General Report of the Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computing Engineering 2006 (CCECE 2006)

After almost two years of planning, CCECE 2006 took place in Ottawa from May 7 to 10 with “Technology for a Better World” as the theme of the conference. The conference received a final number of 1167 submitted abstracts and a number of 14 tutorial and 1 workshop proposal submissions. The final number of accepted papers was 577 (15 for the Workshop, 371 for oral presentation and 191 for poster presentation). We had a total number of 594 registrants in the conference (taking into account that some of the 577 presented papers were delivered by the same author, we had several non presenting attendees).

This year the CCECE 2006 supported the IEEE Ottawa Robotics competition for grades 7-8 by covering part of the cost for the venue and audio-visual equipment. This event took place on Sunday in line with the IEEE R7 meetings and that was a real success.

There were several tutorials and workshops on Sunday May 7th, too. The conference was continued by a reception that night.

On Monday May the 8th, the parallel sessions started and we had a lovely banquet at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, across the Ottawa River, where several IEEE Awards were presented.

On Wednesday, before ending the conference, we had the Best Student Paper Awards ceremony and three student authors were awarded (see the figure below).

The last day of CCECE 2006 coincided with the start of another IEEE sponsored event, the Climate Change Conference (CCC) that shared the same venue with us. Many CCECE attendees had a chance to visit CCC exhibitions on that day.

CCECE 2006 was a long journey for its organizers and we are all happy to pass the torch to the excellent team who is going to organize the 20th CCECE next year in April 2007 in Vancouver.

Bahram Zahir

CCECE 2006 Publicity Chair

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) fourth annual Ottawa Robotics Competition has grown and strengthened from five schools in 2003 to this year's 11 schools and 18 teams competing in two challenges: a total of 103 Ottawa-area elementary school students. It is always rewarding to see children excited about technology, a very key part of their lives and no doubt their future.  It is also good to see institutes like the IEEE running such competitions to encourage schools and students to get active in technology and broaden their horizons beyond the textbook.

Last Sunday, May 7, the IEEE Ottawa section ran the two challenges at the Ottawa Congress Centre in conjunction with the IEEE's annual Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE).

For the junior challenge, Abraar School's Robo-Tech won the overall challenge, with Henry Munro Middle School's Munrobots getting an award for team spirit, and Goulbourn Middle School's Linebot 3 winning an award for technical innovation. For the senior challenge, Katimavik Elementary School's Error 404 won the overall challenge, with Error 404 and Firewalls, also from Katimavik, sharing the team spirit award, and Roberta Bondar School's Bondar Bots winning the technical innovation award. The competition, sponsored by the University of Ottawa's faculty of engineering, was a huge success. As the IEEE Canada president, Robert Hanna, said, "As far as I am concerned, everyone is a winner!" More information can be found on the competition's website: www.ottawaroboticscompetition.org .

Rami Abielmona, Ottawa,

Robotics competition committee vice-chair

Tutorial Workshops at 9th Annual International IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC 2006)

The University of Toronto Civil Engineering Department
and the IEEE Toronto Section.
September 17-20, 2006
Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre
Toronto, Canada

The 9th Annual International IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC 2006) will host 2 tutorial workshops:

1. The role of advanced transportation modeling and ITS in emergency

Evacuation planning and management, by:

Prof.  Hani Mahmassani

Charles Irish Sr. Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Director, Maryland Transportation Initiative

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

The University of Maryland at College Park, USA

2. The role of control theory and artificial intelligence in integrated

traffic management: fundamentals, advances and applications, by:

Prof. Markos Papageorgiou

Director, Dynamic Systems & Simulation Laboratory

TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF CRETE, GREECE

and

Prof. Baher Abdulhai

Canada Research Chair in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)

Director, Toronto Intelligent Transportation Systems Centre

Department of Civil Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada

Prof. Baher Abdulhai, ITSC2006 Conference Chair: “We’re very excited about opportunity to offer these world-class workshops to the ITSC participants. ITSC 2006 will bring together participants from the public sector (e.g. national governments, local authorities, international organizations, planners, public transport authorities, and academic institutions), the private sector (e.g. freight transport operators, car manufacturers, service providers, telecom operators, system integrators, fleet owners, road operators, motoring organizations) and the academic sector. The conference will bring together top scientists, practitioners, and administrators from all over the world to share their knowledge of the latest developments in the field.”

For more information please visit http://www.itsc2006.org/

IEEE International Symposium on Electric Insulation

11-14 June 2006
Delta Chelsea Hotel
Toronto, Ontario

This year, the International Symposium on Electrical Insulation (ISEI) 2006 http://www.deis.nrc.ca/isei2006.htm is hosted in Toronto. Dubbed “The City of Imagination” by the official Toronto tourism website, the city is home to what the Guinness Book of World Records names as the longest street in the world – Yonge Street and the world’s tallest freestanding structure, the CN Tower. The meaning of the city’s name “meeting place” is suitable for a symposium which will bring together engineers from all over the world. International visitors to ISEI 2006 include those from Japan, Korea, Iran, Italy, France, Romania and Brazil.

