IEEE Victoria Section Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary

On August 18, 2006, the Victoria Section hosted the 50th Anniversary Banquet at the University Club, University of Victoria. Section’s special guests were Dr. Bob Hanna (IEEE Canada President), Dr. Harold Page, and Prof. Vijay Bhargava (UBC).

Victoria Section Chair David Gregson (left) is receiving the 50th Anniversary banner from IEEE Canada President Bob Hanna.

The Section was created as a local organization of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) on October 5, 1956. It became an IEEE Section in 1963, when AIEE and its sister society IRE (the Institute of Radio Engineers) merged.

Dr. Bob Hanna, IEEE Canada President, made a presentation congratulating Victoria Section and announcing “IEEE Pacific Rim Vijay Bhargava Scholarship” to be awarded to IEEE Students Attending at University of Victoria.

Prof. Vijay Bhargava (right on the picture below) is a long time IEEE Volunteer with distinguished record. He is a Fellow of IEEE, EIC, RSC and CAE. Among multiple awards he has received are: IEE (UK) A.F. Bulgin Premium, Royal Society of Canada - Eadie Medal, EIC the John B. Stirling Award, IEEE Centennial Medal, IEEE Canada's McNaughton Gold Medal, IEEE Larry K. Wilson Transnational Award, IEEE Harden Pratt Award, IEEE Millennium Medal.

Prof. Bhargava’s IEEE activities include:

•         President of the Information Theory Society

•         IEEE Vice President - Regional Activities Board

•         IEEE Director - Region 7

•         Chair - Montreal Section 

•         Chair - Victoria Section

•         Founder of IEEE Canada CCECE Conf. in 1987

•         Nominated by IEEE Board as a Candidate for the Office of President-Elect in 1996 and 2002

•         Member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society

At the IEEE Victoria Section 50th Anniversary Banquet. 

 - IEEE Southern Alberta Section - September 27, 2006

Alain has a MEng in Computer Engineering (RMC 1992) and a BENG in Computer Engineering (RMC 1986). He is a member of IEEE, the IEEE Computer Society, and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

Martin Plumer

Newfoundland-Labrador Section

Department of Physics and Physical Oceanography
Memorial University of Newfoundland

 Education

Ph.D. 1984 University of Toronto.  Condensed Matter Theory.

          Thesis: Theory of the Spin-Density-Wave State of MnSi.

M.Sc. 1979 Dalhousie University.  Condensed Matter Theory.

           Thesis: Investigation of Many-Electron Systems Through the Density  Functional Formalism.                     

B.Sc.  1977 St. Francis Xavier University.  Honours Physics.

            Senior report:  Thermal Expansion in Holmium.

Mustapha C.E. Yagoub P.Eng., ing.

Ottawa Section

 Undergraduate Program Coordinator and Assistant Professor

Ph.D. (Institut National Polytechnique, France)
Magister. (Ecole Nationale Polytechnique, Algeria)
Dipl.Eng. (Ecole Nationale Polytechnique, Algeria

Research Interests

 Major field

  Microwave and millimeter-wave devices, circuits and systems

 Minor fields

  Applied electromagnetics

  Microwave circuit CAD

  Neural nets for microwave applications

  Linear and nonlinear modeling

  Optimization methods 

Soosan Beheshti

Toronto Section

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ryerson University

system dynamics, modeling and control

data processing

statistical learning theory and generalization

Ben Liang

Toronto Section

Assistant Professor
The Edward S. Rogers Sr.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Toronto

Research interests are in developing theories, algorithms, and protocols for communication networks and mobile computing. Recent research topics include ad hoc and sensor networks, mobility and resource management, multimedia networking, heterogeneous network integration, and information assurance.

Ben Liang received honors simultaneous B.Sc. (valedictorian) and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York, in 1997 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering with computer science minor from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 2001. In the 2001 academic year, he was a visiting lecturer and post-doctoral research associate at Cornell University. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor in 2002.

He received an Intel Foundation Graduate Fellowship in 2000 toward the completion of his Ph.D. dissertation, the Best Paper Award at the IFIP Networking conference in 2005, and the Runner-up Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Wired/Wireless Networks in 2006.

Website portal: www.tryengineering.org

 Two years ago, while at a national conference for college admissions counsellors Douglas Gorham, director of educational outreach, IEEE noticed people were hungry for information on careers in engineering. Gorham watched counsellors at the conference rush to the engineering table for information pamphlets.

 Encouraged, Gorham said the clear need for information gave him  confidence that a project he'd been working on was moving in the right direction.

