician office market. The company has
developed and markets ECG Systems, Spirometry
Systems, Ambulatory ECG Systems, and Autonomic Nervous
System testing devices. Mr. Brown holds a
Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from
Polytechnic Institute of New York. During his 35
year career, he has held a number of engineering and
executive positions with medical device manufactures
as well as the developer of diagnostics for a ship
stimulator for the Merchant Marine Academy with the
Sperry Corporation.
Thursday
December 1st, 2016
Topic:
Why is SIRI so annoying? - Techniques and Limitations of
Natural Language Human Computer Interaction
Speaker:
Dr. Keith Garfield -
College of Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
As more
devices in our world become "smart" our need to interact
with them grows, and the way in which we interact
is likely to change. Speech interfaces are being
introduced as a natural and intuitive mode of
interaction. Unfortunately. the use of speech
interfaces can provide a user with a false sense of
system capability, which leads to frustration when those
capabilities are not present. Dr. Garfield will
discuss the challenges implicit in natural language
processing and natural language understanding that limit
vocal interfaces. He will also discuss techniques
used to overcome or reduce the impact of those
challenges.
Our Speaker:
Dr. Keith Garfield began his career as a structural
engineer with McDonnell-Douglas, designing and testing
space flight hardware used on a variety of
satellites. Following that, he worked on the
shuttle payload integration team at the Kennedy Space
Center before becoming a researcher at the Institute
for Modeling and Simulation at the University of
Florida. Dr. Garfield teaches the formal
mathematics and formal representations necessary to
pursue software and computer engineering
disciplines. Dr. Garfield uses his
experience in the corporate and academic fields
to relate classroom material to real world
applications.
Thursday
October 27th, 2016
Monstrous Madmen:
Portrayals of the Engineer and Potential Impacts
Jeanette B. Barott -
College of Engineering, Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Portrayals of
the engineer in popular culture have been
troubled since before "engineer" was a
profession (1850 in the US), or "popular
culture" a phrase (1854 according to the
OED). Starting with the framework of
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a book
and within subsequent portrayals, and delving
back to Gulliver's Travels and
up to Big Bang Theory, Firefly,
and, of course, the Star Trek universe,
representations of the engineer's role within
society as portrayed through the lens of the
liberal arts will be explored in a fast-paced,
entertaining manner. Underscoring
the entertainment, however, in a crucial
question: has the ever-widening gap between
"us" the engineers and "them" the liberal arts
majors resulted in damage to our STEM
pipeline-and how can we, the engineers, fix it
(given that the entertainment and therefore
edutainment industries are predominatly
managed by "them").
Our
Speaker: Jeanette B. Barott is a
Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Chair
of the Daytona Section. She has degrees in
English Literature and in Software
engineering, and is an active advocate of STEM
(science, technology, engineering, arts, and
math) education throughout the eucational
pipeline. For her day-job, she operates
as a combination wet-worker and security
blanket for the College of Engineering at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Daytona
Beach campus. Other hobbies include big
data analysis, micromanging large projects,
and teaching.
Thursday
September 22nd, 2016
Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAV) As A Service
Justin Yapp
- Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
UAV as a Service (UAVaaS) represents a
ground-breaking concept that is pioneering the future of
cloud computing within the domain of commercial
UAVs. This concept seeks to reduce the financial
overhead that burdens companies who use UAVs for
agriculture, surveillance, emergency response,
inspections, survey and real estate. Also
addressed are privacy concerns with dat
collection/ownership as well as efficient real-time
sharing of information. When implemented, UAVaaS acts
as a cloud-orchestrated rental service for UAVs.
Companies now become multi-tenant operators in which
they can connect to and timeshare UAVs owned by
different entities and fly them whenever needed.
This enables companies to only pay for the FAA
registration, insurance and trained pilots. Our
Speaker: Justin Yapp is a recent Master of
Science in Cybersecurity Engineering graduate from
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He continues
his academic research as a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science and teaches part-time.
His current research in UAV as a Service recently won
the Best Paper award from the NATO Modelling and
Simulation for Autonomous System Workshop held in Rome
earlier this year, and another conference presentation
of this topic is scheduled for the 35th Digital Avionics
Systems Conference in September. Justin hopes to
continue his research and aims to find funding to
develop a test bed in which UAV as a Service can be
developed on a small scale.
Thursday April 26th, 2016
April Student
Presentation Night
Members of the Teams in the Capstone Course and
Members of the Special Projects Laboratory
As we have done the last few years,
our April meeting celebrated the accomplishments of our
students. This is always a popular and entertaining
topic, giving the students an opportunity to show off
some impressive achievements. In addition to
presentations from teams in the capstone course and
members of the Special Projects Lab, Abby Bulka and Nick
Serle described their experiences with their entry in
the 2015 AUVSI International RoboBoat competition, the
S.S. Minnow. The competition had 16 international
collegiate teams and required an unmanned surface vessel
to navigate and perform numerous tasks
autonomously. Abby has a paper about the boat in
the 2016 AUVIS autonomous vehicles conference.
Thursday March 24th, 2016
A Night of Potpourri with
the Old Professor
Dr. Al Helfrick, Professor Emeritus
at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Sticking with the style of "Tales of
the Old Professor", Dr. Helfrick's presentation promises
to be his usual eclectic mix. The subjects will be
historical, hysterical. and sometimes nostalgic but will
have a connection to technology and in particular,
aviation. This is a presentation you don't want to
miss as it most likely will become unscripted and cannot
be repeated.
Our Speaker
- Al Helfrick, is Professor Emeritus
at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He started
his career in radiation hardening of military systems,
then after a military stint including a tour of duty in
Viet-Nam, continued in the fields of cable television,
test and measurements, avionics and finally as an
independent consultant. He joined ERAU in 1991 and
retired in 2015 after serving as a professor and
department chair. He is still active in academia
teaching for the University of Kansas and continues to
publish and present papers at conferences. His
latest article appeared in the IEEE's Aerospace and
Electronic Systems Society Magazine in late 2015.
Wednesday
February 24th, 2016
Overview of Cloud
Computer
Charles Chen co-founder and
CEO of Skymantics,LLC
Cloud
computing is moving from meaningless buzz word to
daily reality. People have questions about the
nature of the technology, and the control and security
they will have over their data. This talk will
provide an overview of the challenges and benefits of
this new technology, specifically as applied to the
international aviation community's Next Generation
Airspace mission.
Our Speaker - Charles
Chen is a co-founder and CEO of Skymantics,
LLC. He is an expert in the area of System
Wide Information Management (SWIM) research and
development with a focus on the Flight Information
Exchange Model (FIXM) and Flight Object concepts.
He is an award-winning author of technical papers
published in the Air Traffic Control Association
(ATCA) Proceedings, Integrated Communications
Navigation and Surveillance (I-CNS) conference,
and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
testbeds. Charles holds a Bachelors
of Electrical and Computer
engineering from Auburn University and a M.S. in
Systems Engineering from Florida Institute of
Technology.
Charles has worked in various testbeds such as the
Florida NextGen Testbed, the Open Geospatial
Consortium Interoperability Testbed, and the NASA
Smart NAS Testbed. He has expertise in service oriente
architecture with the use of Cloud infrastructure and
platform applications to provide advisory and solution
services to the FAA, Eurocontrol, NASA, and commercial
aviation companies around the world.
Thursday January 28th, 2016
System Thinking: Apple
Pie and the Sorcer's Apprentice
Dr. Tony Hagar, Emery Riddle
Aeronautical University
In today's increasingly
globally connected world, complexities emerge that are being
manifested in bizarre, unexpected, and potentially
destructive ways. Despite mankind's awesome
technical achievements, many of these unwelcome side effects
are a result of what Herbert Simon calls "bounded
rationality" - our human limitations on how we think.
This talk will illustrate this with some challenges of the
past, inviting a little audience participation to have some
fun. We then discuss some of today's current issues
and show how the science of systems thinking (not really
new, perhaps just better organized) forms a framework
for grappling with the increasingly challenging issues
emerging in our increasingly complex world.
Our Speaker - Dr. Tony Hagar's career has spanned over 5
decades with the federal government, the aerospace industry,
and academia. He served in the Air Force and later
with the Central Intelligence Agency. He worked on the
Apollo Lunar program, and was the Mission Science Operations
Team Chief for the Voyager Mission encounter at Saturn,
receiving NASA awards for research, service and flight
operations. He spent a dozen years with the Institute
for Defense Analyses doing research and analysis for the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, and later as the
Technical Director of its Systems Analysis Group. He
also served as the Chief Space Technologist for the
Venda/Veridoan Corp. and was an independent consultant
before joining the ERAU facility in 2003.
Thursday
December, 3rd, 2015
Engineering Ethics
and What the IEEE Does for Us
Walter Elden. PE (Retired)
Walter Eden is a
Life Senior Member of the IEEE and has
been a member of the IEEE Society on
Social Implications of Technology.
During the 1990s he served on the
IEEE's Ethics Committee. From 1996 to
1998 Walter served on the IEEE Member
Conduct Committee, now called the IEEE
Ethics and Members Conduct Committee
(EMCC).
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Science and Science
Fiction:
Interdisciplinary Research Methods in the Humanities
Ashly Lear Associate
Professor of the Humanities at Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
For several years, Dr.
Lear has been engaging students in science
fiction through research in various
technical fields. This talk will
explore some of her students' most
innovative discoveries as they delve into
what is possible from the realm of science
fiction.
Speaker: Ashley Lear is an Associate
Professor of the Humanities at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. She
earned a B.A. in English from the College
of William and Marym an M.A. in English
from Wake Forest University, and a Ph.D.
in English fro the University of Houston.
Following her Ph.D. she spent a year at
Georgia Tech as a Marion L. Brittain
Postdoctoral Fellow, earning Postdoctoral
Certifications in Digital Pedagogy and
Technical Communication. She has
published articles on her creative digital
assignments in Writing and the Digital
Generation, and the College
EnglishAssociation Forum.
Her most recent book project, a
comparative literary biography of Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings and Ellen Glasgow, is
under review at the University Press of
Florida. Her science fiction course
includes guest lecturers fromvarious
university disciplines and direct
instruction in developing HTML projects.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
The History and Growth of
Modeling and Simulation
Henry (Hank) Okraski, National
Center for Simulation
President and Chief Executive Officer of Henry C.
Okraski and Associates in Winter Park, Florida
The presentation visits
some early designs of simulators - from
crude attempts in World War I to the link
Trainer, effectively used in World War II
to train approximately 500,000
pilots. The evolution of simulators
from the primitive to the current highly
complex devices is chronicled. The
expansion of simulation technology into
many applications, such as medical,
commercial airlines, space, defense,
transportation, etc., is described through
examples provided.
The growth of simulation
technology in Florida is described with
the economic impact of that growth
discussed. Filling the career workforce
pipeline is a serious challenge and the
National Center for Simulation (NCS) is
addressing the need by focusing on
education, having developed a 4 year
curriculum for high schools and
instituting a Modeling and Simulation
Certification for high school
students. Plans are outlined for
expanding the certification from the 6
beta-test schools in Central Florida,
accomplished in 2015, to a national
offering.
Speaker: Henry (Hank)
Okraski, National center for Simulation,
is a simulation consultant for the
modeling and simulation industry.
After 32 years of government service he
retired and is President/Chief Executive
Officer of Henry C. Okraski and Associates
in Winter Park, Florida.
While with the Navy and a
member of the Senior Executive Service, he
was the Director of the Research and
Engineering Department and the Deputy
Technical Director of the Naval Air
Warfare Center Training Systems
Division. He has served on NATO
Study Groups and received several awards
including the Navy Meritorious Service
Award and Navy Superior Service
Award. He was named Federal Engineer
of the the Year by the National society of
Professional Engineers.
He is a founding
member of the National Center for
Simulation and continues to serve on the
Board of Directors. He chairs the
Education and Workforce Development
Committee of NCS. He led the task
force in developing a for year high school
curriculum in modeling and
simulation. He is a registered
Professional Engineer (PE) and Certified
Modeling and Simulation Professional
(CMSP). Formerly, adjunct faculty
member of Rollins College and University
of Central Florida.
Mr. Okraski has a
Bachelor's degree in electrical
engineering from Clarkson University in
Potsdam, NY and a Master's degree in
systems engineering from the University of
Florida. He received, and is proud
of, the Golden Knight Award from Clarkson,
the highest alumni award given by the
university.
Thursday,
April 23, 2015
Topic:
ERAU Students Presentation on the Robotic Competition
We are closing out the
spring dinner meetings with our
traditional, and always popular, student
presentation program. This program
lets ERAU and Volusia County students
show off their research and competitive
projects. This is a great place to give
them practice presenting their work
while getting the recognition their hard
work deserves.
Students from the ERAU ECSSE capstone
Team "Volt and Pepper" will
describe their design and experience
competing in the IEEE SoutheastCon
hardware competition in Ft. Lauderdale,
FL. The competition challenge
required teams to create a small
autonomous robot capable of operating an
etch-a-sketch, rotating a Rubik's cube,
playing a Simon Says toy, and a deck of
cards.
IEEE Special Award winners from the
Tomoka Region Science and Engineering
Fair, Abigail Waltrath from Southwestern
Middle School and Daphine Forester from
Spruce Creek High School, will give a
brief description of their projects and
receive recognition fro their successful
efforts. Also, Abby Butka and team
S.S. Minnow will present the results of
last year's RoboSub competition,
and a preview of this year's RoboBoat
competition.
Thursday,
March 26, 2015
Topic:
Locating and Tracking Aircraft in the World-Wide
Airspace System
Speaker:
Albert Helfrick PhD, Professor Embry-Riddle
Aeronauticala University
The presentation will
discus the development of aircraft
locating and tracking systems frim the
earliest systems to radar-based and
later systems. The discussion will be of
locating systems used for navigation,
air traffic management and search and
rescue.
Our speaker:
Albert Helfick, PhD is
a retired department chair and professor
at ERAU. He also teaches short
coiurses on avionics for the University
of Kansas and is the author of 12
books. He has been a member of the
IEEE since 1963. He has designed
avionics systems for Cessna
Aircraft. Tel-Instrustment
Electronics and has won the AIAA John
Ruth award and the Radio Club of America
Jerry Minter award for the contibutions
to avionics.
Thursday, February 25th, 2015
Topic:
NASA Exploration System
Speaker:
Anton Kiriwaus, NASA Kennedy Space Center
Since the
close-out of NASA's Space Shuttle Program,
there have been rumors of shutdowns, closings
and an end to exploration. On the
contrary, NASA has been focused on a
three-pronged approach to exploration under
its aptly named Exploration Systems
Development programs. These programs are
working together to enable the agency's to
extend human existance beyond earth orbit for
the first time since the Apollo program and
beyond lunar orbit for the first time in
history.
