Chairman’s Corner

It is with great sadness that we announce that John Wiley died at home of an apparent heart attack on Thursday evening, 2/28. His family in Washington has been notified and will make the necessary arrangements.

John had done an excellent job in revitalizing the local chapter of the IEEE Computer Society and will be greatly missed by us. He had been employed at Intergraph for more than a decade, where he administered the Quality Management Systems (ISO 9001) and contributed to Software Process Improvement (S/W-CMM and CMMI) efforts. Before that he worked for BDM, and many other companies. His colorful background included lots of work and education in Software Engineering, Music, and the Culinary Arts. He was an active member of ACM, ACDM, ASQ, HAVBUG, HUNTUG, IEEE, IIA, NDIA, and had been active with IABC, Old Crows, SOLE, SSP, and STC. He also farmed in Tennessee.

Engineers Week Activities

Hope everyone was able to participate in the Engineer's week activities. The engineering community concluded its Engineer's Week activity with a banquet at the Marriott on Friday, the 22nd of February. As part of the celebration, the Section presented Outstanding Engineer, Outstanding Educator, and Service awards.

It should also be noted that our own Willy Albanes has also been selected as the Region 3's Outstanding Engineer of the year. I would like to extend my kudos to Willy for his outstanding service.

See Will Preussel's accompanying article, with Jim Kennedy's photographs, for more details.

Technical Societies

Please take a peek at the upcoming technical society activities. We have started the year on a good note, with special thanks to the Society Chairs, making it a banner year. The Computer Society has a full schedule of activities lined up from now till end of the year. See the accompanying Computer Society meeting announcements for the meetings for the next five weeks and their web site, http://ewh.ieee.org/r3/huntsville/cs/ for the meetings scheduled for the rest of the year.

North Alabama Regional and State Science and Engineering Fairs

We are getting close to the Science Fair activities and would like assistance from our community of engineers. If you would like to help and be part of the judging process please contact Jim Kennedy at jamesrk@bellsouth.net. The Regional Science Fair is scheduled for 11-14 of March at Calhoun College. The State Science Fair will be on April 4th and 5th at UAH. See Jim Kennedy's accompanying article.

IEEE Computer Society Offers Distance Learning Courses Free to Members

During 2002, members of the IEEE Computer Society have fee-free access to 100 interactive, Web-based course titles in 17 subject areas. Topics include Java, project management, Cisco, Windows network security, Unix and HTML. Many of the courses are designed to help computing professionals prepare for certification exams. For more information, visit the IEEE Computer Society's Distance Learning Campus at http://computer.org/DistanceLearning/.

IEEE Works to Create New Electronic Voting Equipment Standard

The IEEE is working with the U.S. National Association of State Election Directors and Federal Election Commission (FEC) to create new standards for voting equipment. More than 130 engineers from manufacturers; local, state and federal bodies; other countries; and interested parties have joined in a two-year effort to write an advanced IEEE technical standard to modernize voting equipment technology. The IEEE 1583 Committee will update the FEC's 1990 standard to include software-based systems and address how to serve the disabled voting population. The Committee also will examine how to prevent mobile electronic devices from interfering with electronic polling equipment and ensure that each vote cast is counted and confidential. For more information on IEEE 1583, Voting Equipment Standard, visit IEEE Standards at http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/1583/.