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Annual Meeting and Holiday Party

On Thursday, December 8th, the IEEE Huntsville Section met for the Annual Meeting and HATS Holiday Party.  Both events were hosted at the Huntsville Botanical Garden.  During the annual meeting, we recognized the accomplishments of 2009, voted to approve the slate of officers for the year 2010 and recognized our volunteers for 2009 with a framed certificate of appreciation for their outstanding work.  We also approved the 2010 Operating Budget.

The slate of officers for 2010 are as follows: myself, Courtney Spivey (Chair), Bob Robinson (Vice Chair), Tommy McGuire (Treasurer), Roger Bolton (Secretary), J.D. Daniels (Member-At-Large), and Doug Parker (Member-At-Large).  I am excited to have two new faces, J.D. and Roger, on the Executive Committee.

Immediately following the IEEE Huntsville Annual Meeting, we joined the HATS Holiday Party in the Arbor Room of the Botanical Garden.  This was a very nice way to meet and greet members of other technical organizations.

IEEE_05_AnnualMeet_091208

Courtney Spivey
December 16th, 2009

Makers Local 256 Open House

Saturday, December 5th, the IEEE GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) attended an open house at the Makers Local 256.   If you haven’t visited the Makers, you’re really missing out.  Among the many gadgets and inventions, I was really wowed by the full reproduction Ghostbusters costumes, including the ghost trap.  These costumes were carefully crafted with painstaking attention to detail by Wayne Neumeier, and his three Ghostbuster pals.  But let’s not forget the old school Geiger counter, retrofitted with a WiFi detector, the webcam3D scanner or the beverage cooling system complete with dispensing nozzles.  Where else can you enjoy a friendly Oscilloscope tennis match with the ambiance of a Jacob’s Ladder pleasantly zap-zap-zapping away in the background?  Only, I suppose, at the Makers Local 256.

Wayne the Ghostbuster

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Courtney Spivey
December 11th, 2009

2010 Alabama Regional Future City Competition

The IEEE Huntsville Section is proud to host the 2010 Alabama Regional Future City Competition.

Date: Saturday, January 16th, 2010
Time: 7:30 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.
Location: UAHuntsville Shelby Center, Huntsville, AL

The 2010 ARFCC would not be possible without the patronage of our corporate sponsors. These corporations are committed to enriching the education of our youth to make all of our futures bright. On behalf of the ARFCC and the many students that you have reached, thank you for your support.
The 2010 patronage levels are:

  • Platinum Sponsorship: $3,000
  • Gold Sponsorship: $2,000
  • Silver Sponsorship: $1,000
  • Bronze Sponsorship: $500
  • Special Award Sponsorship: $300

Take action

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Sonya Dillard
December 7th, 2009

Makers Local 256 Open House

Come and check out Makers Local 256 during their open house on Dec 5th from 1-4 p.m. Makers Local 256 is a group of like-minded individuals who have created a hacker space located in Huntsville, AL. We are a nonprofit organization helping to join experienced and inexperienced tinkerers in an educational setting to design and work on projects in all hobbyist/DIY fields, particularly where projects overlap multiple fields.

IEEE Huntsville Section GOLD chapter is sponsoring this event, but you do not need to be an IEEE member to attend. Please post this announcement and encourage others to attend as well. You can coordinate with or contact GOLD Chair John Grimm for additional details at the email addresses below, but please attend for a great time!

Makers Local 256 is located at:
203 Brown St.
Huntsville, AL 35805

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Courtney Spivey
December 2nd, 2009

News And Events For The Huntsville IEEE EMC Chapter

For all news and events regarding the Huntsville IEEE EMC Chapter and the EMC Society  please check out our online newsletter at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/acstrial/newsletters/summer09/chapter_chatter.html

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Doug Parker
November 19th, 2009

JCAMS Presents Dr. Robert McMillan on Radar

Joint Communications, Antennas & Propagations, and Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (JCAMS)

“A Probabilistic Model of the Radar Signal-to-Clutter and Noise Ratio”

Thursday December 10, 2009 at 11:15 am

Speaker: Dr. Robert McMillan

Meeting Location: ADTRAN Inc. Executive Cafeteria

The Huntsville chapter of the IEEE Joint Communications, Antennas & Propagations, and Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (JCAMS) invite you to attend a technical meeting on December 10, 2009. The program will begin at 11:15 am Dr. McMillan’s presentation beginning at approximately 11:45 am and end about 1:00 pm.