The first
key to this is the crew vehicle, called Orion,
which is being designed to support human
exploration missions to multiple destinations
in deep space. Its versatile design is
planned to allow it to safely carry and
substain a crew of two to four for 21 days and
can evolve to support a six-person crew on
extended-duration missions The second key is
an evolvable rocket, called the Spce Launch
System, which will carry the Orion spacecraft
as well as cargo and payloads to deep space.
The second key is an evolvable rocket, called
the Space Launch System, whic h will carry the
Orion spacecraft as well as cargo and payloads
to deep space. Its lift capabilities are
being designed to evolve from 70 metric tons
up to 130 metric tons based on future mission
requirements. In its final enabler of
the NASA Exploration Systems is the
transformation of Kennedy Space Center into a
21st-centry spaceport with modern capabilities
to launch spacecraft built and designed by
both NASA amd private industry.
Currently in design and under construction are
the pad and mobile launcher infrastructure as
well as modular and flexible offline servicing
systems for preparing the flight elements for
launch.
OUR SPEAKER
Anton
Kiriwas holds an M.S. degree in Electrical
and Computer Engineering from University of
Florida and M.S. and B.S. degrees in
Computer Science from University of Central
Florida. He is currently an Electrical
Engineer with NASA Kennedy Space
Center. He began his career working in
modeling and simulation of the Space Shuttle
system in support of launch processing at
KSC while working for United Space
Alliance. He transitioned to civil
service with NASA in 2009 to work supporting
maintenance and sustaining engineering of
the many pad and mobile launch platform
electrical systems that were used for Space
shuttle and Ares I-X launches.
After the close out of the Space Shuttle
program, Anton was the lead design engineer
for the Thermal Control and Launch Release
subsystem for Mobile Launcher of the Space
Launch System (SLS). In his current
role, he now works for both the Orion,
Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPVC) Program as
the Electrical Ground Support Equipment
(EGSE) integration lead as well as for the
Ground Systems Development and Operations
(GSDO) program as the team lead for the
Electrical console in the Launch Control
Center. He and his team have just
successfully completed EFT-1, the first test
mission of the Orion, and are working
towards the first test launch of the Space
Launch System in 2018.
Thursday,
January 22nd, 2014
Topic:
TeachLivETM A
Mixed-Reality Teaching Environment
Speaker:
Chrles E. Hughes, University of Central Florida
TeachLivETM
is a mixed-reality teaching environment
supporting teacher practice in classroom
management pedagogy and content. TeachLiveETM
Lab, developed at the University of Central
Florida, is currently in use at 55 university
campuses and four school districts in the
United States. Each partner
utilizes TeachLivE in a unique manner
depending on the needs of their students,
teachers, professors, and community
stakeholders. The system provides pre-service
and in-service teachers the opportunity to
learn new skills and to craft their practice
without placing "real" students at risk during
the learning process. For more
information visit teachlive.org.
Charles Hughes'
research expertise is in virtual environments,
with his current activity primarily involving
human surrogates - virtual domain is focused
on education and preparation of people for
complex human-to-human interactions. The work
with physical avatars focuses on situation
awareness training and physical telepresence
via robots and animatronics. In addition
to avatar-based research, Charlie also does
work in cultural heritage and its use in
helping young people understand the
opportunities and challenges in STEM
disciplines, and the connections of these
disciplines to the arts and humanities.
OUR SPEAKER
Charles E. Hughes holds PhD and M.S. degrees
in Computer Science and a B.A. degree in
Mathematics. He is a Professor of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at
the University of Central Florida (UCF).
He is also Co-Director of the Synthetic
Reality Laboratory (SREAL), Professor in the
School of Visual Arts & Design, a member
of the university's Modeling & Simulation
faculty, was honored as a Pegasus Professor in
2007 and a Dean's Research Professor in
2013. He served on the faculities of
Computer Science at Penn State University and
the University of Tennessee prior to joining
UCF in 1980.
Active research
projects on which Charlie serves as a
principal or co-principal investigator are
funded by the Bill & Melida Gates
Foundation, the National Science Foundation
(NSF) and the Office of Naval Research
(ONR). Recently completed projects were
funded by the National Institutes of Health,
the Natinnal Endowment for the Humanities, the
Army PEO-STRI, and the US Department of
Veterans Affairs as well as NSF and ONR.
Thursday,
December 4th, 2014
Topic:
Rockin' Rockets with RF
Speaker:
Jorge Torres, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Charged rocket
plumes generally exceed the length of their
source vehicles, and offer lightning a
favorable path to ground. Rocket plumes
enhance the induced transient currents in
flight electronics, and increase the risk of
vehicle failure. The affinity of lightning
to the plume can be associated with the
plume's electrical properties, which are
coupled to plasma characteristics including
the electron number density. However, the
electron number density of rocket plumes is
not well-known. In this study, the electron
number density is characterized through data
from static rocket firings. A model of
the plume in finite difference time domain
(FDTD) simulations also supports the
results. Radio frequency and radar
methodologies are used to characterize the
plume as a dynamic component of an
electrical system, supported by the
construction of an RF apparatus that
includes the design and manufacture of
ultra-wideband antenna arrays. The
research estimates electron number density,
but the data suggests other dynamic elements
affect delay and attenuation of the radio
signal
OUR
SPEAKER
Jorge Torres is
a student enrolled in Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University's (ERAU) Master of
Science in Electrical and Computer
Engineering program. He received his
Bachelor of Science in Electrical
Engineering from the same university in
2012. He is currently works as a teaching
assistant for the ERAU Electrical, Computer,
Software, and Systems Engineering
Department's capstone design course. Jorge's
Master's thesis is titled, "Characterization
of Electron Number Density in Rocket Exhaust
Plumes through Microwave Transmissions,"
which involves extensive work with RF
equipment, signal processing, plasma
physics, and high power rocketry. He
has been a five-time intern for the space
launch company, United Launch Alliance,
participating in avionics, software,
systems, manufacturing and launch operations
groups. Jorge also holds a National
Association of Rocketry Level 2 High Power
Rocket Certification. In his
practically nonexistent spare time, Jorge
enjoys going to thrift stores with his
fiancee to find old things to fix.
Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
Topics:
Global Warming - From the Beginning
Speaker: Tracy Wichmann,
Computer Programming Consultant
We worry a
lot these days about global warming.
When the earth was formed it was ver y
hot, like lava from a volcano. There
was very litttle oxygen in the atmosphere
(mostly CO2). Over a period of
about 4.5 million years it evolved until
it now has a climate that supports life
such as we enjoy.
Climate
changes are a natural phenomenon, a
consequence of the earth (and moon's)
motion relative to the sun. There
would be ice ages, temperature changing
volcanic eruptions etc. as well as
seasons.
Our Speaker:
Tracy Wichmann received his Science
Bachelor in Physics from MIT. His
education also included the study of
Servomechanisms at Ohio State's Electrical
Engineering Department and Astrophysics
and Statistics and System
Engineering at UCLA. He is a
consultant for computer programming.
Over the years he had held positions as
Program Manager, Senior Engineering
Scientist, Research Engineer in such
fields as electronic warfare, space
shuttle avionics, air traffic control with
such companies as Hughes Aircraft,
Teledyne Systems, Litton Industries and
the U.S. Air Force. He has published
over 50 papers and publications and has a
patent on a blood pressure measuring
device. He held nnumerous positions
in our section, the Florida Council, as
well as CouthCon,. and currently serves as
our section's Chairman.
Thursday,
September 25th, 2014
Topics:
Passive Radars using Ambient Illuminators
Speaker:
Dr. William C. Barott, Associate Professor at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Advances
in signal processing over the last
decade have generated a worldwide
resurgence of interest in passive radars
using ambient illuminators.
Altough computationally intensive, these
radars are attractive for their small
size and low cost. Research at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has
led to several unique passive radar
receivers. Experimental
demonstrations have shown aircraft
tracking using signals from the XM Radio
satellites, local areial survellance
using a single antenna (moving toward
"thumbstick" radars), and using
RFID-style tags to embed communications
signals within passive radar
echoes. In addition to
experimental work, Dr. Barott's
group at ERAU uses simulated
environments to study the effect of
different scenarios on the survelliance
performance of passive radars.
This talk with present an overview of
these projects as well
as present work and possiblilities for
the future of passive radar.
Our speaker:
Dr. William C. Barott is an Associate
Professor of Electrical Engineering at
Embry-Riddle Aeronauatical University
and a 3-time graduate of Georgia Tech.
His reseach focuses on RF systems to
detect weak signals, including both
passive radars and instruments for radio
astronomy. He has been researching
passive radar since 2010 and was awarded
a research fellowship to spend the
summer of 2012 at Wright Patterson Air
Force Base. Billy is the student
activities chair for the Dayatona
section and also the advisor of the
Embry-Riddle sstudent branch of the
IEEE.
Thursday, April 24,
2014
Topic:
ERAU and B-CU Student Presentation on the Robotic
Competition Speaker:
ERAU and B-CU Student Designers
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University and
Bethune-Cookman University
students will provide
presentations on their robotic
competition as well as senior
projects. The Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University Senior
Design team; also active IEEE
members, designed and developed
a robot to compete in the IEEE
SoutheastCon Hardware
competition The speakers for the
presentation are Marc Latil,
Evan Richardsson and Nicholas
Antonio. The remaining
members of the team are Inacio
Dias, Dominick Tournour, Leo
Ghelarducci adn Carey
Pfaff Six if the seven
members were first year IEEE
students and new to the robotics
side, leading to a large gain in
engineering robotic experience.
The goal of the competition was
to design and construct a robot
that navigates a course
autonomously, acting as a
basketball player. The
newest members of the IEEE at
Bethune-Cookman University set
out on a mission to partake in
this years IEEE SoutheastCon
Hardware Competition. In doing
so they had the opportunity to
gain an immense amount of
knowledge and experience in
engineering and all that it
takes to construct a project
from beginning to end. The
three speakers for this robot
presentation will be Jennifer
Jimenez, Kasongo Munza and Nabil
Ahmed The entire team
consisted of the three people
mentioned above. Also
student winners of the IEEE
Daytona Section Special Awards
at the 2014 Tomoka Region
Science and Engineering Fair
were reconized. The Senior
division winner Nicholas Ficher
was from Spruce Creek High
School and the Junior division
winner Elizabeth Nami Pruitt was
from Ormaond Beach Middle
School.
Thursday,
March 27th, 2014
Topic: Embry-Riddle's
- EcoCAR2
Speaker: Chris
Rowe
EcoCar2
is a three year competition
sponsored by the Department of
Energy, General Motors, and
Argonne National
Laboratories. The
competition encompasses fifteen
Universities across North
America. A 2013 Chevrolet
Malibu is donated to each team
where it is converted to an
electric hybid vehicle.
EcoCAR 2 challenges students to
reduce the Malibu's emissions,
increase fuel economy and maintain
consumer acceptability. The
mission of EcoCAR 2 is to
educate the next generation
of automotive engineers through an
unparalleled hands-on, real-world
engineering experience. The
Embry-Riddle ECoCAR team is
composed of Business,
Communications, Computer Science,
Electrical Engineering , and
Mechanical Engineering
majors. These disciplines
work together to design and
convert a Plug-In Hybrid which
consists of a battery pack, an
electric motor to drive the
wheels, and a generator coupled to
a diesel engine to provide
supplemental power to the batery
pack and electric traction
motor. The car is currently
in the early stages of operational
testing and is being prepared for
a final competition in June 2014.
Our
speaker: Chris Rowe
joined the Embry-Riddle EcoCAR 2
team in January 2013 as part of
the electrical team, and is now
serving as the the Electrical Lead
while working on his Massters
degree in Elecrical Engineering.
Chris is responsible for leading
the EcoCare 2 electrical team in
the technical aspects of the
electrical system in the Chevy
Malibu. This includes
desgin, installation, and
electrical troubleshooting for the
low and high voltage systems on
the EcoCAR.
Thursday, February 27/th, 2014
Topic: Development of
ERAU Minion Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV)
Speaker: Tim Zuercher and Hitesh
V. Patel
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University has been
selected as one of three schools to
represent the United States in the
inaugural Maritime RobotX Challenge.
This challenge requires teams to
develop a fully-autonomous surface
vehicle using a 16-foot
high-performance Wave Adaptive Modular
Vessel. The platform must accomplish
multiple complex tasks autonomously,
including buoy channel navigation,
debris avoidance, docking, target
identification and sonar localization.
The system architecture consists of
software nodes running in parallel to
produce the complex behaviors required
by the RobotX Challenge. These nodes
include state estimation, health
monitoring, object classification, map
creation and trajectory planning. This
method offers a robust and dynamic
navigation solution capable of being
applied to autonomous systems
operating in multiple domains and not
just those limited to maritime
operations. This presentation
discusses the development of the ERAU
RobotX platform with a focus on
addressing the challenges of autonomy,
navigation, and propulsion in a
maritime environment.
Our
Speakers:
Tim Zuercher holds a
B.s. in Aerospace
Engineering with a
concentration in
guidance, navigation
and control. He is
pursuing his M.S.
and Ph.D. in
Mechanical
Engineering and has
been an active
member of the
Robotics Association
at Embry-Riddle
(RAER) since the
spring of 2012. Tim
has designed
embedded circuits
and control systems
for multiple
autonomous vehicles
and has been project
lead on award
winning
international Aerial
Robotics
Competitions and
intelligent Ground
Vehicle Competition
teams. Tim is
currently the
Control Systems Lead
on the Embry-Riddle
Maritime Robot-X
Challenge ASV.
Hitesh
V. Patel holds a
B.S. in Aerospace
Engineering with a
concentration on
propulsion
systems. He is
currently pursuing
his M.S. in
Mechanical
Engineering and has
been an active
member of RAER since
the fall of
2010. He has
provided mechanical
and electrical
support for projects
such as: RoboBoat,
RoboSub, NASA Mining
Competition, EcoCar
2, SAE Formula
Hybrid and NASA
Green Flight
Challenge.
Hitesh is currently
the Mechanical
Systems Lead on the
Embry-Riddle
Maritime Robot-X
Challenge ASV.
Thursday,
January 23rd, 2014
Topic: Quantum
Information Systems and Adaptive Control
Speaker: Dr. Mark Balas
Many
control systems are inherently infinite
dimensional when they are described by partial
differential equations. Currently there is
renewed interest in the control of these kinds of
systems especially in flexible aerospace
structures and the quantum information
field. Since the dynamics of these systems
will not be perfectly known, it is especially of
interest to control these systems adaptively via
low-order finite-dimensional controllers.
When systems are subjected to unknown internal
delays, they are also fundamentally
infinite-dimensional in nature. In our work,
we have developed direct model reference adaptive
control and disturbance rejection with very
low-order adaptive gain laws for large-scale
finite dimensional systems as well as
infinite-dimensional systems.