 The project? A website portal: www.tryengineering.org, containing information on careers in engineering. Geared towards students, parents, teachers and guidance counsellors the site includes links to profiles of an engineer, tips on how to become an engineer, a university finder, lesson plans for teachers, engineering games and the option to ask a question to practising engineers.

 The website, originally started out as a searchable database, providing a list of accredited universities that have programs in engineering. In North America, there are 507.

 Gorham didn't tackle this ongoing project alone. Some of the key players involved are Moshe Kam, IEEE vice president for educational activities, IBM, the New York Hall of Science and Yvonne Pelham, IEEE educational outreach program manager. IBM designed the site, the New York Hall of Science houses the site, but both Gorham and Kam, were the key players in getting the website going.

 "We wanted to impact and educate school counsellors," said Gorham. "The site contains all the flavours of engineering," he said.

 Tryengineering.org has had 57,000 hits or clicks to the home page and 8,500 visitors since it's launch on June 5. Yvonne Pelham, Educational Outreach Program Manager for IEEE educational activities in Piscataway, NJ, defines a visitor as someone who has spent at least twenty minutes on the site clicking on several pages. 70 per cent of the visitors so far are from the U.S., and the site has even received questions from students as far away as the Middle East. The partners involved in www.tryengineering.org are in the midst of planning a bigger promotional splash set for this September and October, with Canada at the top of its agenda.

 With students investigating their careers now as early as 15, the TryEngineering website is a great tool, designed to answer all of their questions. Sleek and professional looking with profiles of practising engineers, the website caters to the curious seeker who does not know too much about the field.

 Engineers such as John Harding, a hardware development engineer for Hewlett Packard Company give honest and frank advice in about two sentences or less and profiles, such as the one featured on himself highlight the education, the job description, and a brief interview with engineers in various fields. 

John Harding, one of seven

engineers profiled on the tryengineering.com webiste

Tryengineering.org features those in chemical, civil, computer, electrical, material, mechanical and nuclear engineering.

 For teachers, looking for lessons for the more mathematically inclined, there are lesson plans. The activities teach both students and teachers how engineering can play a role in daily life, bettering the items we use daily, such as plastic, and perhaps take for granted. The lesson plans tell teachers what their student will gain from each lesson. Activities such as Simple Machines and Goldburger To Go, show parents, teachers and students alike how engineering is used in everyday life.

 If searching for a university on the site becomes a bit too tedious, users can either play a game or ask an expert about the industry to take a little breather.

Jennifer Kai

New Tech Insider Webinar Series from IEEE Spectrum Online

Montreal

• Introduction to Antenna Concepts and Testing

Oct. 11-13, 2006
International Institute of Telecommunications, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
For more information please visit http://ieee.ca/news/current/www.site.uottawa.ca/~mcnamara/shortcourse.pdf

• LEOS Annual 2006

October 29th-November 2nd, 2006
Hilton Montreal Bonaventure Hotel,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
For more information please visit http://www.ieee.org/organizations/society/leos/LEOSCONF/LEOS2006/

• SMC 2007

Oct. 7-10, 2007
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
For more information please visit www.ieeesmc.org/

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Ottawa

• Introduction to Antenna Concepts and Testing

Oct. 11-13, 2006
International Institute of Telecommunications, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
For more information please visit http://ieee.ca/news/current/www.site.uottawa.ca/~mcnamara/shortcourse.pdf

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Toronto

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

• IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

28-29 Sept 2006
Renaissance Downtown hotel.
Toronto, Ontario
For more information please visit http://eldar.mathstat.uoguelph.ca/dashlock/CIBCB2006/index.html

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Kitchener-Waterloo

• Toyota Plant Tour in Cambridge

October 30, 2006
Bus Stop at Davis Centre on
University of Waterloo Campus
For more information please visit www.cambridgetourism.com/sub/Toyota/default.asp

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Winnipeg

• 2006 Graduate Student Conference

October 15, 2006
University Centre,
Univ. of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB
For more information please visit http://ewh.ieee.org/reg/7/winnipeg/events/e2006/conf/gradc06.html

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Many IEEE Canada sections maintain their own listings of upcoming events:

Canadian Atlantic Kitchener-Waterloo Montreal Newfoundland and Labrador New Brunswick Northern Canada

Ottawa Southern Alberta Toronto Vancouver Winnipeg

For more IEEE conferences, visit IEEE Conference Search at http://www.ieee.org/conferencesearch/.

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