The event, which lasts for four days from June 11-14th, kicks off with a plenary speech from Jim Pimperly, winner of the Dakin Award. The recipient of the Dakin Award is chosen by the IEEE and the Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS) every two years. IEEE/DEIS awards recipients for an outstanding technical contribution in advancing the science and technology of dielectrics and electrical insulation. It is named in honour of the late Thomas W Dakin: one of the most revered scientists in the field of dielectrics and electrical insulation. Pimperly will speak on electricity as it is today as well as on the future of the electronic market. The speech begins at 8:30 a.m. at the Delta Chelsea Hotel where all technical session are held. 

Other speakers in the symposium include: David Wallis from the United Kingdom, who will speak about machines, Nigel Hampton from Sweden who will discuss cables, and John Kuffel from Ontario who will speak on the topic of outdoor insulation. ISEI 2006 will also hold a Nano material session which is unique to this year’s symposium.

For more information see the Official Website at http://www.deis.nrc.ca/isei2006.htm

J.K.

IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME)

IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME) is a major annual international conference organized with the objective of bringing together researchers, developers, and practitioners from academia and industry working in all areas in multimedia. ICME serves as a forum for the dissemination of state-of-the-art research, development, and implementations of multimedia systems, technologies and applications. ICME is co-sponsored by four IEEE societies (the Circuits and Systems Society, the Communications Society, the Computer Society, and the Signal Processing Society).

The past conferences were held in New York City, NY, USA (2000), Tokyo, Japan (2001), Lausanne, Switzerland (2002), Baltimore, MD, USA (2003), Taipei, Taiwan (2004) and Amsterdam, Netherlands (2005). In addition to paper presentations, the ICME 2006 features distinguished keynote speeches, tutorials, and special sessions. Continuing the spirit of the conference series, ICME 2006 will also host industrial exhibitions.

ICME 2006 will be held in Toronto July 9 – 12, 2006.

ICME 2006 General Co-Chairs:

  Hong-Jiang Zhang, Microsoft Research Asia, China

Ling Guan, Ryerson University

Special Sessions at ICME 2006 include:

- Processor & Multimedia
Organizers: Yen-Kuang Chen, Intel Corporation and Eric Debes, Intel Corporation

- Transcoding to H.264
Organizer: Hari Kalva, Florida Atlantic University

- Advances in Networked Video
Organizers: Mary Comer, Purdue University and Xiaojun Lin, Purdue University

- Perceptual Visual Processing
Organizers: Xiaokang Yang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Weisi Lin, Institute for Infocomm Research and Minoru Etoh, Multimedia Laboratories, NTT DoCoMo

- 3-D TV: Primed for Success?

Organizers: Liang Zhang, Communications Research Centre Canada, Wa James Tam, Communications Research Centre Canada and Hirokazu Yamanoue, NHK Science & Technical Research Laboratories

For more information please visit http://www.icme2006.org/

Over 10,000 reasons to pay attention to IEEE Last Call

IEEE Canada - TELUS Innovation Award

If over $10,000 in cash awards and an all expenses paid trip to exciting Toronto, Ontario are not enough reason to pay attention to this final call for papers then let me sweeten the deal!

*           How about the opportunity to present your years of study and hard work to a new audience?

*           How about the opportunity to meet your peers from across Canada? Check out your competition, make new friends and have some fun!

*           How about the opportunity to connect face to face with Senior IEEE and Industry leaders?

*           How about owning the bragging rights to participating in, and possibly even winning a National, Industry sponsored competition that highlights all the qualities Hiring Managers are looking for in graduate candidates?

And if none of those reasons sound interesting, what about the satisfaction of proving your team, your school is NUMBER ONE!

THIS IS THE LAST CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE 2006 IEEE Canada – TELUS Innovation Award

Please follow the submission guidelines found @

http://ewh.ieee.org/reg/7/students/telus_award/index.htm

Wednesday, June 16 will be the final day for submissions

Thank you to all participants who have already submitted projects!

