Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

FIRST Robotics Competition

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR OFFICERS FOR THE NEW YORK SECTION FOR 2008 - PAGE 15

Periodical Time Sensitive Material

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NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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On t he c o ver : Ac t ion ph o tog ra ph s t ak en b y J i t he ndr a d u r ing t h e F i r s t Rob o t i c s com pet i t i o n . T he ce n te r ph o to s hows th e MT A te am, f r om l e f t t o r i gh t : J i t he ndr a Yog aras a , J ig n asa Ra y, Am i r Ras h id , Ra sh le ig h Tu dor an d A j a y j oe Koo la .

New York Section Officers

OFFICERS SECTION CHAIR – Stanley Karoly VICE CHAIR OPERATIONS – David M. Weiss VICE CHAIR SECTION ACTIVITIES – Warner W. Johnston TREASURER – David K. Horn SECRETARY – Darlene Rivera

COMMITTEE CHAIRS AWARDS & RECOGNITION– Amelie Gong BY-LAWS – William Coyne CHAPTER ORGANIZATION – Bertil C. Lindberg CONFERENCE COORDINATOR — Leon Katz EDUCATION – Henry Bertoni HISTORIAN – Melvin Olken LONG RANGE PLANNING – William Perlman MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT – Robert M. Pellegrino METRO ENGINEERING SOCIETY COUNCIL — Michael A. Miller METRO SECTION ACTIVITIES COUNCIL — Robert M. Pellegrino MEMBERS-AT-LARGE — Charles P. Rubenstein & Peter Mauzey P.A.C.E. – Martin Izaak PUBLICATIONS – Frank E. Schink PUBLICITY – Nick Nonis PUBLIC RELATIONS – Matthew Nissen SPECIAL EVENTS – Ralph Tapino STUDENT ACTIVITIES – Balvinder Blah TAPPAN ZEE SUBSECTION – Shu-Ping Chang WEBMASTER – Harold Ruchelman

EDITORIAL STAFF MANAGING EDITOR – Marlen K. Waaijer EVENTS CALENDAR – Jean Redmond FRONTPAGE DESIGN – Jithendra Yogarasa LIFE MEMBER SECTION & REVIEWS – Amitava Dutta-Roy WEBPAGE SUPPORT – Victor Butler

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NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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MESSAGE FROM STANLEY KAROLY

(stkar@ieee.org)

I usually get up at 4:30 on workday mornings

to catch a 6:00am bus. Before I leave home I l isten to a popular radio sta-t ion – the actual station identif ication is not impor-tant – but a recent news segment caught my at-tention and I would l ike to talk about that because I think that is important. It was a report on the em-ployment opportunit ies for the college graduating class of 2007.

It appears that there wil l be abundant employ-ment opportunit ies for people graduating with a healthcare or business degree, but for graduates with a Mechanical Engineering or other engineer-ing degree employment opportunit ies wil l be l im-ited. I found this statement to be confusing, incon-sistent and confounding since all along I ’ve heard that we in the U.S. suffer from a shortage of engi-neering graduates and that there are more job op-portunit ies than engineering graduates to f i l l them, and that is the reason why we need to outsource engineering tasks and have foreign engineers come to the U.S. to work. This news report there-fore turned what I was lead to believe upside down.

I get even more confused when I read articles or studies in magazines, or newspapers, which cannot agree or disagree on whether the U.S. has an actual and real engineering graduate problem or not. I remember reading somewhere that the definit ion for “engineering graduate” in other countries may differ from what we in the U.S. term an “engineering graduate.”

I recently read an article where I believe I read that the U.S. graduates about 70,000 engi-neers per year, while India and China combined, had I believe, one mill ion engineering graduates per year. I also recollect that there was some con-cern as to whether or not three year degrees were being counted as engineering degrees in these countries.

My understanding is that in the U.S. an B.S. in engineering takes about four years to complete and that i t requires between 120 and 144 credits.; well at least 120+ credits. If other countries grant “engineering degrees” in three years and the re-quirement is less than 120 credits, how can we

make a fair comparison between the qualif ications of “engineers” with degrees from U.S. universit ies and “engineers” with degrees from foreign univer-sit ies?

My question is: Are these news reports really useful? I really don’t know what the current num-ber of available new hire engineering posit ions in the U.S. is. But whatever it is, it does not say any-thing about the number of available new hire engi-neering posit ions four or f ive years from now.

Therefore I wil l continue to encourage our high school students to become interested in engineer-ing, and take math and science classes, because the f igures that reflect today’s situation do not necessari ly reflect the future. We wil l always need engineers, and we also need doctors and lawyers, i f only to f i l l the gap that may arise due to al l the “baby boomers’ who anticipate to retire or leave the work force.