This talk will focus on the effect of infinite
dimensionality on the adaptive control approach.
To illustrate the utility of the control law, The
speaker will mention some some applications in
partial differential equations for unstable linear
diffusion and aerospace structures. Both then will
go on and consider some issues in the control of
quantum mechanical systems, in particular the
Schrodinger wave equation and Dirac symmetric
hyperbolic systems for relativistic fields.
These topics here may sound highly technical,
maybe even forbidding, and to some extent they
are. But I hope to give you aversion of them
that will be reasonably accessible and will still
remain as exciting and attractive to you as they
are to me.
Our Speaker: Dr. Mark
Balas is presently distinguished faculty in
Aerospace Engineering at Embry-Ridddle Aerospace
University. He was the Guthrie Nicholson
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Head of
the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
at the University of Wyoming. He has the
following technical degrees: PhD in Mathematics,
MS Electrical Engineering, MA Mathematics, and BS
Electrical Engineering. He has held various
positions in industry, academia, and
government. Among his careers, he has been a
university professor for over 35 years with RPI,
MIT, University of Colorado-Bolder, and University
of Wyoming, and has mentored 42 doctoral
students. He has over 300 publications in
archive journals, refereed conference proceedings
and technical book chapters. He has been
visiting faculty with the Institute for Quantum
Information and the Control and Dynamics Division
of the California Institute of Technology, the US
Air Force Research Laboratory-Kirkland AFB, NASA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA
Ames Research Center, and was the Associate Director
of the University of Wyoming Wind Energy Research
Center, and adjunct faculty with the School of Energy
Resources. He is a life follow of the
IEEE. Probably he will be most well known for
the fact that his daughter Maggie is the prominent
Denver drum and bass DJ known as Despise.
Thursday, December 5th,
2013
Topic: Engineering for the
Holidays
Speaker:
Daytona IEEE Section Members
Our
Holiday meeting on December 5th is meant to be an
enjoyable social get together with some light
hearted presentations applying engineering
principles and/or solutions st some holiday topics
such as those presented below.
For the
meeting, each member is encouraged to provide
Jeanette Barott (barott@erau.edu) with a short
summary for a brief (five minute) presentation on
engineering the holidays. Topics are along the
lines of the following: Santa's Sleigh and NextGen,
bioflourescence and Rudolph's nose, the
micro-economics of elvish labor, traveling salesman
and the three wise kings, green energy for holiday
lights, etc.
Noteworthy
presentations may be published in the January issue
of the prestigious Engineering publication, SPARKS -
Daytona Section Newsletter. This could be a
definite resume enhancement item.
Thursday,
October 24th, 2013
Topic: Reverse Engineering Beer
Speaker:
Ann-Marie Bays Owner of Craft
Beverage Sales and Marketing
Our talk will
be about some of the work of Dr. Pat McGovern, a
Biomolecular Archeologist at the University Of
Pennsylvania Museum. Dr. McGovern proposes the
argument that the fermentation of alcoholic
beverages played a major role in human evolution
and the development of civilization. Over the past
two decades she has pioneered the emerging field
of Molecular Archaeology and her endeavors of late
have focused on the organic analysis of vessel
contents and dyes, particularly Royal Purple, wine
and beer. The work she has done in the
reverse engineering of beer found in the tomb of
King Midas is responsible for making possible the
formation of the recipe Dogfish Head Brewing uses
for their beer called Midas Touch. At the end of
our talk we will have the opportunity to sample
some of the beers resulting from Dr. McGovern'
work.
Our Speaker
Ann-Marie Bays
Ann-Marie is the owner of Craft
Beverage Sales and Marketing, a company that does
brand management, marketing and promotion throughout
the state of Florida for Craft Breweries and
importers. Her clients include Boulder Beer Company,
Southern Tier Brewing, Abita Brewing, Anchor Brewing
and Eurobre Imports. Ann-Marie's beer
credential include work throughout the home brew
community and the local beer culture. She is a
Certified Cicerone as well as a Recognized BJCP Beer
and Mead Judge with experience judging several
competitions most notably Sunshine Challenge, Best
Florida Beer Championship and Deland Craft Beer
Festival. She is also an active organizer for
the highly successful Deland Craft Beer Week and
Deland Craft Beer Festival.
In addition to her extensive beer knowledge and
understanding, Ann-Marie is an accomplished photographer
with a degree from the Southeast Center for Photographic
Studies with a commercial focus on glass, reflective surface
and beverage photography. Ann-Marie also has 12 years
of experience running her own company specializing in design
and marketing for small businesses.
Thursday, September 26th, 2013
Topic:
Methods for Encouraging Computer Literacy and Programming
Skills
Speaker: Dr.
Keith Garfield and Ms. Hiranya Mir Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
Dr. Keith
Garfield and Ms. Hiranya Mir will do a
presentation on methods for encouragaing computer
literacy and programming skills. including a
discussion of computer literacy in the modern era
and challenges to assumptions of computer literacy
based on age, ethnicity, and gender. A case
study on a summer program for middle school girls
will be presented, as well as scholarly research
and sample practice assignments for adults for
non-technical backgrounds.
Our Speaker
Dr. Garfield is an associate professor at ERAU,
teaching the formal mathematics and formal
representations necessary to pursue software and
computer engineering disciplines. Dr.
Garfield also teaches courses discussing the
underlying nature of computer programming
languages, software engineering processes, and
modeling and simulation techniques. Prior to
his appointment at ERAU, Dr. Garfield worked as an
engineer performing structural analysis on space
flight hardware with McDonnell-Douglas, as an
engineer on the shuttle payload integration team
at the Kennedy Space Center, and as a researcher
at the Institute for Modeling and Simulation at
the University of Central Florida. Dr.
Garfield's current research activities include
participating in experiments for the FAA's Next
Generation Airspace program, creating artificial
intelligent agents that interact with humans in
natural ways, and using fuzzy logic to study
complex s systems behavior.
Hiranya Mir is a recipient of the NCWIT Aspirations
in Computing Award and a sophomore in Computer Science at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. She is passionate
about bringing different groups of people into the field
of Information Technology.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Topic: Student
Presentations
Speaker: Student
Representatives of Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University and Bethune-Cookman University
Each year
the April meeting is usually dedicated to the
activities of the young engineers studying
Engineering in our local Colleges and
Universities. This year students from
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and
Bethune-Cookman University will do the
presentations. They will report on their
recent robotic competition as well as senior
projects.
In addition the student winners
of the IEEE Daytona Section Special Awards at the
2013 Tomoka Region Science and Engineering Fair
will be introduced and recognized.
Thursday, March 28, 2013 Topic:
Cyber Security and Privacy
Speaker: Remzi Seker
Department of
Electrical Engineering, Computer, Software
and System Engineering Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
Wide
availability of computers and the
connectivity that comes with them provide
services that have become an integral part
of our lives. Connectivity has quickly
evolved into being an essential
infrastructure element on which our society
relies for business as well as maintaining
quality of life. Rapid evolution of
technology and its penetration into our
society brings forth various challenges,
privacy being a prominent one. This talk
will survey some privacy issues and the
impact of involuntary disclosure of personal
information with examples. The speaker will
also provide examples of how data is
collected from users and the potential
long-term impact of such practices. The
speaker will also present some measures
which could help users protect their
information.
Remzi Seker:
is a Professor in the Department of
Electrical, Computer, Software, and Systems
Engineering in Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University. His research interests are safety
and security critical systems and computer
forensics. One of Dr. Seker’s research
interests focuses on ways to address the
asymmetric threats that arise from rapid, yet
necessary use of technology. Dr. Seker is the
co-author of one of the first papers that was
published on Mobile Phishing and possible
techniques for preventing it.He serves on ACM and IEEE
Computer Society Computing Curriculum:
Computer Science 2013 (CS2013) Committee. Dr.
Seker has been actively involved in educating
the general public as well as legal
professionals in the area of security and
privacy. He has been interviewed multiple
times by various TV stations and magazines on
matters regarding cyber security. Dr. Seker
served as a US Department of Homeland Security
Software Assurance (SwA) Forum Working Group
member. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and he
serves as associate editor for Electrical
Engineering and Computers and the Journal of
Cyber Security and Mobility.
Thursday, January 24,
2013 Topic:
Experience from IEEE Humanitarian Work
Speaker: Percy "Butch" Shadwell
International Chairman of the IEEE Humanitarian
Technology Challenge - Reliable Electricity
Principal Consultant - Shadwell Technical
Services
In
2009 at a special meeting at the National Academy of
Science Butch Shadwell was elected the international
chair of the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Challenge -
Reliable Electricity Solution Team. Their charge was
to donate their time and talent toward finding better
ways to apply technology to alleviate human suffering
in the world. He lead the development of an
experimental power system with many unique features
for this problem domain. He has installed prototypes
in Nicaragua and Kenya on four trips abroad. He will
review the project and experiences from this
humanitarian work.
Speakers: Percy "Butch" Shadwell has been
working in electronics since he was 12 years
old. Starting with vacuum tube technology, he
has designed systems through the evolution of
transistors, SSI, MSI, and LSI. In this
extraordinary career he has worked with almost every
kind of technology in the electronics
industry. Including advanced R&D in
nuclear medicine, opto-electronics, electronic
warfare, robotics, industrial automation, machine
vision, artificial intelligence, digital television,
special sensors and embedded microcontrollers.
A
senior member of the IEEE, for the last twenty years
Mr. Shadwell has been authoring the Brain Teaser
Challenge, a monthly humorous column with a
technical challenge inside. It is published in a
number of IEEE newsletters and magazines worldwide.
Readers are encouraged to send in their answers.
He has conducted
sponsored research at Carnegie-Mellon Robotics
Institute and received over $1.5 million in grants
for his work in machine vision. For the past
ten years he has had a successful consulting
practice developing new technologies for over a
dozen companies. His clients include
multi-billion dollar companies, and as an active
volunteer in IEEE has been a featured speaker at
many universities, sections, and student branches
around Region 3 and Jamaica. In 2009 he was
selected as the international chair of the
Humanitarian Technology Challenge - Reliable
Electricity.
Thursday, January
24, 2013, IEEE Dinner Meeting Topic:
Electric Propulsion
Speaker: Susan Allen, PhD.
Associate Dean for
Research,
College of Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University
The presentation will be by Dr. Susan Allen who is the new Associate Dean for Research at the College of Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Her work has focused largely on laser/material interactions, with an early emphasis on laser chemical vapor deposition and some novel laser machining. She has worked on laser cleaning of surfaces, including particle removal and laser induced desorption and their underlying mechanisms and, more recently, on laser sensor development and photocatalytic disinfection of bacteria. The presentation promises to be very informative and will give all a chance to meet Dr. Allen.
Speakers: Dr. Susan Allen has more than 150
scientific and engineering publications, many
presentations to professional societies and other groups
and nine U.S. patents. She has served on advisory
panels for the National Science Foundation, the National
Academy of Sciences and was appointed to the President's
Committee for the National Medal of Science.
Currently, Dr. Allen is serving as the Associate Dean
for Research for the College of Engineering at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Professor Allen is active in
the Materials Research Society, the Optical Society of
America, the American Vacuum Society and is a Senior
Member of IEEE and a Fellow of SPIE. Her previous
university administration appointments include: Director
of Arkansas Center for Laser Applications and Science at
Arkansas State University, Vice Chancellor for Research
and Academic Affairs at Arkansas State University, Vice
President for Research at Florida State University and
Dean of the Graduate School at Tulane University.
Saturday, December 1,
2012, IEEE Technical Meeting Topic:
Electric Propulsion
Speaker:
Jianhua Liu, PhD. Associate Professor
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
With the rapid
advancement in areas such as high energy/power density
batteries, fast charging stations, and high efficient
motors and motor controllers, ground electric vehicles
(GEV) have gradually becoming a reality while air
electric vehicles (AEV) are rising from the horizon. What is
common in both GEV and AEV is the energy storage
system and the power train system, jointly referred to
as the electric propulsion system. To educate students of the College
of Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
in this exciting
area, we plan to offer a new class titled "Electric
Propulsion" for both undergraduate students and graduate
students. This presentation will shed some lights of this class. First, we
give a brief account of the history of electric
propulsion. Then, we list the pros and cons of the
electric propulsion system as compared to other
systems. Next, we introduce the main contents
of the course, including batteries, battery management, battery
charging, various motor technologies and matching
motor controllers,
choosing appropriate technologies to suit different
applications, and system integration. Finally, we
present an example of electric propulsion system which
can be used
for both GEV and AEV.
Speakers: Jianhua Liu received a PhD degree in
Electrical Engineering (with a minor in Statistics) from
the University of Florida in 2004. From August 2004, he
has been a faculty member in the Department of Electrical,
Computer, Software, and Systems Engineering at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach
campus, where he is an Associate Professor of Electrical
Engineering. His areas of research interests include
wireless communications, signal processing, sensor
networks, and electric propulsion.
Thursday, October
25th, 2012, IEEE Dinner Meeting Topic:
Birds of Prey
Speaker: Ms. Gina Holt, Wild
Abouth Birds, Inc.
Gina Holt is dedicated to a
special kind of bird called a "Raptor" - a bird of
prey. Raptors include hawks, owls, kestrels,
osprey and eagles. They are an integral part of
our ecology, particularly here in central
Florida. In addition to giving us insights into
how they live, mate, nest and hunt she will bring two
of her specimens; a barred Owl and a red shouldered
hawk. She will also cover their adaptations,
food chain, habitats, conservation and the
environment.
Speakers: Ms. Gina Holt, a raptor rehabilitator
and environmental educator. She has been involved
in bird rescue and rehabilitaion for over ten years and
providing environmental education classes with live
birds for the last five. The rescue of her first raptor
was a life-changing event for her. She decided she
wanted to work closely with raptors. She first
volunteered and then became a staff member at the
Audubon Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland,
Florida. About five years ago she started her
company, Wild About Birds, Inc. dedicated to
environmental education, conservation and preservation
of haviats for the benefit of Florida's birds and other
wildlife.
Thursday, September 27th, 2012,
IEEE Dinner Meeting Topic:
Fossils of Nova Road - The Story of the Ground Sloth and the Mastodon
Speaker: James "Zach"
Zacharias Senior Curator of Education and Curator of
History
Daytona Museum of Arts and Sciences
Join
Zach Zacharias and learn about the Prehistoric animals
that roamed this area during the last ice age. Daytona
Beach and the area around Nova Road was a hotbed of
animals like the Giant Ground Sloths, Mastodons and
Mammoths. Several years ago during a graveling
operation the bones of a number of South American
Giant Ground Sloths were found near the corner of Reed
Canal Road and Nova Road. Last year during the
evacuation of a retention pond in Holly Hill, near the
corner of Mason and Nova Roads, the remains of an Ice
Age Mastodon was unearthed. Zach will talk about
these discoveries, the evacuation of the fossils, the
significance of these finds, and the preservation of
the remains. He will also bring along some of
the fossilized bones, from these evacuations, for
closer inspection.