Note to Branch leaders the June 9 deadline for submissions of the Intent to Attend Form for the 2006 Region 7 Leadership Workshop is fast

approaching. The travel guidelines and form are available @

http://ewh.ieee.org/reg/7/students/workshop/sbw.htm

IEEE Canada Women in Engineering Prize

August 15, 2006 is the extended deadline for nominations. Nominations are being sought to recognize female IEEE Canada members who received their first professional degree within the last ten years and who are active in IEEE activities. For more information and a link to the online nomination form, please view http://ieeecanadianfoundation.org/EN/clift_prize.htm

IEEE Canadian Foundation Scholarships awarded for 2006

Seven scholarships, valued at $3,500 each, to Louis Girard at Université de Sherbrooke, Ramnesh Bansal at Ryerson University, Nuzhat Rehman at Carleton University, Jordan Choi at the University of Calgary, Nina Selak at UBC,  Robert Coish at Memorial University, Xiaolin Song at Concordia University and Stephen Woodrow at the University of Manitoba. The cheques are sent directly to the universities to be applied to each student's account, and the certificates will be framed and presented at a local Section event.  These certificates are signed by the presidents of the IEEE Canadian Foundation and IEEE Canada and presented to Section Chairs (or their delegate) at the annual spring meeting of the IEEE Canada Board of Directors - this year in Ottawa - the photo shows the Section representatives together with the two presidents. More information about these scholarships can be found at http://ieeecanadianfoundation.org/EN/mcn_sch.htm

IEEE Service Awards

Nominations are sought for suitable candidates for IEEE's top two service awards, the IEEE Haraden Pratt Award, sponsored by the IEEE Foundation, and the IEEE Richard M. Emberson Award, sponsored by the IEEE Technical Activities Board. Deadline for Nominations is July 1, 2006.  More details and online nomination forms at http://ieee.org/awards (then click on "Service Awards") If you have any questions, contact IEEE Canada Awards chair, Bob Alden at r.alden@ieee.org

Membership News:

Recruit a Colleague, Earn Credit toward IEEE Dues

Through the IEEE Member-Get-A-Member program, current members can receive a US $5 credit toward next year's dues for every new member they recruit. And anyone who joins between now and the end of August pays half-year rates for a membership that runs through the rest of 2006. For details on the IEEE Member-Get-A-Member program plus tips on recruitment, go to http://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/3139/41367725 Student members can take advantage of the IEEE Student-Get-A-Student program by visiting http://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/3140/41367725

The 2006 April Progress Report on membership is accessible at:

http://www.ieee.org/mdprogreport. Higher Grade Memberships, at 253,082, are 2.0% below the level of April 2005.  This is an improvement from the previous month when they were down by 2.8%. Regionally membership is up in R7, R8 and R9, and down in the other seven regions.  So we are doing well, but we should not give up our efforts in getting last year's members to rejoin.

Help with your Resume'.

http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/employmentnavigator/

For the Financial Advantage Program

http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/services/financial/fap/index.html

IEEE Student Concourse - Join IEEE

http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/membership/students/sc_joinieee.html

New IEEE Member Grade, Graduate Student Member

Are you planning your upcoming Section and Chapter programs, activities or elections?  You will be happy to hear that a new IEEE member grade, Graduate Student Member (GSM), will provide you with a larger pool of potential volunteers.

The IEEE Board of Directors approved the bylaw change that divided the IEEE student member grade into two categories: graduate student member and student member. The new grade allows GSMs to vote in IEEE elections and to hold office in IEEE Sections, Chapters and Affinity Groups.  The SAMIEEE program will be updated to identify these members during third quarter
2006.

In the meantime, to assist Section Chairs who want to appoint a graduate student to a volunteer position, we can identify individual GSMs for you. Please email officer-data@ieee.org to confirm whether the individual qualifies as a GSM.  The basic qualifications are:

 * Baccalaureate or equivalent degree from a recognized institution in an IEEE-designated field of interest.

* Must carry at least 50 percent of a full-time academic program as a registered graduate student in an IEEE-designated field.

An individual can hold the student member and graduate student member grade for a total of eight years. Upon graduation or reaching the eight-year limit, whichever comes first, the graduate student will be automatically elevated to Member grade.

Objectives of the grade include getting GSMs more actively involved in IEEE activities and programs, providing geographical and technical entities with new volunteers and to help reinforce benefits of membership to help retain these members after graduation.   Dues and benefits remain unchanged for both grades at this time.

Senior Member Upgrades

The following members were upgraded to Senior Member status at the February 2006 IEEE Admission and Advancement Panel meeting:

Canadian Atlantic Section	Heywood	Malcolm
Kitchener-Waterloo Section	Li	Ming
Montreal Section	Bui	Tien
Montreal Section	Correa Lopes	Luiz
Montreal Section	Youssef	Amr
North Saskatchewan Section	Bolton	Ron
Ottawa Section	Pakzad	Yousof
Ottawa Section	Rajan	Sreeraman
Saint Maurice Section	Pepin	Christian
Toronto Section	Davy	Debbie
Toronto Section	Esmailzadeh	Ebrahim
Toronto Section	Mathur	Vishveshwar
Toronto Section	Tian	Yunyan
Toronto Section	Zhao	Lian
Winnipeg Section	Dirks	Erwin

