IEEE Computational Intelligence Society meetings

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New CIS Constitution and Bylaws in effect on January 1st 2008

New CIS Constitution and Bylaws have been posted on the CIS website and will enter in effect on January 1st 2008.

MONTREAL IEEE CIS MEETINGS

Invited Seminars and Meetings

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MINI CONFERENCE
THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
Program Summary

Light Breakfast – 8:45am
Opening Remarks – 9:00am
Seminar 1 – Dr. Bassam Bamieh – 9:30am
Seminar 2 – Dr. Keith Hipel – 11:00am
Seminar 3 – Dr. Evangelia Micheli-Tzanakou – 1:30pm
Seminar 4 – Mr. Gérard Terreault – 3:00pm
Seminar 5 – Dr. Scott Yam – 4:30pm

Dr. Nabil Esmail – Dean of The Faculty of Eng. & Comp. Science, Concordia Univ.
Dr. Rama Bhat – Associate Dean of The Faculty of Eng. & Comp. Science, Concordia Univ.
Dr. Anader Benyamin – Chair of the IEEE Montreal Section

SPEAKER: Dr. Bassam Bamieh – Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Santa Barbara

TITLE: Fundamental Limitations in the Dynamics of Vehicular Formations: Local versus Global
Feedback

ABSTRACT: Problems of coordinated motion of vehicular formations have received much
attention lately, especially in the areas of formation flight and so-called vehicular platoons. We
investigate fundamental limitations that the use of only local feedback control has on the apparent
rigidity of large formations. In other words, how closely can such large formations resemble a solid
object? This question is also of interest in the context of naturally occurring swarms, such as birds
in flying formations and schools of fish. Similar dynamical phenomena occur in distributed load
balancing in parallel processing and consensus-type algorithms. We examine these dynamical effects
using the network topology of regular lattices, and investigate the role of topological dimension. A
common phenomenon appears where in dimensions 1 and 2 and with only local feedback, rigid
formations are impossible in the presence of any amount of additive stochastic perturbations, and in
the limit of large formations. In dimensions 3 and higher, tight formations are indeed possible with
only local feedback! We show that microscopic error measures that involve only neighboring
vehicles do not suffer from this effect, implying that it is unrelated to string instability issues. This
phenomenon reflects a fact that in dimensions 1 and 2, local stabilizing feedbacks can not suppress
the long spatial wavelength “meandering” motions of large formations. We point out connections
between this analysis and the statistical mechanics of harmonic solids where such phenomena have
long been observed, as well as connections with the theory of resistive lattices as has been observed
by others.

BIOGRAPHY: Bassam Bamieh's research is centered around notions of uncertainty and robustness
in control and dynamical systems, and the study of distributed systems and their control. Aside from
basic research on the theory of Robust and Optimal Control, his group carries out several research
activities including Atomic Force Microscopy, design and control of multi-micro cantilevers, optical
actuation via optical tweezers, quantum control, and analysis of turbulent shear flows. He joined the
UCSB College of Engineering faculty in 1998, prior to which he was with the department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor
Bamieh is a Fellow of the IEEE, an IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer, a past
receipient of the IEEE Control Systems Society G. S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award, the AACC
Hugo Schuck best paper award, and a National Science Foundation CAREER award.

SPEAKER: Dr. Keith Hipel - Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE
University Professor of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo

TITLE: Trade versus the Environment: Strategic Settlement from a Systems Engineering
Perspective

ABSTRACT: The key goal of this research is to employ a Systems Engineering approach to conflict
resolution to clearly identify the ubiquitous conflict taking place at the local, national and global
levels between the basic values underlying trading agreements and those principles providing the
foundations for environmental stewardship, and to suggest solutions as to how this most basic of
disputes can be responsibly resolved. Subsequent to outlining the current situation involving free
trade among nations and associated environmental problems, the positions of both sides in this
chronic dispute between trade and the environment are summarized. Supporting the stance of free
trade is the fundamental driving forces of profit maximization, while in direct opposition to this
market-driven value system are the principles of maintaining a healthy environment and related
social welfare objectives. Accordingly, this global clash of values is systematically studied as a game
in which the values of the Global Market-Driven Economy (GMDE) are in confrontation with those
of a Sustainable Ecosystem (SES) philosophy. A Systems Engineering tool for strategic analysis,
called the Graph Model for Conflict, is utilized for realistically capturing the key characteristics of
this type of complex conflict and for providing strategic insights regarding its potential resolution. In
particular, a systematic Graph Model investigation reveals that the environment and social standards
will continue to deteriorate if the entrenched positions and related value systems of both camps
persist. However, based on the strategic understanding gained from this formal conflict study, a
number of positive proposals are put forward for resolving this conflict from a win/win perspective,
at least in the long run. To highlight inherent advantages of employing a formal Systems
Engineering tool for addressing strategic conflict problems, the application is used for illustrating
how the Graph Model can be conveniently applied to a specific dispute and comments regarding the
capabilities and benefits of the conflict methodology are provided at each step in the modeling and
analysis procedure.