Speakers: The Guest
Speaker for the September Meeting will be James "Zach"
Zacharias a graduate of Florida State University and
currently serves as the Senior Curator of Education and
Curator History at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in
Daytona Beach Florida.
Thursday, April 24th, 2012, IEEE Dinner Meeting Topic:
Student Report on the Robotic Competition at SouthestCon2012
Speaker: Members of the
ERAU and BCU Student Robotic Teams
At the
beginning of the Fall Semester in 2011 teams of
students from the Engineering and Computer Science
Departments at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
and Bethune-Cookman University began the development
of robots designed to compete at the Robotic
Competition at SoutheastCon 2012. These robots
were required to meet very stringent design rules and
had to be capable of operating in an autonomous mode
over a challenging course. Each of the student teams
designed, constructed and programed their robots over
the winter in order to meet the March 15th
Deadline. On March 15th and 16th the ERAU and
BCU teams competed with robotic teams from
approximately 40 Universities and Colleges
representing the major engineering schools in the
Southeast Region of the United States.
Speakers: Members
of ERAU's and BCU's Robotic Teams. The members of each
robotic team will explain the design of their robot,
and indicate the engineering techniques they employed
to make their robots competitive. Finally they
will demonstrate the actual robot hardware. The
development and construction process, necessary to
build these machines, has required a great amount of
time and energy from these students, and I know the
people attending the meeting will enjoy their
efforts.
Tuesday, March
22nd, 2012, IEEE Dinner Meeting
Topic:The University of Central Florida Business
Incubuation Program
Speaker:Management from
the UCFBIP
Since its founding in
October 1999 the UCF Business Incubation Program
(UCFBIP) has helped more than 200 emerging companies
(including over 110 current clients) create over $500
million in annual revenue and more that 1600 new jobs
wiht an average salary of $50,000. With nine
opened current locations across 5 counties in Central
Florida, the Business Incubation Program is a
collaboration in economic development between UCF,
Orange County, the City of Orlando, Seminole County,
the City of Winter Springs, Lake County, the City of
Leesburg, the City of Sanford, Osceola County, the
City of St. Cloud, the City of Kissimmee, Volusia
County and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council. The UCF Business Incubator - Daytona
Beach International Airport is UCFBIP's ninth
incubator. The incubator opened July 27, 2011,
in an effort to assist high growth companies in
Volusia County. The incubator is a mixed use
incubator and will house all kinds of companies
except for retail.
The
8,000 square foot facility is located at the US Customs
terminal at the Daytona Beach International
Airport. It has a very modern style, and is able
to house approximately 20 companies depending upon how
many offices each company requires for operation.
The first client has already moved in and many other
companies are currently being reviewed for entry to the
UCF Business Incubaion Program.
Tuesday, February
28th, 2012, IEEE Dinner Meeting
Topic: Volusia
County Hospice Operations
Speaker:
Cathy Gallagher, RN
Halifax Health Center Hospice
Liaison Nurse Cathy Gallagher, RN will present an overview
of the Volusia County Hospice operations, how it is
accessed, what it does, its staff and equipment and its
record of success. This includes not just how it
interfaces with the patient but how it works with and
relates to the family and loved ones.
Cathy Callagher was
born and educated in New York State. In 1976 she
came to Florida to attend Flagler College in St.
Augustine. When she graduated she decided to stay
in Florida because it is nice and warm. In 1999
she decided to become a Registered Nurse.
While in Nursing School (1996-1999) she worked as a CNA for
Hospice. After graduating from Nursing School, she
worked for 2 years as an RN in the Oncology Department of
Halifax Health. In 2001 she rejoined the Hospice
Program at Halifax Health as an Admissions Nurse. For the past nine years, she has worked as a
Community access Liaison which allows her to reach out and teach
others about the benefits and helpfulness of hospice.
Cathy is certified in hospice and palliative care nursing.
Thursday, January 19th, 2012, IEEE Sectional Dinner
Meeting
Topic:The History of Navigation - Part 2 Speaker:Tracy Wichmann
Part
two describes the change in
the history of navigation with the
invention of the marine
chronometer. Early
navigators used the stars, the
winds, the currents and visual
references to find
destinations. With the
development of the marine
chronometer navigators could
obtain rather precise measurements
of their longitudinal location
anywhere on
the surface of the earth.. .During
his lecture he will describe how
the escapement mechanism in these
chronometers evolved to allow
precision measurements to be made
over extended periods of time.
Tracy Wichmann
has a diverse resume.He
received his Science Bachelor in Physics from MIT.His education also included the
study of Servomechanisms at OhioState’s
Electrical Engineering Department and Astrophysics and
Statistics and System Engineering at UCLA.He is an Adjunct Professor at EmbryRiddleAeronauticalUniversity and
consultant for computer programming.Over the years he had held positions as Program
Manager, Senior Research Scientist, Research Engineer in
such fields as electronic warfare, space shuttle avionics,
air traffic control with such companies as Hughes
Aircraft, Teledyne Systems, Litton Industries, and the
U.S. Air Force.He has
published over 50 papers & publications and has a
patent on a blood pressure measuring device.He has been past Chairman and Treasurer of the
Daytona Section and currently serves as our Vice Chairman.He is also a member of the
Southcon Board of Directors.
Thursday, November 29th,
2011 IEEE Sectional Dinner Meeting Topic: Current Topics on the Volusia County
Council
Speaker:
Frank Bruno, Chairman Voulsia County Council
Frank
Bruno will speak on his experience as the Volusia County
Council Chairman and what has transpired during his term
in this position. He will also comment and provide
his observations on the proposed Sun Rail System.
Frank Bruno after competing his active
duty in the United States Military, opened a print
shop in Port Orange. This venture was very
successful, and he sold it to entered politics.
Over the last four years Frank has served as the
chairman of the Volusia County Council. He
currently serves on the transportaiton commission
which overseas Sun Rail. Mr. Bruno will be
stepping down, at the end of this current term, due to
term limits.
Thursday,
October
27th, 2011 IEEE Sectional Dinner Meeting Topic:Sterotactic
Radio Surgery
(Gamma Knife Treatment; CyberKnife Treatment)
Speaker: Dr. Brad Factor
Stereotactic
Radiosurgery (SRS)
is a technique to treat brain disorders. It uses a
highly focused beam of radiation to target specific
areas of the brain. The beam of radiation destroys the
tissue that a doctor would otherwise have removed with a
scalpel during an operation.
Dr. Brad Factor: Dr. Brad Factor is Board
Certified by the American Board of Radiology in Radiation
Oncology and he has interests in treating all cancer sites.
Dr. Factor joined Halifax Health after serving as an
Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at the H. Lee
Cancer Institute and ResearchCenters. He is
interested in applying new techniques and treatments in the
field of radiation oncology, such as stereotactic
radiosurgery, intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), image
guided radiation therapy (IGRT) and Stereotactic Body
Radiotherapy (SBRT).
Thursday, September 22th,
2011 IEEE
Sectional Dinner Meeting Topic:
The Accuracy of Weather Forcasts Speaker: Dr.
Christopher Herbster
Weather forecasting,
which historically has been notoriously inaccurate, has
substantially improved over the last 50 years. Computers
and the mathematical modeling of weather patterns is a
substantial factor in this improvement. Satellites have
also provided a global view of cloud cover and moisture
content. Doppler radar gives current data on wind and rain
activity. The net result is that the accuracy of the
forecasts has dramatically improved. Moreover the
precision of warning time, strength and place, of these
predictions is strongly related to the size of the
meteorological event. Thus hurricanes can be precisely
tracked, but tornados are predictable only within a
general area. Small squalls, thunder storms and supercells
can only be predicted within less than an hour.
Fortunately we have doppler radar to give some form of
warning about such events.
Dr. Christopher Herbster:
Dr. Christopher Herbster, Professor of Meteorolog,
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Thursday, April 28th,
2011, IEEE Sectional Dinner Meeting Topic:Student Report on the Robotics Competition Speaker:ERAU and BC-U
Student Robotics Teams
On
March 17th - 20th, 2011 a Robotics Competition was
held as part of SoutheastCon 2011. This is an annual
conference in which about 40 Colleges and Universities,
from all over the South Eastern portion of the United
States, compete. This year the Daytona Area was
represented by a robotics team from Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University, and for the first time a robotics
team from Bethune-Cookman University. The scenario in
which the robots must perform was specified several months
before the contest. The robotics teams then
build their robots to operate in the specified venue and
respond according to what was discovered. The robots
must operate autonomously and rely strictly on on-board
sensors and processors to discover and react appropriately
to obstacles discovered during the competitive runs.
At the April Section meeting members of each of Daytona's
competing robotics teams will give a short report on
the robot that they designed for the competition and some
of the lessons learned from the experience.
Student
Robotics TeamsMembers of the
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and
Bethune-Cookman University will each describe
the design and characteristics of their
robots, what their robot encountered during
the tests, and how well their robots
performed in the competition.
Thursday, March 24th,
2011, IEEE Sectional Dinner Meeting
Topic:The History of
Naviagation - Part 1
Speaker:Tracy Wichmann
Part one meaning
before the invention of the marine
chronometer. How early navigators used
the stars, the winds, the currents and visual
references to find destinations. How
ancient boat design reveals navigation methods
and how the Chinese may have discovered
America before Columbus.
Tracy Wichmann
has a diverse resume.He
received his Science Bachelor in Physics from MIT.His education also included
the study of Servomechanisms at OhioState’s
Electrical Engineering Department and Astrophysics and
Statistics and System Engineering at UCLA.He is an Adjunct Professor
at EmbryRiddleAeronauticalUniversity
and consultant for computer programming.Over the years he had held positions as Program
Manager, Senior Research Scientist, Research Engineer
in such fields as electronic warfare, space shuttle
avionics, air traffic control with such companies as
Hughes Aircraft, Teledyne Systems, Litton Industries,
and the U.S. Air Force.He
has published over 50 papers & publications and
has a patent on a blood pressure measuring device.He has been past Chairman
and Treasurer of the Daytona Section and
currently serves as our Vice Chairman.He is also a member of the Southcon Board of
Directors.
Wednesday, February 23rd,
2011, IEEE Sectional Dinner Meeting
Topic:The da Vinci Surgical
Robotic System
Speaker:Micah (Mike) Blackmon MD
The presentation will
describe the da vinci surgical technique, a Robotic Surgery
System for many surgical procedures including gynecologic
oncology procedures, general gynecologic procedures and
prostate procedures. The surgeron sits at a console
about 15 feet from the anesthetized patient who is positioned
on the surgical table. The console is comproised of a
video screen, hand controls and foot pedals. The da
Vinci system employs two cameras to provide a 3-D color image
of the operating field, plus five to 10 times magnification
for a very precise view. Next to the surgical table is
the bedside cart with four arms, three for instruments and one
for a camera. The arms can be equipped with various
instruments and rotate like a hand and wrist. The da
Vinci system translates the surgeon's motions into tiny
movements and corrects for any hand tremors or extra hand
motion. This allows for xomplex surgeries with small
incisions, thus revolutionizing minimally invasive
surgery and explanding the types of surgeries sthat can be
performed.
Micah (Mike) Blackmon, MD is
with the HalifaxHealthCenter for Urology
will be our speaker for the evening.. He is a native Floridian
having been born and raised here and he received his MD from the
University
of Miami.
He performed his residency at the Medical College of Georgia in
Augusta, GA. He is board certified.
Thursday, January 20th,
2011, IEEE Sectional Dinner Meeting
Topic: The Marine Science Center at Ponce Inlet -
Overview
Speaker: Michael Brothers, Director of the Marine
Science Center
The presentation will
describe the work of the Marine Science Center and some of the
unique characteristics of the species that center
supports. It promises to be an interesting and
informative presentation for all.
Michael Brothers is the Director of the Marine Science Center at Ponce
Inlet. He has a long history of the study of marine
animals, birds and sea creatures. The presentation will
be describe the work of the Marine Science Center and some of
the unique characteristics of the species that center
supports. It promises to be an interesting and
informative presentation for all.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
i IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: Reducing Energy
Consumption - What can you do?
How does power factor work into this solution?
Speaker: David
Wise and Roy Mailsoff
America
has a great thirst for energy. We need
energy to maintain lifestyles that we have become
accustomed to. There are ways to reduce
consumption by minimizing and optimizing usage and by
different technologies. These will be discussed
from a research and operational perspective.
What is Power Factor?
How can it impact your electrical system and energy
usage? There are many different technologies
competing for a place amongst those systems that
need to be considered, so you may meet your energy
goals, and several will be discussed. Having
useful information about what to consider when
looking at energy conservation is important to
establish baseline reviews to determine what is most
beneficial to you.
David Wiseis the Vice President
of Production and Technology, KVAR Energy Savings,
Inc. He has held numerous electronics
engineering technology positions in the
manufacturing sector. He brings considerable
products certification management capabilities and
experience. Mr. Wise is also recognized as the
inventor on seven US patents.
Roy Mailsoffafter attending the
University of Oregon and Hofstra began working at
his family's commercial real estate and land
development in Chicago, Illinois. It was in
Chicago while maintaining commercial real estate
properties that Mr. Mainsoff realized the urgency
for energy conservation and awareness. In
2007, Mr. Malisoff met with KVAR Energy Savings, Inc
(KVAR) CEO, Steve Fish, and learned about power
factor optimization through the use of patented
technology licensed to KVAR. Thereafter, Mr.
Malisoff relocated to Daytona Beach, Florida, where
KVAR manufactures energy saving devices called KVA
Energy Controllers (KVAR ECsTM)..
Thursday,
October 28, 2010 - IEEE Section Dinner Meeting Topic:Calibrating Speed Detection
Devices for
Extended Applications: LIDAR and Radar Speaker:Dr. Brian Butka
and Will Gaughan
Speed detection devices
and commonly used by law enforcement agencies to
determine the instantaneous speed of vehicles.
However, in civil engineering applications there is a
need to measure the acceleration and deceleration of
vehicles in addition to the instantaneous vehicle
speed. This talk will discuss the principles of
operation of both LIDAR and RADAR speed methods that
can be used to calibrate the devices.