The following members were upgraded to Senior Member status at the April 2006 IEEE Admission and Advancement Panel meeting:

Hamilton Section	Al Bayati	Mohammed
Hamilton Section	Hjartarson	Thorhallur
Montreal Section	Caloz	Christophe
Montreal Section	Chen	Lawrence
Montreal Section	Jukan	Admela
Montreal Section	Toner	Patrick
New Brunswick Section	Habib	Hamam
Northern Canada Section	Bates	Stephen
Northern Canada Section	Caulfield	David
Northern Canada Section	Knight	Andrew
Ottawa Section	Berini	Pierre
Ottawa Section	Huang	Changcheng
Ottawa Section	Jarosz	Boguslaw
Ottawa Section	Lukowski	Tom
Ottawa Section	Sabry	Ramin
Ottawa Section	Vaidyanathan	S
Ottawa Section	Vukovic	Alex
Ottawa Section	Wang	Xianbin
Southern Alberta Section	Smith	Thomas
Southern Alberta Section	Sparling	Brian
Toronto Section	Hirpara	Kiran
Toronto Section	Marceau	Richard
Toronto Section	Meshkatoddini	Mohammad
Vancouver Section	Arya	Ali
Vancouver Section	Chan	Anthony
Victoria Section	Nandi	Subhasis

Newly Elected IEEE Senior Members Featured in this Issue

Ming Li – Senior Member

Kitchener-Waterloo Section

Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics
Professor, David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science Research interests: Bioinformatics, Kolmogorov complexity and its applications, computational learning theory, computational complexity, and design and analysis of algorithms.

Tien Dai Bui – Senior Member

Montreal Section

Tien Dai Bui has been a researcher in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada for more than 30 years. He was educated in Ottawa at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa and in Toronto at York University. Tien Bui is currently an associate editor of the International Journal of Wavelets, Multiresolution and Information Processing, and the Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation. His current research interests are in wavelet transforms and partial differential equations with applications to machine intelligence, pattern recognition, mathematical modeling, and image processing.

Ebrahim Esmailzadeh – Senior Member

Toronto Section                      

Professor
Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science
University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

Research Areas: Vibrations of Machines and Flexible and Distributed Systems, Nonlinear Dynamical Systems, Vehicle Dynamics, Active Control of Vibration and Noise, Mechatronics, Nonlinear Adaptive and Optimal Control Systems, Machine Tools Chatter, Dynamics of Mechanical Systems.

Lian Zhao – Senior Member

Toronto Section  

Assistant Professor

 Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

 Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

- Wireless communications, radio resource management, power control, rate allocation, wideband CDMA systems;

- Wireless channel characteristics, channel prediction, link adaptation techniques for 3G systems;

- Low power, low-speed, and low-cost wireless sensor networks; the application of sensor networks in buildings;

- Digital signal processing with application in communications.

Future Senior Members of the IEEE Canada   Have you been in professional practice for at least ten years and have shown significant performance over a period of at least five of those years?   You should be an IEEE Senior Member.   Need help in obtaining your three references?   Contact membership chair of your Section.  

IEEE News

- Computer Society Seeks Nominations for Technology of the Decade Award:

The IEEE Computer Society is seeking nominations for its 60th Anniversary "Technology of the Decade Award," which will recognize a significant contribution to innovative information technology over the past 10 years. Nominations are due by Thursday, 15 June. For more information, click here.

- 22 May 2006 – The IEEE has launched a new online research service developed to fill the needs of power utilities and other energy organizations. The IEEE Power & Energy Library provides targeted searching and browsing of power and energy-specific content from IEEE's wide collection of online technology publications click here.

- Call for Papers: ICAST 2006 (International Conference on Advances in Space Technologies), 2-3 September 2006, Islamabad- Pakistan

For further updated information, kindly visit www.icast2006.com

- 2007 IEEE Medal and Award Nominations Due

You have until 1 July to nominate a colleague or company for an IEEE medal, corporate recognition, honorary membership, service award, or prize paper award to be presented next year. For nomination forms, visit the IEEE Awards Web site at http://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/3131/41367725 or contact IEEE Awards Activities, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331 USA; tel: +1 732 562 3844; fax: +1 732 981 9019; e-mail: <mailto:awards@ieee.org>

- The IEEE Power & Energy Library

Authoritative information for innovative organizations

* Online access to vital information from any IEEE journal or conference

* Industry-focused search and browse

* Four access models, based on your research needs

* Affordable for any-sized organization

Free trial for utilities & power organizations: http://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/3136/41367725

Obituary

Derek Sawyer, longtime time IEEE member and volunteer, passed away at home from a heart attack on Friday, June 2nd 2006. Derek was Engineering Manager at Ontario Hydro till his retirement some three years ago.