Synopsis:
Four effects relevant to the determination of the ratio of radar signal to clutter and noise are considered.  These effects are atmospheric turbulence, target fluctuations based on the Swirling models, zero-mean Gaussian background and receiver noise, and lognormal-distributed clutter.  Radar return signal levels are affected by target fluctuations and atmospheric turbulence, characterized by a variant of the Rayleigh distribution and a lognormal distribution, respectively.  Since these distributions are not independent and identically distributed (IID), they cannot be simply added, and must be treated by combining them in a manner similar to convolution.  Also, clutter and noise are not IID, and must be combined in a similar way.  The ratio of these two combinations comprises a probabilistic model of the ratio of radar signal to clutter and noise.  This ratio is the probability that a given signal level will be achieved in the presence of atmospheric and target scintillations divided by the probability that a given clutter and noise level will be observed.  To determine the ratio of the actual signal to clutter and noise, we must multiply these probabilities by the mean powers in these phenomena, as will be shown later. Several cases of interest were treated by varying the average radar cross section, the log intensity standard deviation of turbulence, the radar threshold-to-noise and signal-to-noise ratios, and the distributions of lognormal clutter.

The presentations are open to anyone interested in the topic: IEEE membership is not required to attend.

Seating is limited, so please RSVP by email to Eric Grigorian at  as soon as you can, but no later than close of business December 8, 2009 if you want to attend.

I hope to see you there!

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Eric Grigorian
November 16th, 2009

Huntsville EMC Wins Prestigious Award

Congratulations to the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Huntsville Chapter!  They have been selected from among all EMC chapters worldwide as the recipient of the Most Improved Chapter Award from the international IEEE EMC Society.  This award signifies outstanding improvement in membership services and establishing goodwill for the EMC Society.  It was presented to the EMC Huntsville Society Chair, Doug Parker, at the International EMC Symposium in Austin, Texas in August of this year.
Under the leadership of Doug and many other local volunteers, the Huntsville EMC Chapter has made a huge impact in the local technical community.  Each year, they host frequent technical meetings that are free of charge and open to everyone in the community.  EMC brings renowned IEEE Distinguished Lecturers to share their technical knowledge in training sessions and hosts a bi-annual tabletop event that links industry, academia and professionals in the EMC discipline.
Our EMC Society also supports other local organizations and events.  This year, they reached out to engineering students by supporting IEEE UAH Student Branch events, speaking to the UAH engineering students, and purchasing EMC technical books as a donation to the UAH library.  They donated heavily to the HATS STEDTRAIN grant, a program that links local K-12 school projects with much needed funding.  They also co-sponsored the IEEE 125th Anniversary Celebration at the United States Space and Rocket Center.
The IEEE Huntsville EMC Society was chartered in 2006, and under the care of its first Chair, Glenn Shelby, it has consistently provided outstanding technical events to the community.  Through the past several years, the EMC Society has continued to gain momentum.  Let’s all congratulate Doug and the other volunteers Huntsville’s IEEE EMC Society on this lucrative award.
For information about the IEEE EMC Huntsville Chapter, please visit: http://ewh.ieee.org/r3/huntsville/emc/
For information about the IEEE EMC 2009 Symposium, please visit: http://www.emc2009.org/
For information about the HATS STEDTRAIN Seed Grant, please visit http://www.hats.org/STEDTRAIN/stedtr.shtml

Congratulations to the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Huntsville Chapter!  They have been selected from among all EMC chapters worldwide as the recipient of the Most Improved Chapter Award from the international IEEE EMC Society.  This award signifies outstanding improvement in membership services and establishing goodwill for the EMC Society.  An award certificate and $250 were was presented to the EMC Huntsville Society Chair, Doug Parker, at the International EMC Symposium in Austin, Texas in August of this year.

Under the leadership of Doug and many other local volunteers, the Huntsville EMC Chapter has made a huge impact in the local technical community.  Each year, they host frequent technical meetings that are free of charge and open to everyone in the community.  EMC brings renowned IEEE Distinguished Lecturers to share their technical knowledge in training sessions and hosts a bi-annual tabletop event that links industry, academia and professionals in the EMC discipline.

Our EMC Society also supports other local organizations and events.  This year, they reached out to engineering students by supporting IEEE UAH Student Branch events, speaking to the UAH engineering students, and purchasing EMC technical books as a donation to the UAH library.  They donated heavily to the HATS STEDTRAIN Seed Grant, a program that links local K-12 school projects with much needed funding.  They also co-sponsored the IEEE 125th Anniversary Celebration at the United States Space and Rocket Center.

The IEEE Huntsville EMC Society was chartered in 2004, and under the care of its first three Chairmen, Paul Stover, Glenn Shelby and Doug Parker, it has consistently provided outstanding technical events to the community.  Through the past several years, the EMC Society has continued to gain momentum.  Let’s all congratulate Doug and the other volunteers of Huntsville’s IEEE EMC Society for this prestigious award.