Calibration of LIDAR devices requires generating
pulses with extremely precise timing delays, this talk
will detail W ill Gaughan's solution to this problem
using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
Dr. Brian Butkais an associate
professor in Electrical, Computer, Systems and
Software Engineering at Embry Riddle Aeronautical
University. Dr. Butka has previously taught
Electrical Engineering in the United Sates Naval
Academy and has over 20 years of industrial
experience in the mixed-signal design of custom
integrated circuits. Dr. Butka's research
interests include avionics and control for autonomous
vehicles (primarily rotary wing) and the design and
verification of safety-critical hardware. Dr.
Butka is currently collaborating with Dr. Barott of
ERAU on a bi-static radar project
Will Gaughanis a graduate
student pursuing the new Masters in Electrical and
Computer Engineering.. Will graduated in May 2010 with
a BS in Electrical Engineering with a Systems
Engineering emphasis. He is currently working on
a bisatic radar project with Drs. Butka and
Barott. In his spare time Will has been known to
play guitar and sing at local nightspots and
restaurants.
Thursday, September 23, 2010 -
IEEE Section Dinner Meeting Topic:Trajectory Generation and
Cooperative Control of Mobile Robots with Kinematic Constraints Speaker: Jing
Wang, PhD
Complex
networked cyber-physical dynamical systems are
everywhere in our real life. Examples include
small-scale air, water and ground-based autonomous
vehicle systems, sensor networks, VLSI circuits,
computer network, Internet and so on. Yet complex
networked cyber-physical systems pose new challenges
because they are extremely dynamic, unreliable and
large-scale, and traditional approaches based on
centralized control may not be applicable. Recent
years have witnessed the extensive development on the
cooperative control design of networked systems. In
this talk, a near-optimal real time trajectory
generation method for mobile robots with kinematic
constraints is first presented. Then, after a brief
review of the basic idea of designing linear
cooperative control, a new reactive cooperative
formation control design for a class of dynamical
systems with collision avoidance capability will be
reported. As design examples, the applications to the
cooperative control of nonholonomic chained systems
and cooperative control based teleoperation with high
latency will be discussed. Simulation results and some
elementary experimental results will also be provided.
Jing Wang
received his Ph.D. degree in control theory and
control engineering from South University, China in
1007. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at
the Institute of Computing Technology , Chinese
Academy of Sciences, from 1997 to 1999, and at the
National University of Singapore, from 1999 to
2002. From 2002 to 2007, he was with School of
Electrical and Computer Science of University of
Central Florida as a Research Assistant
Professor. Science 2007, he has been an
Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Computer
Engineering at Bethune-Cookman University. His
main research interests include Robot Control,
Cooperative Control of Multi-Robots, Control of
Nonholonomic Systems, Visual Servoing, Distributed
Optimization, Distributed Sensor Networks, Nonlinear
Control of Energy Systems. Recenty, Dr. Wany was
awarded an NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI)
grant. He is a Member of the IEEE.
Thursday, April 29, 2010 - IEEE
Section Dinner Meeting
Topic:Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University Students Branch, 2010 Robotic Competition Report Presentation Speaker:Members of the ERAU Robotics Team
In March of 2010 a team from the IEEE
Student Branch of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
(ERAU) attended the 2010 IEEE Southeast Conference in
Charlotte, North Carolina. The purpose of the trip was
to participate in a Robotics Competition held in conjunction
with SoutheastCon 2010. The event involved competition
between solar powered autonomously controlled vehicle
designed and developed by a number of technical colleges and
universities throughout the Southeast portion of the United
States.
The ERAU students built a robot that
from a completely discharged state was required to charge
the vehicle using solar power and autonomously race around
an obstacle course. Each competitive vehicle had to
charge and then complete as much of the obstacle course as
possible within the 3 minute time limit. The ERAU team
placed second of all the teams competing in the special
competition ladder. They were limited to competing in the
special ladder as they had one member of their team who was
a postgraduate student.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University Students Branch, 2010
Robotic Competition Teamwere the speakers for the evening. Several
members of the ERAU Robotics Team will described the
process taken to conceive, design, build, and test their
robot, the results of the competition, as well the
experiences gained and lessons learned. A live
demonstration of the robot in action will be presented.
March 25th, 2010 - IEEE Section Dinner Meeting Topic:
Small Radio Telescope Program Review Speaker: Charles
R. Husbands and Dr. Hugh Ward
In 2007 Dr. Hugh
Ward and Dr. Jane Owen prepared a proposal to the IEEE Life
Members Committee to fund a Small Radio Telescope (SRT) for
educational purposes. It was proposed to use the SRT to
teach Radio Astronomy, Electronics and Data Processing in
the local schools, and for College and University Research
projects. Grant funds were received from the IEEE Life
Members Fund, hardware was ordered and assembly began in
late 2008. The first phase of the program, Assembly
and Testing, took place between September 2008 and February
2009. The second phase of the program, the
Installation and Testing of the SRT, at the planetarium of
the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona
BeachFlorida occurred between February
and May of 2009. Due to flooding in the Planetarium at
the Museum in May 2009 a third phase of the program, to
install a wireless data link from the Planetarium to the
Museums Auditorium was undertaken. This link allowed the SRT
to be operated and displayed in either the Planetarium or
the Auditorium. The development phase of this program was
completed in December 2009.
At the present time there are two additional phases in
the SRT development program underway.One
is the implementation of the hardware and software necessary
to permit the SRT to be operated remotely over the internet.In addition an educational program
is underway, under the direction of Dr. Ward. This program
involves the design of processing software and lesson plans
that will permit the SRT to be used within the museum and our
local school system for age appropriate education.The current status of these programs
will be reviewed and on how we envision the SRT being used in
near future will be discussed.
Charles R. Husbands holds a
Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering and a Masters
Degree in Engineering Management. He has been a
practicing engineer for over 40 years and is a Senior
Life Member of the IEEE. In 1996 he retired from the
MITRE Corporation where he directed a research group in fiber
optic technology. In retirement he formed Blackhorse
Communications a private consulting company
specializing in optical and microwave communications. He
has published and lectured extensively on optical networks and
communication systems and holds a number of patents in this
area. He is currently the Project Manager for the
Daytona Section’s Small Radio Telescope Program.
Among
the 26 chapters in the INEMI roadmap is the "Product
Emulator" for Automotive Products. The Roadmap has
consistently predicted that electronics will become 30% to
40% of the manufacturing cost of an automobile!! There is
an on-going dramatic increase in the use of electronic
systems to enable better performance, handling and
reliability in the automobile. Today's car depends
on "drive-by-wire" technologies for steering, braking and
handling. We are beginning to see the use of radar
systems for "blind spot" management, parking, lane
changing, driving while impaired, or falling asleep at the
wheel. Manufacturers are introducing new systems
that will allow the driver to view internal and external
information such as temperature and humidity; hands-free
communication and entertainment systems; GPS travel
directions/maps; tolling, and more. Hybrid vehicles
are being introduced with voltages ranging from 42V to
500V. Some of these systems will be discussed as
well as new technologies that are yet to come.
Ron Gendneywas V.P. Operations and
Chief Technical Officer for the International Electronics
Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) and was responsible for
the development and publication of the item biannual
Roadmap. He retired from iNEMI at the end of 2002
(although continued to be involved with several of ongoing
projects on a consulting basis). He joined the
consortium in 1996, bringing with him nearly 40 years
experience in the development, manufacturing and
procurement of electronic components and electronics
packaging.
Mr.
Gedney has several patents in electronic packaging and has
authored or co-authored numerous technical articles,
several book chapters and co-edited a book on lead-free
electronics. He is past president of the IEEE
Components Packaging and Manufacturing Technology (CPMT)
Society, past General Chairman of the IEEE/EIA-sponsored
Electronic Components and Technology Conference, past
chairman of the CMPT Binghamton chapter, a Fellow of the
IEEE and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on
Electronics Packaging Manufacturing. In 1999 Mr.
Gedney was the recipient of the IEEE CMPT Society's David
Feldman Outstanding Contribution Award. He was
presented with the IEEE third Millennium Medal in
2000. He received the SolderTec Global Lead-free
Solder Award in 2004 " in recognition of his leadership
and technical expertise in eliminating lead from
electronic assemblies". He graduated from Tufts
University with a degree in electrical engineering.
January 28, 2010 - IEEE Section
Dinner Meeting Topic:Magnetic Gear
Drives Speaker: Dr. Kent
Davey
Propulsion
drives for ships and submarines, windmills, and ocean
floor turbines are all characterized by high torque and
low speed. The conversion of mechanical energy to
electrical or vice versa is characterized by large
electromechanical volumes at low rotation speeds. Gears
are a convenient way to convert the slow speed, high
torque side to a high speed, low torque counterpart. A
magnetic gearbox has the following advantages over
mechanical gearboxes:
no
lubrication
overload
protected
reduced
mechanical fatigue
no
mechanical contact losses
no
mechanical contact acoustic noise
potential
for very high efficiency (only a little core loss and
bearing loss)
high torque
per volume ratio-
considerably higher than a standard motor or generator
Clever
topologies allow the magnetic gear to compete with a
mechanical gear. The right topologies allow approximately
˝ of the magnetic teeth to engage with their mate at any
one time. Such an engagement is impossible with mechanical
gears.
Dr. Kent Davey is
an independent consultant in electromechanics and
electromagnetic, and an adjunct Professor with the School of Physics, University of Houston. He is a
Fellow with the Institute of
Electrical and Electronic Engineers and Editor of IEEE
Transactions on Magnetics. He specializes in the
interaction of electric and magnetic fields with matter
and in the numerical computation of electric and magnetic
fields.He was
formerly Senior Research Scientist with the Center of Electromechanics, University of Texas, Austin.
Before that he was the Chief Research Scientist for
American Maglev, and a tenured Associate Professor in
Electrical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.
He has 93 refereed journal papers with IEEE and another 90
conference publications.
Machine recognition of human speech has
been under development since the early 60's. Everybody is
familiar with the tedious telephone menus that we are forced
to muddle through to communicate with our suppliers. The
problems arise from two sources: poor recognition of phonemes
and neglecting to relate the phoneme identification process to
the context of the dialog. The basic approach is to
isolate phonemes from the sound pattern. If the phonemes can
be identified then there is a one to one correspondence
between a sequence of phonemes and a word. Unfortunately,
phonemes are hard to isolate and so a statistical prediction
algorithm, called a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is used. Another
method is called Dynamic Time Warping (DTW). Vocoder patterns
(frequency vs. time) are presented and it is shown that they
are basically pictures of a sequence of phonemes blended
together. DTW can adjust for speed and emphasis in speech. The
HMM can help identify phonemes by their relationship to
adjacent phonemes. This presentation includes a demonstration
of voice recognition and vocoder operation.
Professor
Wichmanngraduated from MIT with a
degree in Physics and did his graduate studies at Ohio State
and UCLA in Electrical Engineering. His career specialty was
Electronic Warfare and he is a charter member of the AOC
(Electronic Defense Association). He joined the IEEE
in 1952. He worked for the Air Force as an Electronic
Scientist and for Litton, Teledyne and Hughes Aircraft
Company in various engineering and program management
capacities . He did his Speech Recognition work originally
at Litton in the 1960s. Mr. Wichmann has published over 50
papers in various scientific journals and given dozens of
technical presentations at technical symposia and
conventions over the years.
October 22nd, 2009 -
IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic:Communications
Considerations
for a Smart Grid
Speaker:Adrian Zvarych TCR
Engineering
The
nation's need for developing a Smart Grid has reached a
pinnacle, where lessening our dependence on foreign oil,
reducing carbon footprints, managing an aging electric
infrastructure, and making the grid more efficient is
vital to the health of our nations' economy. At
the heart beat of a Smart Grid is a robust and reliable
communications infrastructure. This presentation
will provide an overview of critical Smart Grid
components, and demonstrate how the communications
infrastructure is vital to ensuring consumer loads and
utility generation supply can be well balanced in the
future.
Adrian
Zvarych graduated from Carnegie-MellonUniversity
with a BSEE in 1982, and has served in the utility
industry since then. Starting off as a
protection & controls field engineer with FPL in Broward
County, he was the youngest engineer to work on
the design of a 500kV substation upgrade and
expansion, and went on to develop the first
'virtual bus differential' station protection
scheme at Florida Power Corp, exploiting available
logic in the microprocessor based protective
relays. After entering the
telecommunications field within Progress Energy in
1997, he was involved in developing fiber optic
and other communication network topologies,
managing telecom assets, and then later helping
other utilities develop their telecom
infrastructures.
September 24th, 2009 -
IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: South Pole Research Mission Presents Logistical and
Physiological Challenges
Speaker:Michael
Potash, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University
The terrestrial monitoring of
atmospheric light spectra demands freedom from light and
air pollution. For this reason and others, the South Pole
is continually occupied by a diverse collection of
scientists taking advantage of its unique environment.
Every December, the Space Physics Research facility at Embry-RiddleAeronauticalUniversity deploys
scientists to the South Pole to calibrate instrumentation
for data gathering that will occur during the dark
Antarctic winter. In 2008, they sent the first father-son
science team in the history of the South Pole. The
endeavor presented various logistical and physiological
challenges to the father-son duo and made for a memorable
adventure.
Michael Potash was born in
Brooklyn New York
where he developed an interest in electronics at an early
age. His talents in music and technology found synergistic
expression when he was hired as a recording engineer and
electronics technician at a New York recording
studio. Michael taught technical electronics in both the New York and Florida
public schools before accepting a position as an electronics
technician at Embry-RiddleUniversity.
Today he spends his time designing flight-related
instrumentation systems and teaching the occasional class
for the university. Michael holds a BSEd from City College
of New York and will shortly receive a BSEE from
Embry-Riddle. He lives in Ormond Beach with his
wife Melody and their two children, Noah and Eliana. Noah is
in the process of earning his Master’s degree in software
engineering at Embry-Riddle.
April 26, 2009 - IEEE
Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Students Presentation
Speaker: Members of the ERAU Robotics Team
A team from
the IEEE Student Branch of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University (ERAU) went to attend the IEEE Southeast
Con 2009 in Atlanta, GA in early March 2009. The purpose of
the trip was to participate in a Robotics Competition held
in conjunction with the Conference. The theme of the
competition was "Recycling beverage containers." About
forty colleges and universities from all over the
Southeastern portion of the United States entered this
competition.
The ERAU
students built a robot that can autonomously find, pick
up, sort, and store plastic bottles, glass bottles, and
aluminum cans by using various electrical and mechanical
parts controlled by software.
The
speakers for the evening were several members of the ERAU
Robotics Team. They described the process
taken to conceive, design, build, and test of their robot,
the results of the competition, as well an the experiences
gained and lessons learned. A live demonstration of
the robot's functions was conducted.