BIOGRAPHY: Keith Hipel is University Professor of Systems Design Engineering at the
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and is Vice President of the Academy of
Sciences which is part of the Royal Society of Canada. Keith thoroughly enjoys mentoring students
and is a recipient of the Distinguished Teacher Award and the Award of Excellence in Graduate
Supervision from the University of Waterloo. His major research interests are the development and
application of conflict resolution, multiple objective decision making and time series analysis
techniques from a systems design engineering perspective. The main application areas of these
decision technologies are water resources management, hydrology, environmental engineering and
sustainable development. Keith is the author or co-author of four books, nine edited books, close to
200 journal papers, as well as many conference and encyclopedia articles. He is Fellow of the Royal
Society of Canada (FRSC), Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCAE), Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (FIEEE), Engineering Institute of Canada (FEIC), International Council on
Systems Engineering (FINCOSE), and the American Water Resources Association (FAWRA). Keith
is also a recipient of the Norbert Wiener Award from the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics
(SMC) Society, Outstanding Contribution Award from the IEEE SMC Society, Docteur Honoris
Causa from Ecole Centrale de Lille, W.R. Boggess Award from AWRA, and the University of
Waterloo Award for Excellence in Research,. He has held a Canada Council Killam Research
Fellowship, Monbusho Kyoto University Visiting Professor Position, Stanley Vineberg Memorial
Visiting Professorship, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Research Fellowship,
and Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship. Moreover, he is a Professional
Engineer (PEng) and has carried out consulting activities with engineering firms, government
agencies, and utilities in many countries. Keith is an Associate Editor of many international journals
including the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part A, Group Decision and
Negotiation, and Systems Engineering. Finally, Keith has been privileged to serve members of the
IEEE SMC Society through activities such as being an elected member of the Board of Governors
for a total of nine years since 1990, Vice President of Publications (1998-1999), Chair of the
Strategic Opportunities and Initiatives Committee (2004-2005), member of the Strategic Planning
Task Force (2004-2005), member of the Executive Committee (2004-2005, 1998-1999), organizer of
sessions on Conflict and Risk Analysis in Systems Management at all of the annual IEEE SMC
Conferences since 1991, member of the IEEE SMC Fellow Selection Committee (2007-2008, 1997-
1998,), and, currently, Co-Chair of the Technical Committee on Conflict Resolution for which he
jointly received the Most Active SMC Technical Committee Award (2007). On October 8, 2007,
Keith delivered the opening keynote address entitled “Competition and Cooperation in Societal and
Technological Systems of Systems”, at the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man
and Cybernetics held at the Delta Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

SPEAKER: Dr. Evangelia Micheli-Tzanakou - Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE
Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers University

ABSTRACT: One of the major problems a researcher faces is what is learned from data obtained by
various methods and different techniques. This presentation will discuss and compare topics such as:
Statistical Advances and Challenges, as well as Feature Extraction in Computational Intelligence
methodologies. Often a simple model describes the data well, simply because the S/N ratio is too
small for detection of more complex structures-which for example is the case with medical data
involving human subjects. One has a lot of variability both in intra- and inter-sets of data. Some
important Simple Tools that have been used for a long time are: Linear Regression, Discriminant
analysis, Principal Component Analysis etc. In all of these, the size of the data set matters. Huge
data sets create memory problems. The question is how do we handle different data types and how
do we handle them? What if the data are correlated? What if we have complex data structures? In
this presentation these questions will be addressed. Examples of “features” for different biomedical
applications will be given and different feature extraction methods will be discussed.

BIOGRAPHY: E. (Litsa) Micheli-Tzanakou is Professor II and Director of the Computational
Intelligence Laboratories in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers and an adjunct
professor of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Till 2000, Dr Tzanakou was
Chair of the Department for 10 years and established the Undergraduate curriculum in the same. She
was elected a Founding Fellow of AIMBE in 1993, a Fellow of IEEE (1992) and a Fellow of the
New Jersey Academy of Medicine (1986). Her latest book “Supervised and Unsupervised Pattern
Recognition: Feature Extraction and Computational Intelligence” was published by CRC Press in
January 2000. Dr. Tzanakou co-authored a book with S. Deutsch on "Neuroelectric Systems",
published by New York University Press, in 1987. She has edited 7 books as Book editor in the
Springer/Plenum Press Biomedical Engineering Series. She has published over 280 scientific papers
in journals, conference proceedings and book chapters.
Dr. Tzanakou has established the first ever, experimental Brain to Computer Interface (BCI), using
her ALOPEX algorithm, in 1974. This method is now used for target optimization in Parkinson’s
disease. ALOPEX has also been used in a wide variety of problems: signal processing, image
processing, pattern recognition, transportation and many more.
Her research interests include Biometrics, Neural Networks, Information Processing in the brain,
Image and Signal Processing applied to Biomedicine, Mammography, Telemedicine, Hearing Aids
and electronic equivalents of neurons. She has graduated over 50 Masters and PhDs and currently
supervises 5 graduate students.