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Courtney Spivey
September 1st, 2009

Chair's Corner

It has been longer than usual since our last LiveWire article, and we have lots of news to report. First, I invite all of our local IEEE members to join our IEEE Huntsville Section LinkedIn group. The group has been growing steadily since it was created by Past Chair Dr. Belur Dasarathy in December 2008. This is a great way to stay in touch with other members in the area, and to learn about upcoming events and opportunities to participate in our events.

We welcome Ed Worley to the Huntsville Section. Ed is an IEEE Life Member and former Programs Chair from Fort Worth, Texas. We hope that you find Huntsville a great place and help us make it better. On May 12th and 13th, the NASA ARMY Systems and Software Engineering Forum was hosted at Marshall Space Flight Center. This free conference was sponsored in part by the IEEE Computer Society. Bob Robinson was instrumental in providing support for this event on behalf of the Section.

May 16th was the 125th anniversary of IEEE, and the IEEE Huntsville Section celebrated with a free robotics demonstration at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. If you missed this event, be sure to catch up by reading the news article. Those of you who were able to attend got a chance to meet many of our volunteers, who facilitated this event. Thanks to Tommy McGuire, Doug Parker, Bob Robinson, Keith Jadus, John Grimm, Renee Coulter, Ed Worley, Eric Grigorian and Frank Parris, all of whom assisted at this event. And special thanks to the IEEE EMC Society, who made a very generous financial contribution to this event.

On May 21st, the EMC Society hosted a technical lecture by Dr. Michael Hopkins, on the subject of ESD susceptibility and scanning. The EMC Society is one of our most active technical societies. Be sure to review Doug Parker’s summaries of their recent activities. In May the Control Systems Society also hosted a technical lecture, check out Wayne Kendrick’s meeting summary.

The annual Professional of the Year Banquet, hosted by the Huntsville Association of Technical Societies (HATS) was celebrated on June 11th. This year, the IEEE Huntsville Section awarded this honor to Dr. Bill Seidler of The Boeing Company. Congratulations to Bill on this great accomplishment. Will Preussel, the Chair of our Awards Committee, along with Woody Williams, collected nominations and worked with the Awards Committee to select Dr. Seidler as this year’s honoree.

Tennessee Valley BEST is coming up this fall. We will be looking for volunteers to act as mentors to the competing students, and to assist with the event itself. This is an opportunity to share your knowledge and inspire some young minds! I hope to see you at some of our upcoming events. And thanks to all of our volunteers who have helped out these past few months. We have done some great work! Thank you all.

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Courtney Spivey
July 4th, 2009

Join Our LinkedIn Group

I would like to invite all of our local IEEE members to join our IEEE Huntsville Section LinkedIn group . The group has been growing steadily since it was created by Past Chair Dr. Belur Dasarathy in December of 2008.  This is a great way to stay in touch with other members in the area, and to learn about upcoming events and opportunities to participate in our events.

To join,  please have your IEEE member number handy.

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Courtney Spivey
June 2nd, 2009

Huntsville Section Celebrates IEEE 125th Anniversary

This year, IEEE met a milestone at 125 years since it s establishment.  The IEEE Huntsville Section celebrated by hosting a free party at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.  More than 500 IEEE members, friends, family and robotics enthusiasts turned out for the event, which included free admission to the U.S. Space and Rocket Cetner museum, as well as a complimentary lunch.  Some lucky partygoers got an added bonus of door prizes and giveaways such as tickets to the new Star Trek movie at the Space and Rocket Center’s iMax Theater.

The robotics demo was a unique event that brought together robotics teams from local competitions including BEST, FIRST and ACTE, as well as individual and classroom projects.  Lee High School impressed everyone with their competition robot from FIRST, which hurled huge balls thorugh the air.  Priceville High School brought their own remote controlled robot to show off, while Hampton Cove Elementary School brought a Nintendo Storm robotics project.  Chris Bero demonstrated his 1st place project from ACTE.

For those of you who missed this one, it was a truly special event, but don’t worry – there will be more to come!

Photos courtesy of Frank Parris.

02-IEEE-125th-5-16-09

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Courtney Spivey
May 13th, 2009

Follow the Section online

Section members meet up on a number of sites. We encourage you to participate in these sites, and to let us know if we are missing any that interest you.

LiveWire

For over a decade, the Section has keeped members up to date using LiveWire. You can now also subscribe to the LiveWire RSS feed.

LinkedIn

Many section members are linked to the Section’s LinkedIn group.

Flickr

The section uses Flickr to share event pictures, so checkout the Section’s Flickr account.

YouTube

The Section has a YouTube channel that hosts our videos and links to other IEEE videos.

Goolge Calendar

Who has time to check the site for calendar updates? You can include the Section’s calendar into your own calendar using either XML or iCal.