March 26, 2009 -
IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic:
Predicting Topographic and Bathymetric Measurement Performance
for Low-SNR Airborn Lidar Speaker: Clint
Slatton, Assistant Professor Department of
Electrical and
Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainsville
Florida
Government
and
commercial airborne lidar (light detection and ranging)
systems have enabled extensive measurements of the Earth’s
surface and land cover over the past decade. There is
much interest, however, in employing smaller lidar systems
that require less power to enable sensing from small
unmanned aerial vehicles or satellites. Technological
advances in the performance of small micro-lasers and
photo-detector sensitivity have recently enabled the
development of experimental airborne lidar systems with low
signal-to-noise-ratios (SNR). Recent government and
academic prototypes have indicated that low SNR airborne
lidars could significantly increase the fidelity of terrain
reconstruction over what is possible with existing
conventional lidars. Thus, there is a need to build up
a modeling capability for such systems in order to aid in
future system and mission design. A numerical sensor
simulator has been developed to model the expected returns
from low SNR micro-laser altimeter systems and predict their
performance. Both optical and signal processing system
components are considered, along with other factors,
including atmospheric effects and surface conditions.
Topographic (solid earth)
and bathymetric (littoral zone) measurement scenarios are
considered. Analysis of topographic simulation data
focuses on the effect of solar noise on SNR and elevation
accuracy while bathymetric performance is evaluated with
regards to water depth and scan angle for different water
clarities. The mission conditions chiefly responsible
for limiting performance of low-SNR lidar are discussed in
detail, along with suggestions for further algorithm
development and system performance evaluation.
K. Clint Slatton (S’95–M’02–SM’07)
received B.S. and M.S. degrees in aerospace engineering and
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering, all from the
University of Texas (UT) in Austin, TX in 1993, 1997, 1999,
and 2001, respectively. From 2002 to 2003, he was a
Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for Space Research at UT,
where he worked on multiscale data fusion techniques for
interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) and airborne
laser swath mapping (ALSM) measurements. He also worked at the
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Radar Sciences Section
and was a recipient of the NASA Graduate Student Research
Program Fellowship. He is currently an Assistant Professor
with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and
the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. He is the
Director of the Adaptive Signal Processing Laboratory and a
co-investigator for the NationalCenter for Airborne
Laser Mapping (NCALM), for which he develops
information-theoretic segmentation methods for ALSM data in
complex environments, such as forests. He was named a
2006 winner of the Presidential Early Career Award for
Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for work on predicting
signal propagation in highly cluttered environments using
remotely sensed geometry from ALSM. His research
interests include remote sensing applications of ALSM and
InSAR, high dimensional data segmentation, multiscale data
fusion, graphical models, and photonics, with sponsored
projects from NSF, NASA, the US Army, the US Navy, and
NOAA. Dr. Slatton is a member of the AGU and also of
Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Sigma Gamma Tau.
February 26, 2009
- IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic:
ENIGMA and ULTRA - The Nazi Code Machine and How it was Broken
Speaker:
Tracy Wichmann
The Enigma machine is any of a family of
related electro-mechanical rotor machines that have been
used to generate ciphers for the encryption and decryption
of secret messages. The Enigma was invented by German
engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I. A
variety of Enigma models were produced but the German
military model , the Wehrmacht Enigma, is the version most
commonly discussed.
The machine has gained notoriety because
Allied cryptologists were able to decrypt a vast number of
messages that had been enciphered on the machine. The
intelligence, consequently code named ULTRA, was a
substantial aid to the Allied war effort. The exact
influence of ULTRA is debated, but an oft repeated
assessment is that decryption of German ciphers hastened the
end of the European war by two years.
Through the Enigma cipher had
cryptographic weakness, in pratice it was only in combination
with other factors (procedural flaws, operator mistakes,
occasional captured machines and key tables) that Allied
cryptologistis were able to decrypt messages.
This talk is
a summary of the Machine's development and use during WWII
and low Ultra was able to exploit it.
Mr.
Wichmanngraduated
from MIT with a degree in Physics. He did his
graduate work at Ohio State University majoring in
Electrical Engineering. He also attended UCLA and
took numerous special courses in Communication Theory
and Computer Programming. He began his career at Wright Patterson
Air Force Base in the Electronic Countermeasures Research
Section and continued to specialized in Electronic Warfare
until his retirement. He worked for many companies as
an employee and a consultant and spent the last 15 years
with Hughes Aircraft Company in the Radar Systems
Group. He developed many signal processing algorithms
and wrote numerous computer programs to exploit information
from enemy signals or generate signals to deceived enemy
radar, navigation and communication systems.He moved
to Ormond Beach in 1995 (to be near grandchildren) and
through IEEE connections, got a job teaching, part time
at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. He also
became interested in the potential for digital signal
processing to recognize waveforms and devised the
sine/cosine wavelet analysis.
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January 22, 2009 - IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: Electronic Roadmap to Improve Electronic Manufacturing
Technologies
Speaker:George
Till Halifax Medical Center
Foundation Speakers Bureau
INEMI
is an industry led consortium of approximately 70 electronics
manufactures, suppliers, and related organizations. Its
mission is to identify and close technology gaps, which
includes the development and integration of the electronics
industry supply infrastructure. Accelerated deployment of
technology is shaped and led by member companies , and provides
benefits to the global electronics industry.
The
primary tool used to identify technology gaps is the Technology
Roadmap, updated and published every two years. Products leaders
from the large corporations define future technology needs
for specific product areas and produce a set of product
emulator tables defining the measurable attributes of technologies
required for their product areas. These requirements are
then analyzed by manufacturing experts from approximately 20
manufacturing disciplines to identify risk, or gaps, in being able
to satisfy product needs in the desired time frame. These
gaps are used to prioritize research and development efforts.
All of
these efforts are performed by volunteers from the member
organizations. The INEMI Secretariat is a small group
headquartered in Herndon, Virginia who act as a facilitators of
these efforts. In recognition of the global nature of the
electronics industry, offices have also been established in Europe
and Asia.
George
Till, after
a brief tour of duty in the U.S. Army (Korea), attained a degree
in Mechanical Engineering from the Indiana Institute of
Technology in Fort Wayne, Indiana. For the next 18 months he
designed equipment for the pulp and paper industry. He
spent the next 30 years in the computer industry with IBM,
Burroughs, and Prime Computer. His duties ranged from
systems engineering, hardware and software development and
management, to strategic planning. During the last 10
years he has been associated with the INEMI (International
Electronics Manufacturing Initiative) Technology Roadmap effort.
December 2nd, 2008 - IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic:The da Vinci Surgical System
Speaker:Dr. Carl Schwenker Halifax Medical Center
Foundation Speakers Bureau
On
December 2nd, 2008 Dr. Carl Schwenker MD from the Halifax Medical
Center Foundation Speakers Bureau will speak on the da Vinci S
Surgical System. The Halifax Medical Center has recently acquired
the da Vinci S Surgical System, a sophisticated robotic platform
designed to enable complex surgery using a minimally invasive
approach. The system translates the surgeon's motions into
tiny movements and corrects for any hand tremors or extra hand
motion. This allows for complex surgeries with small incisions,
revolutionizing minimally invasive surgery and expanding the types
of surgeries that can be performed.
The
daVinci S Surgical System changes surgery in three ways, it
simplifies many existing minimally invasive surgeries (MIS),
laparoscopies. Makes difficult MIS operations routine, and
makes new MIS procedures possible. The system replicates the
surgeon's hand movements in real time. It cannot be
programmed, nor can it make decisions on its own to move in any
way or perform any type of surgical maneuver without the surgeon's
input. With the da Vinci S Surgical system, patients may
experience improved patient outcomes such as reduced trauma to the
body, reduced blood loss and need for transfusions, less
post-operative pain and discomfort, less risk of infection,
shorter hospital stays, faster recovery and return to normal daily
activities, and less scarring.
Dr. Carl
Schwenker was born in
Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from the University of
Cincinnati, College of Medicine and served his internship and
residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, FL. He
was in private practice, OB/GYN, in Daytona Beach from
1963 until 1996. After retirement he started a second
career with the Foundation (Halifax Medical Center) working in
fund raising, Medical staff liaison and organizing a Community
Speakers Bureau. Dr. Schwenker also worked as an advocate
for prevention of child abuse. He and his wife became foster
parents and ultimately adopted a special needs child. He
also served on the board of Community Partnerships for Children,
a lead agency of the Florida Department of Children and Families
October 25th, 2008 -
IEEE Section Dinner Meeting Topic: Ballot Initiatives, Property
Values and the Impact on Education Speaker:Morgan B. Gilreath Jr. Volusia County Property
Appraiser's Office
On
October 23rd, 2008 Morgan B. Gilreath Jr. of the Volusia County
Property Appraiser's Office will speak on the ballot initiatives
being decided at the November 4th, 2008 elections. These ballot
initiatives will share the election ballot with candidates running
for local , county and national offices. These initiatives
may have an effect on local property values and taxes. Mr.
Gilreath will discuss the impact of the past and proposed
constitutional amendments of local education from elementary
through the collegiate level. The talk will be very timely
and will not be political, but fact based.
Morgan B.
Gilreath Jr.,
has been a Volusia county employee since 1986 and has been with
the Volusia County Property Appraiser's Office for all of that
time. He holds an MA degree and is a US Army Vietnam
veteran. His professional accreditation's include the
Certified Florida Appraiser (CFA) designation by the Florida
Department of Revenue and the Accredited Senior Appraiser (ASA)
designation awarded by the American Society of Appraisers.
He is a former Associate Professor
at the University of Georgia, where he was instrumental in
appraisal related course development and instruction. Mr.
Gilreath has published extensively and has been
involved in the development of several appraisal textbooks used
nationally.
September 25th, 2008 -
IEEE Section Dinner Meeting Topic:Climate Change Speaker:Dr. Lou McNally Assistant Professor of
Meteorology for Applied Meteorology & Climatology
Embry Riddle Aeronautical
University , Daytona Beach, Florida
On September 25th, 2008 Dr. Lou
McNally of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University will be
addressing climate changes (global warming to some people) and
man's input, potential impact, and answers (based in fact) to
questions about the whole problem. There is quite a bit of
literature on both sides of the question, but the peer-reviewed
science (the stuff we can now measure) all points one way.
He looking forward to helping solve the dilemma in everybody's
mind. Lou
McNally, Ph.D. is an Assistant
Professor of Meteorology for Applied Meteorology, Broadcast
Meteorology, Aviation Meteorology and Climatology at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. His experience
includes work with the Bermuda Weather Service as an Operational
Meteorologist (Forecaster) with Hurricane/Subtropical Storm
experience. He also heads McNally & Associates, Inc.
which provides Operational and Consulting Meteorologist
services. Dr. McNally received his Ph.D.
(Interdisciplinary) and M.S. from the University of Maine.
April
24th, 2008 - IEEE Section Dinner
Meeting
Topic: The Return to the Moon
Robotics Competition
On April 5th, 2008 the
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Student Branch of the
Daytona IEEE Section sent a team of students to the
SoutheastenCon 2008 in Huntsville Alabama. The purpose
of the trip was to participate in a Robotic Competition held
in conjunction with the Southeastern Conference. The
theme of the competition was "Return to the Moon." Forty one
colleges and universities from all over the southeast portion
of the United States entered this competition. The ERAU students built a
robot that could autonomously explore and retrieve resources
and then transport them back to a lunar base
station. The playing field was a 6 foot by 6 foot
plywood deck., partially covered with with small rocks
firmly glued to the plywood surface to form a simulated lunar
surface. The objects to be detected and stored by the
robot were wooden blocks of various colors equipped with RFID
tags. The block took on various values based on their
color and value noted on the RFID tags. The autonomous
robot had to (1) find the location of the wood blocks with IR
sensors, (2) drive to the location of the blocks with the help
of the IR sensors and digital compass, (3) sense the worth of
the blocks with the RFID reader, (4) pick up the blocks with
and store on board the robot, (5) carry the blocks back and
deposit them at the base station. To add confusion to the
process two robots were on the same playing field
simultaneously competing for the same blocks and physical
positions.
The speakers for
the evening will be several of the members of the Embry
Riddle Aeronautical University Robotic Team. They
will describe the design and operation of the robot, and
the results of the competition.
March
27th, 2008 - IEEE Section Dinner
Meeting
Topic: The Spitizer Space Telescope
View of the Solar System
Speaker:Dr. Yan Fenandez ,
Assistant Professor of Astronomy
Department of
Physics, University of Central Florida
Since
its launch in 2003, NASA's fourth Great Observatory, the
Spitzer Space Telescope, has devoted over 1500 hours of time
looking at various objects in our Solar System. Its
unique vantage point and design have given us an unprecedented
infrared view of our neighborhood. Spitzer has observed
near-Earth asteroids whizzing by, icy asteroids beyond
Neptune, even a cloud of dust that surrounds planet
Earth. Dr. Fernandez will review some of the highlights
of over four years of data collected by this remarkable
telescope and will discuss some of the open questions that
remain.
Yan Fernandez received his Ph.D.. in
Astronomy in 1999 from the University of Maryland and has
been an Assistant Professor at the University of
Central Florida's Department of Physics since 2005.
His research area is planetary science with an emphasis on
the small bodies of the Solar System. His studies
involve the thermal, physical. and compositional properties
of active comets, dormant comets, asteroids, and icy
outer-Solar System objects. His goal is to understand
the evolution of our Solar System. To do this he uses
telescopes around the world and in space, including the
Spitzer Space Telescope.
February 28th, 2008 -
IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: Radio Astronomy and the
Allen Telescope Array
Speaker: William C. Barott PhD,
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
Radio
Astronomy
is a discipline never satisfied with the current state of
technology. Since its beginnings, scientists have
been in search of lower noise systems to delve deeper into
the cosmos, and more processing power to analyze the
volumes of data generated by their telescopes.
Recent Advances in FPGA technology have enabled a
fundamental change in the design of large radio
telescopes. The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is the
first of this generation, which combines high speed DSP
with many small antennas to rival more costly large
antenna telescopes. Built by University of
California Berkeley and the SETI Institute and funded by
Microsoft's Paul Allen, the ATA will consist of 350
separate low-cost antennas ad be capable of a diverse
range of coordinated tasks, including 24/7
simultaneous observing by multiple users. In this
talk, Dr. Barott will discuss the history and future of
radio astronomy and SETI, along with his personal
experiences as a developer for the ATA Project.
William C. Barott, PhD is an Assistant
Professor of Electrical Engineering at Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University. He is a graduate of Georgia
Institute of Technology (BS/MS/PhD), and specializes in
antenna, phased arrays, and RF systems. He has been
involved in SETI-related work since his undergraduate
years, and joined the Allen Telescope Array project as the
primary developer of the ATA beamformer. He spent
the summer of 2007 living at the ATA Hat Creek facility in
Northern California.
