IEEE Northern VA Section Newsletter for March 2016

 

In This Issue

• Section Report
• Call for Volunteers
• Upcoming Events
• Acknowledgements
• Survey Contest

 

Section Report

Early last month, two-dozen volunteers from the Northern VA and Washington Sections attended the Region 2 South Area Leadership Training workshop. Presentations covered everything from IEEE structure, leadership responsibilities, and financial management and member communication tools, and were always informative, usually interactive, and occasionally highly entertaining. You can stream the WebEx video at: https://ieeemeetings.webex.com/ieeemeetings/ldr.php?RCID=6f134a21348d35d4d9aea9f42c2391de

In the middle of the month at a joint IEEE-ISSA talk in Reston titled “When Tools Lie”, co-founder and CTO of Contrast Security Jeff Williams used the receiver operating characteristic curve to display the limitations of static and dynamic, the promise of next generation alternatives, and how tools from the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) can easily compare effectiveness.

Then just this past Saturday volunteers from our section and elsewhere joined IEEE-USA President Peter Eckstein at the Discover Engineering Family Day event in the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. Children drew lines to guide robots and felt the relative power loads of incandescent, compact fluorescent, and LED light bulbs using a hand-cranked generator.

Encouraging STEM in K-12 is one of our section’s most rewarding activities, and some of our best opportunities occur in spring. Organization judges are needed this month for four Northern VA regional science fairs. Teams of three or four will conduct 10-15 minute interviews with students then award up to $500 total per fair to three projects. Past winners include OFDM modulation using an FPGA, image classification with neural networks, and a full-size humanoid robot controlled using electroencephalography.

In April volunteers are needed to staff the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, DC. A major event drawing hundreds of thousands of people, this year’s IEEE-USA booth will be large, strategically located, and feature a laser Theremin. Rosters for all these opportunities must be finalized soon – see the next section for details.

                                                Marty Schulman

                                                2016 IEEE Northern VA Chair

 

Call for Volunteers

Volunteers are needed for the following activities; please email or call the contact in advance.

 

Saturday, March 5,

            FIRST Chesapeake Needs Judges for Robotics Competition

            Battlefield High School, Haymarket, VA

            http://www.firstchesapeake.org/volunteer

 

Saturday, March 12, 8:00 am – 1:00 pm

            NoVa Regional Science and Engineering Fair special awards judge

            Wakefield High School, Arlington, VA

            Contact schulman@ieee.org by March 7

 

Saturday, March 12, 8:00 am – 1:00 pm

            Fairfax County Regional Science and Engineering Fair special awards judge

            Robinson Secondary School, Fairfax, VA

            Contact schulman@ieee.org by March 7

 

Wednesday, March 16, 2:25 pm – 3:25 pm

            Nextgineering Program needs engineers to talk about their jobs

            Langston Hughes Middle School, Reston, VA

            Contact Marni Kasprowicz, kasquad@gmail.com

 

Thursday, March 17, 8:00 am – 1:00 pm

            Loudoun County Regional Science and Engineering Fair special awards judge

            Freedom High School, South Riding, VA

            Contact schulman@ieee.org by March 11

 

Saturday, April 16, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm; Sunday, April 17, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

            USA Science & Engineering Festival 

            Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC

            Contact Dusty Fisher, dlfisher@ieee.org by March 15

 

Upcoming Events

Following is a list of events that may be of interest to members. Inclusion in this list does not imply section involvement and registration may be required. Follow the link for details.

 

Thursday, March 3, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

            Diamond RF FETs

            National Electronics Museum, Linthicum, MD

            https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/38369

 

Saturday, March 5, 3:00 pm – 6:30 pm

            WIE Visit to Maker Space in Silver Spring

            Catylator, World Building, Silver Spring

            https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/38655

 

Monday, March 14, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

            Women in Security SIG: Tackling the Talent Shortage

            Online Webinar

            https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/37523

 

Tuesday, March 15, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

            Communications with New Horizons at Pluto and Beyond

            National Electronics Museum, Linthicum, MD

            https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/38144

 

Thursday, March 17, 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm

            ISSA NOVA/IEEE CS: Challenges of Cloud Migration

            MITRE 1 Building, McLean, VA

            https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/37631

 

Tuesday, March 22, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

            ASQ 509 SW SIG/IEEE CS: Informaiton Systems Contingency Plan

            MITRE 2 Building, McLean, VA

            https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/37609

 

Saturday, March 26, 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

            Design and Analysis of Embedded Automotive Networks

            National Electronics Museum, Linthicum, MD

            https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/37479

 

Wednesday, March 30, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

            ASQ 509 LSS SIG/IEEE-CS: Monthly Meeting

            Teqcorner, McLean, VA

            https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/37620

 

Acknowledgements

Doug Holly created the agenda, worked with presenters, and personally handled logistics to make last month’s leadership training a great success. All of the South Area extends our appreciation for the time he took from his busy consulting schedule.

 

Contest

Respondents to last month’s survey preferred Facebook, followed by LinkedIn, with little interest in other social media. Turnout was not very high again, so this month let’s try something different:

 

Joseph discovers

His gift for mathematics

Fourier transforms

 

Yes, it’s a Haiku contest! Funny or poignant, mainstream or esoteric, it doesn’t matter – as long as it follows the 5, 7, 5 syllable pattern and has an electrical engineering theme or connection.

 

Electrons approach

The barrier is too tall

Try again later

 

Email one or more entries to nova.chair@ieee.org by Monday, March 14 with “Contest” in the subject line and state they are your original work. Top entries as judged by our esteemed panel will be printed in next month’s Newsletter. Give it a try – you can do better than these examples!

 

Dad catches his son

Playing with high voltage wire

Billy is grounded