In addit ion we can continue to debate the is-sue of the need for more engineering school graduates and the differences between degrees within the IEEE. We can also debate the reasons why more of our high school students don’t go into engineering f ields. We could also debate the question or issues of professional rewards. I be-l ieve I read somewhere that one reason why high school students are less interested in becoming engineers is because they constantly read about al l the money, bonuses, and perks that await busi-ness graduates. Let’s hear your comments. Stanley Karoly

The staff of the NY IEEE Monitor and the Executive Committee of the

IEEE NY Section congratulate five Members from the

Tappan Zee METSAC Section who have been promoted to the

Senior level in January and February, 2007.

Diao Yixin Huang Han

Kudva Prabhakar Lung Hsiang-Lan

Naphade Milind

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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In this issue

Masthead & submission guidelines - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2

Message from the NY Section Chair - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 3

Message from the editor - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 4

Staff bookmarks - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 4

Calendar of Events for March - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 5

Tappan Zee Tour of Kawasaki Rail Car poster- - - - - - - - 6

Emerging Green Builders Career Fair by Matt Nissen- - - 7

L I S AT 2 0 0 7 c o n f e r e n c e p o s t e r - - - - - - - - 8

LISAT 2007 Conference Schedule- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 9

March SIGNALS Networking Mixer by Amelie Gong - - - 10

2007 GOLD-NY Board by Konal Kumar - - - - - - - - - - - 11

NY Section WIE under new leadership - - - - - - - - - - - 12

P o s t e r f o r P. A . C . E e v e n t - - - - - - - - - - 1 3

Tappan Zee presentation poster - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 14

Call for nominations for officers for the NY Section for the

year 2008 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 15

L o w e r H u d s o n Va l l e y E n g i n e e r i n g E X P O 2 0 0 7

by Balvinder Blah - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 15

WIE AWARD of the YEAR - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 16

Polytechnic University information sessions poster - - - 16

Message from the editor

I n this issue we have four posters for events in May and one poster for an event in June. I

thank Amelie Gong and Matt Nissen for their re-ports on the WIE/GOLD ‘Signals’ Networking event and the Emerging Green Builders Career Fair. Both the GOLD and the WIE Chapter are under new leadership and they have already planned another WIE/GOLD “Signals Networking Mixer” for May 17th. I look forward to meeting the new volunteers who have joined. Undoubtedly we can look forward to many more interesting events in the Fall. The Monitor is taking a summer break, but we wil l be back in September with our next issue. I encourage you to check the NY Section Website (ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/) for late breaking news. You can also f ind an events cal-endar in the public areas of the N Y S e c t i o n O n l i n e C o m m u n i t y (www.ieeecommunities.org/ieee.ny.) It is a good place to look around if you are interested in be-coming a volunteer. You can become a member of this online community by gett ing in touch with the Matt Nissen (matt.nissen@ieee.org), who is the founder of the online community. Our Life Members and Reviews editor Amitava Dutta-Roy is in Brazil this month. We hope to have a report by him in September. Thank you for taking the t ime to read the NY Monitor. Please send your comments, complaints, and suggestions to marlen.k.waaijer@ieee.org. Marlen K. Waaijer SUMMER READING

W hile the Monitor is on summer break I plan to read the “The Deep Economy” by Bil l

McKibben, published by Times Books, 2007 ISBN: 0-8050-7626-3. The following from the author ’s website:

“ In my new book, Deep Economy, I ’ve set out to chal lenge the prevai l ing view of our economy. For the f i rst t ime in human history, “more” is no longer synonymous with “better”—indeed, for many of us, they have become almost oppo-si tes. I want us to think in new ways about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for i t al l . ”

Look for a review in the September issue. What are you reading? Any recommendations for the NY Section members? Feel l ike writ ing a review? E-mail: NYMonitor@ieee.org with your sugges-tions.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR The Monitor received the fol lowing letter from Craig Anderson, who is a member of First Robot-ics team 1660, Harlem Knights. He attends Rice High school.( see our February 2007 issue)

Dear Editor, Robotics has successfully exposed me to the f ields of science and technology. It has been a very excit ing experience these past 2 years in FIRST Robotics. The students I 've worked with are some of the most dedicated students I 've ever met. I enjoyed working with every single student. It 's impossible to NOT make fr iends in Robotics. This activity helped prepared me in many ways in my community. In my High School, I started off as a very quiet person. Robotics is al l about team communication. So now, in my classes I 'm able to make presentations and I know I wil l continue to improve as t ime goes on. I was able to be myself when performing community service in my Day Care Center and Elementary School I used to at-tend. I wil l use the techniques I learned from my mentors and apply them to Engineering when I attend college next year. Craig Anderson