January 24th,
2008 - IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: Forecasting of Foreign
Exchange Rates using Artificial Neural Networks
Speaker:Dr. Daniel Plante
Associate Professor of Computational Sciences
Stetson University
In
a world utilizing only a single currency, investments could
be made strictly based on the environment, however, this is
no longer the case. Movement of one currency with
respect to another may strongly influence or even overwhelm
the rate of return on the investment itself.
Forecasting of exchange rates can itself be treated as an
investment vehicle if it can be done so accurately and
therefore has been treated with great interest by the
research community. Also, in countries where loans
carry high interest rates, corporations and corporate
customers often prefer to take loans in foreign currencies
with lower interest rates. In order to minimize the currency
risk it is common to construct a loan that consists of
baskets of currencies.
In
this presentation, an introduction to neural networks will
be provided along with its application to the prediction of
foreign exchange rates. As a case study, we will focus
on the ISD/ISK (US Dollar to Icelandic Krona) exchange rate,
as Multi-Currency Instruments are quite popular in
Iceland. Results using various neural network learning
algorithms will be provided along with an overview of the
state of the art in the field.
Daniel Plante received
his Ph.D. in physics from Notre Dame in 1995 and was a research
postdoc in atomic physics at Auburn University before entering the
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Stetson
University, where he is presently an Associate Professor of
Computational Sciences. Daniel's research interests are
essentially everything that students interested in working with
him are interested in, though his personal favorites are machine
learning and artificial intelligence. During recent years,
his research has included finite element grid arrangement, f
financial computing, automated music transcription, multi-server
database design, and data mining applied to optimizing software
patent similarity.
His work was done in collaboration
with Bleeder Mugnusson. Baldur graduated from Stetson
University in December 2005 with a double major in Mathematics
and Computer Science. There he completed his senior
research paper on "Currency Predictions for Mult-Currency
Instruments" and was awarded the Emmet S. Ashcraft Award,
presented to the most outstanding junior in mathematics and
computer science at Stetson. Baldur is presently a Ph.D.
student in the School of Operations Research and Information
Engineering at Cornell University.
29th November - 2007 - IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: From Macro to Micro to Nano
Electronics
Moore's
Law and Materials
Speaker:
Dr. Mark Law, Chairman of Electrical and Computer
Engineering
University of Florida
The
20th century saw a tremendous increase in electronics
capabilities. We now live in an information age
dominated by electronic products in information resources,
communication, and entertainment. How did this
happen? Who were the key players and what were their
inventions that changed the world? What is Moore's Law
and how has it driven the semiconductor industry? Come
and learn about the history of the electronics industry and
where we are today. I'll even explain why
semiconductor stock prices are so volatile. What are
the challenges for the future? What strange things
happen in the quantum world that will limit future
productivity? Why have CPU clock speeds stopped
increasing? What is nano and how do we get
there? I'll describe some future challenges to provide
faster and cheaper technologies.
Mark Law is a professor and chair of
Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of
Florida. He received the B.S. Cpr.E. degree from
Iowa State University in 1981, the M.S.E.E. from, Stanford
University in 1982, and the Ph.D. degree from Stanford
University in 1988. His current research interests
are in integrated circuit process modeling,
characterization, and device modeling. Dr. Law was
named a National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty
Fellow in 1992, 1993 Semiconductor Research Corporation
(SRC) Technical Excellence Award, Outstanding Young Alumni
of Iowa State in 1994. College of Engineering
Teacher of the the Year in 1996-97, a UF Research Fellow
in 1998, and won the 2006 SRC Aristotle Award for
Outstanding Graduate Student Advising and Iowa State
Professional Achievement Award in 2007. Dr. Law has
written over 200 papers in the area of process and device
modeling and has advised 17 Ph.D. students. He has
been involved in almost $15 million of funding during his
career, most from industrial sources. He is an IEEE
EDS distinguished lecturer. He is a member of the
American Physical Society, Material Research Society, and
American Society for Engineering Education. He was
named an IEEE Fellow in 1998 for his contributions
to integrated circuitry process modeling and simulation.
With
the communications and computer technology now available,
our ability to communicate, conduct business, make
purchases. and conduct financial transactions has become
easier and faster. However, with this comes the risk
that information about your personal and financial identity
may be stolen. This risk has increased dramatically in
the past years. Once stolen, it may take years to
rectify the damage done to your credit as well as a
considerable financial toll. Our speaker will discuss
these issues and what you can do to reduce the threat.
Theresa Ronnebaum
has been employed with the Florida Attorney General's Office
since 1999. She has been with the Office of Statewide
Prosecution since September of 2002 as the first federally
funded Identity Theft Victim Advocate to Florida. Mrs.
Ronnebaum is also currently working with the Office of
Victims of Crime as a consultant on the topic of Identity
Theft and how to better assist victims. Her passion
for the criminal justice field began with her prior
employment as a county probation officer and as a victim
advocate in the sex crimes, domestic violence and child
abuse units for the 9th Judicial Circuit State Attorney's
Office. Theresa received her Bachelor's degree in
Criminal Justice with a Minor in Psychology from Florida
State University in 1995.
Jay Young is a graduate of Broward
Engineering College with a BSEE, Nova University with a
BSBA. He has worked for GE, Lockheed Martin, NASA,
Public Service Co. of New Mexico, and Florida Power and
Light too name a few and has been awarded 2 US
patents. Jay has been a business owner for over 28
years, He is a Member of CrimeStoppers, served on the
Community Arbitration Program, Community Citizen Law
Enforcement Advisory Committee for Volusia County and
currently is a member and past Chair of the Daytona Beach
Police Advisory Committee. He also has had training
in Anti-riot management and anti terrorism. Winner
of the Community Service Award and the Golden Circle Award
for community service. He currently serves on the
county Land Management and Regulation Commission for
Volusia County.
27 September - 2007 - IEEE
Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: Getting to Know You
Speaker: Members of the Daytona IEEE
Section
To
kick off the new season,
we thought it would be nice to have an
opportunity for our members to get to
know each other. With that
thought in mind, we decided to deviate
from our usual program of guest
speakers and have a more casual,
social program.
We all
know that it doesn't take much to get an engineer to
talk about his/her work. So, we'll take advantage
of what some non-engineering types may consider an
annoying "social disorder" and have some interesting,
informative presentations.
To begin
the program, our officers will introduce themselves and
give a brief verbal summary of their background,
professional experience, place of current and/or former
employment, hobbies and any noteworthy achievement or
humorous work event that may interest our members.
After
that, we invite the other members in attendance to
introduce themselves and give a similar brief background
and any related story about his or her career you think
may be interesting. We also invite the
members to introduce their spouse and/or guests.
However,
knowing that most engineers have a tendency to get
carried away when they get talking about their work,
we may be forced to employ 'the hook' after about 4
minutes to give everyone a chance to have their few
minutes of fame. Although we encourage
participation, those
who aren't comfortable speaking or are in the witness
protection program or working undercover with an assumed
identity, can just introduce themselves.
28 April - 2007 - IEEE Section
Dinner Meeting
Topic: IEEE
Student Section Robot Competition
Speakers:
Joe Poznanski and members of the student team
This
year, the Embry-Riddle IEEE Student Section competed
in the hardware competition at the 2007 IEEE
SoutheastCon conference. With the support of the
IEEE Daytona Section and the technical experience of
Dr. Liu, the team had a valuable and fun learning
experience. As the decision to enter the
competition was made relatively late, it was not until
November that preliminary design ideas were
considered, and not until early January before the
club began meeting in its entirely for the
"build". This gave the team approximately 2.5
months to complete the project, not that much
time considering the complexity of the project.
Due to this brevity of time, it was decided to
make the robot as simple as possible, and pursue
several launching systems to determine the most
accurate and efficient one. Enough members were
in attendance to make this feasible; this allowed
everyone to be involved in the actual robot creation
progress, regardless of skill level.
Through the course of its development, the project
taught the robot building team everything from basic metal
and woodworking, to mechanical and electrical components,
to teamwork and cooperation.
This
project was especially important to the team as it was
primarily composed of freshmen, making this the team's
first robot building experience, and assuredly not
the last. Design consideration to next year's
robot are already in the works, and several more
facility members as well as IEEE Daytona Section members
have expressed an interest in participating. The
presentation will discuss the robot's design,
competition results, and the lessons they learned from
the project. Joe Poznanski, Hardware Team Leader,
IEEE Student Section and members of the student
team will participate in the lecture.
22 March-2007 - IEEE Section
Dinner Meeting
Topic:
Observations of the Past
50 Years In the Electronics Field
Speaker: Dr. Albert Helfrick
This year marks Dr. Helfrick's 50th
year as a licensed amature radio operator. In
recongnitation of that milestone he has prepard this
presentation of his experinece in the electronic field.
This presentation is not so much about him, or even
amature radio but more about the incredible inroads made
by the electronics industry. The presentation is not all
technical, but the techno-crowd will find a lot of
interesting material. He will talk about his first
vacuuum radio to the latest low noise "Pseudomorphic
High Elecron Mobility Field Effect Transitors" that he
has used in space-related communications. Much of
the presentation is downright funny. There are
stories of his day in broadcasting, the U.S. Army in
Viet Nam, his college days and his latest endoverse in
space communications.
Dr. Albert Helfrick is chair of the Electrical
and Systems Engineering De partment and Mechanical ,
Civil and Engineering Science Department at Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University. He is the author of 14
text books, more than 100 articles and contributions to
books. He is a senior member of the IEEE,
technical editor of the IEEE Tranactions on Aerospace
and Electronic Systems. He was recently named
"Outstanding Engineering Educator" for the Florida
Council. He is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA, a
member of the Digital Avionics Technical Committee,
Associate Editor of the AIAA's Journal on Aviation
Computing, Information and Communications. He is a
Fellow and past officer and board member of the Radio
Club of America, the Quarter Century Wireless and the
Old Timers Club.
22 February-2007 - IEEE Section
Dinner Meeting
Topic: Science of
Management
Speaker:
Roger Gurbic
Real life examples of situations,
facing engineering managers, are seldom taught in
electrical engineering courses. This presentation will
illustrate the responsibilities and functions of a
manager. Early management studies such as Maslow's
hierarchy and Taylor analysis of tasks will be
discussed. Some of the available management and
decision tools will also be discussed
Roger Grubic retired
from Lockheed Martin as a Program Director. His
accomplishments include managing the development and testing
of the Landsat D Ground Segment ( a program that developed
over 1.5 million lines of software) for NASA Goddard. He
led the technical portion of the winning proposal for the USAF
GPS Block IIR spacecraft program and later led the GPS Block
IIR spacecraft System Engineering effort. Roger
was the Program Director for the 5D-3 Defense Meteorological
Satellite Program (DMSP). a weather satellite program for the
USAF, and later led the Spitzer Space Telescope spacecraft
program, an Infra Red observatory built for NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. During his career at Lockheed
Martin and GE Astro Space, he was both a program manager and a
functional manager, in the matrix organizations. Earlier
at Bell Laboratories Roger was involved in state of the art
digital design for missile systems, software development and
the development of a cartridge magnetic tape recorder for PBXs
and central switching systems. He holds a BEE and a MSEE
from the Ohio State University and an MBA from Villanova
University. He is a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and
the Daytona Section Vice Chairman.
28 January-2007 - IEEE Section
Dinner Meeting
Topic: Volusia Beach Damage and
Restoration
Speaker:
R.
P.
"Bob" Haviland
R. P.
"Bob" Haviland is well known for his work on environmental
problems. He will present the results of his study of the
beaches of Volusia County, in the form of a slide show.
This includes many beach events of the last 25 years,
showing the steady loss of beach, plus photos of major damaging
events which have happened. The processes involved in both
normal day-to-day events and those of major storms are
covered. Current and proposed actions of "Beach
Restoration" are listed with local examples of results. The
effect of recorded sea level rise and the probable future,
plus an approach which will have to be taken some day are
included.
Robert
P.
"Bob" Haviland was one of the early workers in the
space program. He was project engineer for the first two
stage rocket, the first object to reach outer space, and the
first launch from Cape Canaveral. He pioneered ablation
heat protection and recovery from space. He conceived the
Discover Program, the foundation of satellite
reconnaissance. Retired, he is now active in environmental
problems. Bob graduated from the Missouri School of
Mines. He worked for Schlumberger Well Surveying and then
for General Electric for 30 years before retiring.
Since retirement he has spent his time writing and studying
environmental problems. He has 7 patents, 16 books and many
articles and papers to his name.
30 November-2006 - IEEE Section Dinner
Meeting
Topic: Reliability
of Pb-Free Electronics
Speaker:
Ronald
"Ron" Gedney, Consultant
The
European Union’s move to Pb-free electronics has been a challenge
to electronic packaging technology. From a technical point of
view, the move to higher temperature soldering has impacted all
components and processes involved in electronics manufacturing. A
little known reliability issue has arisen from the use of tin (Sn)
plated component leads (terminals) which can form small
mono-filament protrusions commonly known as “whiskers”. Tin
whiskers have impacted missiles, satellites, nuclear power plants
and computer systems – that we know of.
This
presentation will discuss how the problem of tin whiskers is
being addressed, what is being done around the globe on this
issue and its status.
Ron Gedney retired as
V.P. Operations from iNEMI in 2002, but
continues to do some consulting work on Pb-free electronics. He
joined the consortium in 1996, bringing with him
nearly 40 years experience in the development, manufacturing and
procurement of electronic components and packaging. The bulk of
his career was spent at IBM, where he was
involved in the development of electronic packages for
semiconductors.
Mr. Gedney is a Life Fellow of the IEEE. He is past
president of the IEEE Components, Packaging and Manufacturing
Technology (CPMT) Society, past General Chair of the Electronic
Components and Technology Conference, and past chair of the CPMT
Binghamton chapter. Mr. Gedney received the CMPT David Feldman
Outstanding Contribution Award, and the IEEE third Millenium
Medal. In 2004, he received the SolderTec Global Lead-free
Solder Award 2004 “in recognition of his leadership and
technical expertise in eliminating lead from electronic
assemblies”. He has been granted several patents and has
authored numerous articles. He graduated from TuftsUniversity with a degree in electrical engineering.
26
October-2006
- IEEE Section Dinner Meeting Topic:
Planets, Draft Planets
and Small Solar System Bodies
Speaker: Roger
R. Hoefer, Curator of
Astronomy for Volusia County Schools
and the Museum of Arts and Sciences Planetarium
The recent "demotion" of
Pluto to a dwarf planet status has created a lot of
public outcry, but the actions of the International
Astronomical Union during their convention in Prague
this past August are not without historical
precedence. Roger R. Hoefer, Curator of
Astronomy for Volusia District Schools and the Museum
of Arts and Sciences will explore the history, origins
and evolution of the nomenclature that astronomers use
to identify the various members of our solar
system. Also included will be some of the latest
images of Pluto and extrasolar planets taken by the
Hubbell Space Telescope.