ABSTRACT: Cable had started as a distribution media for Broadcast Television, bringing TV
signals to area poorly serviced by off-the-air transmission. From a few channels it grew-up,
distributing not only local stations but more distant ones and eventually providing programs not
available off-the-air. Satellite was a significant change in the industry for transmission all over the
continent, for both major Networks and for Pay-TV and Specialty Networks. Yet all these Analog
TV signals were distributed locally over Coaxial Cable with excessively long cascade of amplifiers
until the Optical Fiber invaded the industry, allowing clean high level distribution to local nodes for
feeding subscribers through Coax (birth of the Hybrid Fiber Coax Network). The HFC is the
beginning of the Digital Revolution. In addition to Analog TV, the Digital distribution using
efficient QAM is used for Digital Television as well as Data transmission. Television signals,
Internet services and telephony also required huge backbone networks serviced largely by fiber all
across continents. In a cooperative effort the major operators defined a common protocol focused on
the needs of Cable, providing robust bi-directional communication, fully compatible between
various suppliers. DOCSIS was born. From version 1.0 to 3.0 it matured from Internet connectivity
to full-blast Internet downloads, serving telephony, controlling Switched Digital Video.

BIOGRAPHY: Gérard Terreault, BScA, MSC graduated from Ecole Polytechnique of Montréal in
1964, Masters in Communication Engineering from University of Birmingham, UK in 1966. He
joined General Precision Industries in 1966 to design Radio Direction Finders, especially digital
frequency tuning. In 1972 he joined the newly created Centre de Recherche Industrielle du Québec.
At CRIQ, he was involved in various communications product designs, in particular the network
communication interface for an Air Canada Terminal (1974), a digitally controlled cable converter
(1978), a remotely controlled subscriber's service switch (Addressable tap, 1982), a hospital patient
wireless cardiac monitoring (1987), a Cable specific Spectrum Analyzer (1994). In 1996 he joined
Avantron Technologies (that later became Sunrise Telecom), where he was involved in designing the
second and third generations Cable specific Spectrum Analyzer AT2000 and AT2500. As VP of
Technology he was not only involved in design, but also in the analysis of RF block diagrams,
measurement algorithms and performance validations. He introduced Digital Measurements,
especially QAM performance measurements. Now retired, he is still Member of OIQ, Life Member
of the IEEE (BTS, CES, VTC). He was a member of the Society of Cable Telecommunication
Engineers, company's representative on the Standards Committees (HFC Monitoring Subcommittee,
Interface Practices Sub-committee).

SPEAKER: Dr. Scott Yam
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Eng., Queen’s University

ABSTRACT: With the proliferation of triple-play (i.e., voice, data, and streaming video) into the
customer premises, fiber to the X (FTTX) is becoming not only a reality but necessity, and so are the
enabling technologies that allow low cost access to high optical bandwidth. Aside from its bigger
core dimension (compared with its single mode counterpart) which makes alignment and installation
easier, multimode fiber (MMF) are also designed to work with other lower cost optical transceivers.
Moreover, large quantities of it have been installed in the late 1980s in office buildings, with its
potential bandwidth waiting to be utilized. Different standardization groups have come up with
different strategies to capture this potentially substantial market (e.g. IEEE 802.3ae, IEEE 802.3aq).
The challenge here is to allow high data rate applications (10 Gb/s or above) over short reaches (<
500 m) to satisfy the current needs of local area networks. By accurately understanding the
fundamental propagation physics on a device level behind this class of multimode waveguide and
applying clever engineering (pre/ post compensation in the optical or electrical domain), we have set
new records in this field and has attracted attention from both industry and academia. We are
currently the only group in Canada that focuses on high-speed data transmission in MMF and one of
the handful university research centers internationally to have a strong position in this emerging
market.

BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Scott Yam is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering at Queen's University, Canada. He received the B.Eng. degree in
Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada (1998), and the
M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University (2000, 2004) in the
USA. From 2000 to 2003, he worked as a Sprint Fellow at the Sprint Advanced Technology
Laboratories (ATL) in Burlingame, California. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the IEEE Laser and Electro-optics Society, the IEEE Communications
Society, and the Optical Society of America (OSA). Dr. Yam has over 40 technical journal and
conference publications, as well as 2 patents and 1 pending patent application. He is currently the
Chair of the IEEE Kingston Section, and has served as reviewer for Journal of Lightwave
Technologies (JLT), Photonics Technologies Letters (PTL), Journal of Optics A (JOPA), and Optics
Communications, and is a recipient of the Young Scientist Award and Student Paper Award from the
IEEE LEOS Japan Chapter.

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|Home| |Welcome| |Social Events| |Technical Page||Mtl Executive|

New CIS Constitution and Bylaws in effect on January 1st 2008

New CIS Constitution and Bylaws have been posted on the CIS website and will enter in effect on January 1st 2008.

MONTREAL IEEE CIS MEETINGS

Invited Seminars and Meetings