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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CALENDAR OF EVENTS (MARK YOUR CALENDAR)

Friday, May 4, 2007 9:00am - 5:00pm LISAT 2007: Third Annual Conference on Long Island Systems, Applications & Technology Location: Institute for Research & Technology Transfer, Lupton Hall, Farmingdale State College State

University of New York Further information: www.ieee.li/lisat

Wednesday, May 9, 2007– 12:00noon - 2:30pm NY Section Executive Committee meeting Location: Con Edison, 4 Irving Place New York, NY 10003, Room 1549S RSVP required: Paul Sartori sartorip@coned.com No walk-ins allowed for security reasons!

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 6:00pm Tappan Zee Sub Section, ASME International & SME: Tour of Kawasaki Rail Car Led by David Dykstra, Assistant Director, New Car Engineering, Metro-North Railroad Location: KRC's Yonkers Plant, 29 Wells Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10701 (the KRC plant is within sight of the Yonkers train station) RSVP: Advance registration (by May 11, 2007) is required for this meeting . To register e-mail your re-

quest with your name, company/school, address and phone number to: Dr. Shu-Ping Chang (spchang@us.ibm.com) or Robert M. Pellegrino (bobpellegrino@ieee.org)

For updates go to: www.ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/tz Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 6:00pm - 8pm

'Signals' Networking Mixer - WIE/GOLD: Meet IEEE NY Executive Committee members and colleagues Location: PROOF 239 3rd Avenue (between 19th and 20th Street), New York NY 10003 RSVP: WIE Chair Alexandra Gagliotta Alexandra-WIENY@ieee.org or GOLD Chair Kai Chen: k.t.chen@ieee.org

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 - 5:30pm PACE Presents: Jeremy A. O'Brien, Financial Planner, Smith Barney "Planning for your Retirement Years" Location: Urban Engineers of New York, Empire State Building, Suite: 6024, 350 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10118 RSVP: required by May 17, 2007, Joy Oberstein at 631-755-8858, joy.oberstein@smithbarney.com or P.A.C.E. Chair, Martin Izaak 212-736-1255 x2760

Wednesday, June 13, 2007– 3:00pm - 5:00pm NY Section Executive Committee meeting Location: Con Edison, 4 Irving Place New York, NY 10003, Room 1549S RSVP: required e-mail Paul Sartori sartorip@coned.com No walk-ins allowed for security reasons!

Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 7:00pm - 8:00pm, refreshments at 6:30pm Tappan Zee Sub Section Meeting: Dr. Lai-Tee Cheok "Overview of Today's IPTV". Location: Polytechnic University, Westchester Campus, Rm. 23, 40 Saw Mill River Rd, Hawthorne, NY 10532 CEUs: This lecture has been approved for 0.1 CEU credits For updates and detail information go to: www.ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/tz

Friday June 15, 2007 Deadline for submissions for 2008 Executive Committee nominations ( see page 15)

Friday, June 22, 2007 – 9:00am – 4:00pm Columbia Institute for Tele-Information: “Ultra Broadband and the Personal Media Cloud” Location: Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 Cost: non IEEE members $100 regular/IEEE Members: $40 w/ lunch included Further information: www.citi.columbia.edu or John Heywood at jwh2121@columbia.edu

Check the NY Section website: www.ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/ and the NY Section Online Community Calendar: www.ieeecommunities.org/ieee.ny for events that take place during the summer.

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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Tappan Zee Subsection Getting Connected and Staying Connected

Tappan Zee Subsection, ASME International & SME

Present

Tour of Kawasaki Rail Car

Presented By David Dykstra

Assistant Director, New Car Engineering Metro-North Railroad

e-mail: dykstra@mnr.org

Kawasaki Rail Car, Inc. (KRC) was established in 1979 in Philadelphia, Pa., where the company's first project was building light rail cars for the city. As part of Kawa-saki Heavy Industries, Ltd. (KHI), an international business based in Japan, KRC immediately benefited from a railroad heritage that dates back to 1906. The Yonkers plant is equipped for fabrication, assembly, rehabilitation and function, testing of all types of passenger rail cars. In New York, Kawasaki's 520 rail cars in service on New York's Lexington line achieve an average MDBF of 300,000 miles. In the past years, KRC has made over 700 cars for the NYCT, making that transit agency KRC's number one customer.