Roger Hoefer is a
1962 graduate of Northwest Oklahoma State University in
Alva, Oklahoma with a BA Ed in elementary education. He
began his teaching career in Jefferson County Public Schools
near Denver, Colorado as an elementary teacher and outdoor
education specialist. He also trained as a planetarium
specialist in the school system's planetarium. In 1959
he was hired as Curator of Astronomy at the Dayton Museum of
Natural History in Dayton, Ohio where he was planetarium and
observatory director. He was Planetarium Director and
space science educator in the Future Astronaut Training
Program at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in
Hutchinson, Kansas for 5 years before moving to Daytona
Beach in 1991.
28 September-2006 - IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: Icelandic Fiber Optic Network
Speaker: Charles R. Husbands, Blackhorse Communications
Near the peak of
the Cold War the North American Treaty Organization (NATO)
suggested installing a series of high power long range
radar systems in the island nation of Iceland. The
purpose of these radar systems was to provide tracking and
identification all aircraft crossing the Atlantic Ocean
between Labrador and Ireland. These radar also
allowed aircraft to be tracked in the Arctic Ocean
between Greenland to Scotland. The final solution
for interconnecting these radar systems was to design and
construct a dual counter rotating fiber optic network
around the entire perimeter of the island.
This presentation
will cover the design and construction of this Icelandic
fiber optic network. In a cooperative effort between
the Icelandic Post and Telegraph (IPT) and NATO
provided a facility was designed to carry not only the
radar data but all of the telephone, data and television
communications traffic on the island. Because of the
unique terrain and environmental conditions encountered in
Iceland a unique set of construction techniques were
required to construct this network. This
presentation will describe the technical details of
the cable plant, operational hardware and the network
control necessary to successfully build and operate this
network.
Charles
Husbands holds a Masters Degree in Electrical
Engineering and a Masters Degree in Engineering
Management. He has been a practicing engineer for
over 40 years and is a Senior Life Member of the
IEEE. In 1996 he retired from the MITRE Corporation
where he directed a research group in fiber optic
technology. In retirement he formed Blackhorse
Communications a private consulting company
specializing in optical and microwave
communications. He has published and lectured
extensively on optical networks and communication systems
and hold a number of patents in this area. From
1987 to 1994 he served as a consultant for the
United States Air Force to the Iceland Post and
Telecommunications service supporting the design and
implementation of Iceland's national fiber optic ring
network.
27 April-2006 -
IEEE Section Dinner Meeting
Topic: Design of a High Bypass Turbofan Engine
Speaker: Kristina
Malakle - Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Senior aerospace engineering students
forming the fictitious company Enginuity Technologies from
Dr. Attia's Air Breathing Propulsion Detail Design Course
will present their final design project. Seniors
Christopher Cassann, Ed Schurr, George Tolls, Jon Delmonico,
Matt Gonce, Naiara Petralanda, Robin Hertherington, Ron
Driggers, Rhan Rafty and Kristina Malakle were challenged to
design an entire high bypass turbofan engine. The
presentation will include a basic overview of aero gas
turbine engines and their components. Enginuity
Technologies' EX9-A, is an exciting innovative turbofan
design including advanced technology such as carbon fiber
composite fan blades, foil bearings, active noise control
and much more! Enginuity Technologies' will present
their design in 3-D CAD renderings. This presentation
should be exciting and one not to be missed.
Kristina Malakle is a member of Enginuity
Technologies and a graduating senior. She has been a
member of ERAU-IEEE for the last three years.
Kristina has been an active participant with IEEE and has
served as Recruiting Committee Chairman and as the ERAU
Student Branch Chairman. Kristina is looking forward
to an exciting career as an aerospace engineer and intends
on staying active with the IEEE.
Everybody knows that sounds are made up of
many frequencies. In music they are called
harmonics. Most sounds are very complex but what makes
them recognizable is a combination of frequencies and the
times that they occur.
Professor Wichmann has devised a signal processing technique which
he calls Diacoustic Analysis. That is the use of sounds to
detect failures, or implending failures, in machines. It
works by breaking the sound signal into a time vs. frequency
pattern. Now it is well known that the time resolution of a
signal is inversely proportional to its frequency (Gabor's
Theorem). Using a family of sine/cosine wavelets, the
Diacoustic technique extracts the frequencies present in a sound over 10
octaves (10-10,000 Hz) with time precision that varies
with frequency. Thus there is a 1/10 of a
second interval for the 10 Hz component up to a 0.0001
seconds for a 10 kHz component. It is shown that for
the case of automotive engine exhaust, these pictures
reveal defects that are hard to detect by hearing alone.
Mr. Wichmann graduated from MIT with a degree
in Physics. He did his graduate work at Ohio State
University majoring in Electrical Engineering. He also
attended UCLA and took numerous special courses in
Communication Theory and Computer Programming.
He began his career at Wright Patterson Air
Force Base in the Electronic Countermeasures Research
Section and continued to specialized in Electronic Warfare
until his retirement. He worked for many companies as
an employee and a consultant and spent the last 15 years
with Hughes Aircraft Company in the Radar Systems
Group. He developed many signal processing algorithms
and wrote numerous computer programs to exploit information
from enemy signals or generate signals to deceived enemy
radar, navigation and communication systems.
9 February 2005 - IEEE Section Dinner
Meeting
Topic:
2005 DARPA Autonomous
Vehicle Grand Challenge Program
Speaker: Remo Pillat -
University of Central Florida
In 2004 the DARPA Grand Challenge field test of
autonomous ground vehicles ran fromBarstow
California to Primm, Nevada and offered a $ 1 million
prize. However. the prizewent unclaimed as no
vehicle of the 15 finalists were able to complete the difficult
desertroute. In 2005 the Grand
Challenge Prize was increased to $ 2 million. The StanfordUniversity Racing Team claimed the prize completing the
course of 132 miles in a winningtime of 6
hours, 53 minutes. This presentation will
concentrate on the major challengesfaced in
a developing an autonomous vehicle for long distance operation
in a hostileenvironment. Focus was placed
on the interdisciplinary character of the work effort andthe application of this
technology to future autonomous vehicles.
Remo Pillat
received his MS in Computer Science from Ilmenau Technical University,Germany. He is currently a
Ph.D. student in the Computer Vision Lab at the Universityof Central Florida (UCF). His
interest in Germany included image metrology with anAtomic Force Microscope, and Indoor and
Outdoor robot navigation and localization.In 2004, he participated in an exchange
study program between his home university andUCF, where he was one of the first members
of UCF's Grand Challenge Team. Duringthe qualification and contest period of
the DARPA Grand Challenge. Remo was theChief Software Developer for UCF's
autonomous car. His current graduate work involvesresearch in the area of 3D
Robot vision.
19 January 2006 - IEEE
Section Dinner Meeting
Topic:
Managing Electrical Power
Distribution System Reliability
Speaker:
Elmer Lee Pettit, Jr.
Fifteen years ago, in conjunction with
the Quality Improvement Program, Florida Power and Light
made a major effort to improve service reliability using
reliability tools and techniques. In this presentation we
will look at that effort. It will how the distribution
system works, how reliability is measured, and how it can be
modeled. We will then look at what causes service
interruption and how operation can improve reliability.
Elmer
Lee Pettit Jr. (M'58) received his BS Degree in
Electrical Engineering from Vanderbuilt University and his MS in
system Science from Polytechnic University, NY. He is a "C"
Course graduate in General Electric's Advanced Course in
Engineering and a registered Professional Engineer in Florida and
Maryland. Mr. Pettit joined Florida Power and Light Company (FTP)
in 1958 and except for five years with the General Electric Apollo
Support Department, worked at FPL until his retirement in
September 1993. His technical interest at FPL included
distribution system analysis, protective device coordination, long
range planning and reliability modeling. He developed the
"FEEDPRO" distribution analysis software package and has
authored and conducted training courses, including "Protection
DEvices Coordination" and "Distribution Design for Reliability".
He has also developed an expert system for fuse sizing and
capacitor bank placement on distribution circuits. Mr.
Pettit is presently a consulting engineer specializing in power
distribution systems and is Treasurer of the IEEE Daytona Section.
17 November 2005 - IEEE
Section Dinner Meeting
Topic:
Satellite Communications:
Today and Tomorrow
Speaker:
Dr. Sajjad H. Durrani -
Distinguished Lecture
Satellite communications technology has made
tremendous advances since its inception in the mid-1960s. The
industry continues to flourish in spite of occasional
setbacks. The talk will give an overview, followed by a
brief discussion of the basic concepts and techniques
involve; typical satellites and earth stations; and the major
services currently available. It will touch upon domestic and
international regulatory issues, and discuss the trends.
Dr. Durrani's career
since 1949 includes more than 10 years of teaching, 10 years with
industry, followed by 18 years with NASA. At NASA he held
research and management positions at Goddard Space Flight Center
and Headquarters. After his retirement in 1992 from NASA he worked
until 1998 for the Computer Science Corporation. Since then he has
served as a Guest Lecture with the International Space University
in Strasbourg, France, as a consultant to Pakistan under the UN
Development Program (1999), and IEEE Executive Fellow with the
Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C.
(2000-2001). He has been named an IEEE Engineering and
Diplomacy Fellow to work as a Technical Advisor with the US
Department of State in 2004.
20 October 2005 - IEEE
Section Dinner Meeting
Subject:
Introductory Analysis of
High Level Systems
Speaker:
Robert P. Haviland
R. P. "Bob" Haviland
was one of the early workers in the nation's space
program. He served as Project Engineer for a number of
space projects including the development of the first two-stage
rocket, the launch of the first object to reach outer space, and
the first missile launch from Cape Cavernal. Bob pioneered the
use of ablation coatings to provide heat protection, enabling
successful reentry and recovery of space material. Bob is
credited with conceiving the Discovery Program, the foundation
of using satellites for reconnaissance purposes.
In retirement he is now active in examining solutions to
environmental concerns.In this presentation Bob will
examine the concept of "systems." Systems exist in almost
every field. We have computer systems, mechanical systems,
the solar system, and even the Ponzi Pyramid System.
Despite the casual use of the term there is no formal definition
of what constitutes a system. In this presentation a test
will be developed to show that a system has been created.
This process will then be extended to formalize the common
concept of sub-systems, systems and super-systems and provide
examples of this designation.
22 September 2005 - IEEE
Dinner Meeting Topic: Central Florida, A Hotspot
for Modeling and Simulation (M&S) Technology Speaker: Robert L. Wittman Jr., MITRE Corporation
Central Florida is a
hotspot for modeling and simulation (M&S) technology and it
continues to grow at a rapid pace. Not only will you
find a number of world-class M&S research and educational
facilities in the area, but Central Florida is also home to a
range of DoD sponsors and contracting organizations.
Additionally, there are growing demands and support for other
"secure" and entertainment gaming technologies. This
presentation explores the variety of existing and emerging
M&S activities and technologies in and around Central
Florida.
Robert Wittman Jr. holds a Masters
Degree in Software Engineering from the University of West
Florida and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the
University of Central Florida. He works for the Mitre
Corporation as an architect for the Army's next generation
simulation system.
1 June 2005 - May Meeting and IEEE Life Member
Affinity Group Trip
Topic: Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station Museum and Missile Launch Facilities
The Life Member Affinity Group of the Daytona Section of
IEEE will toured the Air Force Station, Museums and
Missile Launch facilities located south of the NASA's Kennedy
Space Center. The Air Force Base was the assembly and launch
facility which supported the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo
Missions. The base is still the major launch facility for
most of the nation's commercial and military satellite
programs.
21 April 2005 - IEEE Dinner
Meeting
Topic:
Pico Satellite Design
Effort
Speaker:
Pico Satellite Design
Team, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
In late September 2004 a team of student at Embry Riddle
Aeronautical University began work on the design of the Pico
Satellite. The Pico Satellite is being developed as part of the
Florida University Satellite competition. The
purpose of the Embry-Riddle satellite design is to count
lighting strikes from its Low Earth Orbit of approximately 800
km in altitude. The satellite will detect lighting over a
predetermined geographical areas and will record the number of
lighting strikes during a prescribed detection time. The
goal of the competitive satellite design effort is to encourage
Florida Universities to develop satellite systems.
24 March 2005 - IEEE Dinner
Meeting
Topic:
Moons, Methane, and
Saltwater Oceans
Speaker:
Roger R. Hoefer, Curator
of Astronomy for Volusia County
Schools and the Museum of Arts and Sciences
Planetarium in Daytona Beach
Roger Hoefer
will discuss recent discoveries by NASA's Mars Exploration
Rovers (MER) and ESA's Express orbiter combined with information
from the Galileo and Cassinni/Huygens mission. These
studies have added to a growing list of discoveries that have
exobiologists around the world excited about the possibility of
finding life on other bodies in our solar system. Roger R.
Hoefer has a BA Ed. in elementary education from Northwest
Oklahoma State University. In 1969 he was hired as Curator of
Astronomy at the Dayton Museum of Natural History in Dayton,
Ohio where he was planetarium and observatory director. He
was Planetarium Director and space science educator in the
Future Astronaut Training Program at the Kansas Cosmosphere and
Space Center in Hutchinson Kansas before taking his present
position in Daytona Beach in 1991.
24 February 2005 - IEEE Dinner Meeting
Topic:
Analyzing Legacy Systems
with the Architecture Analysis
and
Design Language (AADL)
Speaker:
Dr. David P. Gluch,
Professor in the Department of Computer and Software Engineering at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Dr. David P. Gluch research interest is model-based
software engineering with a focus on high dependability
performance-critical systems analysis and verification.
His current research centers on the extension and application of
the SAE Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL)
standard. Dr. Gluch has a Ph.D. in physics from Florida State
University and is a senior member of IEEE. He has
co-authored a book on real-time UNIX systems and authored
numerous technical reports and professional articles.
20 January 2005 - IEEE Dinner
Meeting
Topic:
Spectral Sliced
Technology Applied to Optical Local Area Network
Speaker:
Charles R. Husbands,
Consultant, Blackhorse Communications
Charles Husbands holds a Masters Degree in Electrical
Engineering and a Masters Degree in Engineering
Management. He has been a practicing Engineer for over
40 years and is a Senior Life Member of the IEEE. In
1996 he retired from the MITRE Corporation where he directed a
research group in fiber optics technology. In retirement
he formed Blackhorse Communications a private consulting
company specializing in optical and microwave communications
systems. He has published and lectured extensively on optical
networks and communication systems and holds a number of
patents in this area. In this presentation he will
describe a Wavelength Division Multiplexing technique
developed by spectrum slicing select wavelengths from low cost
LED components. This technique can be deployed to
increase the bandwidth capacity of existing optical networks.