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Matthew Spivey
May 7th, 2009

Welcoming a New Life Member

I would like to welcome Ed Worley to the Huntsville Section. Ed is an IEEE Life Member and former Programs Chair from Fort Worth, Texas. We hope that you find Huntsville a great place to be.

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Courtney Spivey
April 21st, 2009

Chair's Corner

The month of March has been very busy for the Huntsville Section.  We have had several educational activities, a special announcment from the EMC Society, and even more on the horizon.

The North Alabama Science and Engineering Fair was hosted at the UAH Shelby Center on March 4-6.  Frank Parris and I judged the projects and were blown away by the ingenuity of our regional middle school and high school kids.  The IEEE Huntsville Section granted special awards for some of the most impressive projects.   On March 26th, Jim Covington, Willie Fitzpatrick, Eric Grigorian, Jim Kennedy, and Bob Robinson judged the Northwest Alabama Council for Technology in Education (ACTE) team programming category.  Check out Frank’s articles about ACTE and NARSEF to find out who the winners were.

The North Alabama Science and Engineering Fair was hosted at the UAH Shelby Center on March 4-6.  Frank Parris and I judged the projects and were blown away by the ingenuity of our regional middle school and high school kids.  The IEEE Huntsville Section granted special awards for some of the most impressive projects.   On March 26th, Jim Covington, Willie Fitzpatrick, Eric Grigorian, Jim Kennedy, and Bob Robinson judged the Northwest Alabama Council for Technology in Education (ACTE) team programming category.  Check out Frank’s articles about ACTE and NARSEF to find out who the winners were.

Our own UAH Student Branch participated in SoutheastCon 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia.  Bob Robinson and I both attended, and we participated in some great sessions hosted by IEEE Region 3, which focused on increasing the benefits of membership, solving problems in K-12 education and assisting our members in career development.

We are very excited to announce that IEEE’s national EMC Society plans to host its annual Board of Directors meeting here in Huntsville in November of 2009.  Hats off to Huntsville’s EMC Society for doing an excellent job all around, and showing off our local talent.  Doug’s article will tell you more about this event.

In the next issue of the LiveWire, look for a review of the Alabama Science and Engineering Fair (ASEF), held on Friday, April 3rd.  Also, 125th Anniversary of IEEE is coming up on May 13th.  The Huntsville Section plans to host a family oriented event that will feature some local robotics talent that will be open to the public for everyone to enjoy.  More details are coming soon, so keep your eyes and ears open!

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Courtney Spivey
March 31st, 2009

2009 Engineers Week Award Winners

Congratulations to the 2009 IEEE Huntsville Section Special Award Winners: Tony Luchner, Annie Saylor, Augusta Johnson, David Gross, and Willie Fitzpatrick.

For more, see the full article describing the IEEE Huntsville Section Awardees at the 2009 E-Week Banquet by Will Preussel.

Photos courtesy of Woody Williams.

IEEE_08H_EngrAwards_090219

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Courtney Spivey
March 9th, 2009

2009 Alabama Regional Future City Competition

Event Information

The 2009 Alabama Regional Future City Competition was hosted on Saturday, January 7th, 2009 at the UAHuntsville Shelby Center.

UAHuntsville Campus Map

Photos

Click the photo to view photo Album.
AAA9

Winning Schools

  1. Life Christian Academy, Toney, AL
  2. Academy for Science and Foreign Languages (ASFL), Huntsville, AL
  3. Discovery Middle School, Madison, AL

Participating Schools

  • Chambers Academy: Huntsville, AL
  • Huntsville Middle School: Huntsville, AL
  • Challenger Middle School: Huntsville, AL
  • Eastwood Middle School: Cottondale, AL
  • Hampton Cove Middle School: Huntsville, AL
  • Homewood Middle School: Homewood, AL
  • Episcopal Day School: Gadsden, AL
  • Riverton Middle School: Huntsville, AL
  • Wilkerson Middle School: Birmingham, AL
  • Haleyville Middle School: Haleyville, AL
  • Whitesburg Middle School: Huntsville, AL
  • Liberty Middle School: Madison, AL

Corporate Sponsors

Gold COLSA Corporation
COLSA_logo
Silver AEgis
AEgis-Logo
Westar Aerospace and Defense Group
westar_logo

In Kind Sponsors

  • IEEE Huntsville Section – Host Organization
  • Bentley Systems – Postage and Printing
  • Jacobs ESTS Group – Preliminary and Finals Judging
  • Missile Defense Agency – Volunteers
  • American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)
  • AUVSI Pathfinder Chapter
  • American Solar Association (ASA)
  • Alabama Modeling and Simulation Council (AMSC)
  • Huntsville Association of Technical Societies (HATS)
  • System Safety Society (SSS) Tennessee Valley Chapter
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Sonya Dillard
January 8th, 2009

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