KRC's Yonkers Plant

29 Wells Ave Yonkers, NY 10701

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 — 6:00PM

(Please plan to arrive between 5:30 - 6:00PM)

Note: the KRC plant is within sight of the Yonkers train station for those wishing to take the train. (Refreshments will be served)

For directions and more information, please visit the IEEE Tappan Zee Subsection website,

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/tz/

ALL ARE INVITED

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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Careers in sustainable development A report by Matt Nissen ( matt.nissen@ieee.org)

O n Saturday, March 3, 2007 the NY Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC)

organized the Emerging Green Builders Career Fair. This New York f irst ever event was hosted by the AIA Center for Architecture. The robust atten-dance – more than two-hundred and fi fty people participated - made it clear that a recruit ing event with a focus on sustainabil i ty was long overdue. The organizers plan to make this an annual event. The Career Fair was sponsored by Silverstein Properties, Inc. and featured some of New York's best architecture, engineering, construction and real estate f irms. Companies were invited to present themselves with recruitment tables where they collected resumes, conducted interviews, and interact with local professionals to promote their f i rm’s sustainable pract ices and projects. Cook+Fox Architects not only apply sustainable practices in their design, but they also implement it in-house and they take great pride in their bro-chures that are printed on 100% recycled paper - surprisingly hard to f ind locally. Job seekers came from far and wide - California to Maine - to f ind and learn about the most excit ing f irms working on Sustainable Development projects al l over the world. They mingled with students from local uni-versit ies - Pratt Institute, PACE University, Fash-ion Institute of Technology (FIT), Parsons School of Design, Polytechnic University, SUNY New Paltze - to name a few. The companies in atten-dance were: ADS Engineers; Aerotek recruit ing; AKF engineers; Arup; Cook+Fox; Davis Langdon; Flack+Kurtz; FXFOWLE; Gensler; Green Depot LLC.; HLW international; Hellmuth Obata + Kassa-baum (HOK); Jaros Baum & Bolles (JB&B); LiRo Architects + Planners; Mancini Duffy; Skanska; Skidmore; Owings & Merri l l (SOM); Structure Tone; Trane; Viridian Energy and Environmental; Wank Adams Slavin...and more.

I went to the fair in my capacity as the Public Relations/Consultants Network Chairman and was please to meet several of our members. Many mentioned they heard about the event via the e-notice invitation and the announcement in the NY IEEE Monitor. The IEEE New York Section would l ike to thank all the volunteers and organizers who contributed to the event’s success, especially Tim Fu and Audi Banny.

Emerging Green Builders NY - part of the New York Chapter of the USGBC - represents a coali-t ion of students and young professionals in the New York City area who want to encourage future leaders to become active in the green building

movement. Their mission is to create a network of emerging green building leaders and to develop opportunit ies for involvement through the USGBC New York chapter to generate momentum for the green building industry in the New York Metropoli-tan area. They periodically host educational semi-nars on green building and they promote social events to enhance the community. They also ar-range green building tours in and around New York City. You can get information on upcoming events and see pictures from past events on their website: http://www.egbny.com.

The IEEE actively supports the furthering of sustainable development and practices. We have an online Sustainable Development community (www.ieeecommunit ies.org/sd) and we are a proud member organization of the Engineers Forum on Sustainabil ity – fol low the Engineer's Forum on Sustainabil ity l ink on www.aaes.org/. U.S. Green Building Council - www.usgbc.org/, 02 Eco-Design Network - www.o2nyc.org/, AIA-NY Chapter - www.aiany.org/

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MARCH SIGNALS NETWORKING MIXER By Amelie Gong (agong@ieee.org)

O n a warm spring l ike evening of March 20, about thirty IEEE members and their fr iends

came to the SIGNALS Mixer at Proof to enjoy a beautiful evening and to meet other members and fr iends. The event was sponsored by the P.A.C.E., GOLD and WIE aff inity groups of the IEEE New York Section and was organized by Matt Nissen, Nikolas Nonis, Alexandra Gagliotta, Kai Chen and other volunteers.

After the f irst round of chatt ing and drinking, Matt Nissen, who is also the publicity chair of New York Section, welcomed everyone and introduced Stanley Karoly, the 2007 Chair of the New York Section to the crowd. Stanley Karoly, who has not missed a SIGNALS mixer since he became chair, welcomed everyone and introduced some New York Section volunteers among whom Amitava Dutta-Roy, a l ifet ime fel low and the secretary of the Life Member aff inity group, Amit Patel, the Northern New Jersey GOLD Chair and Mark Sadick, 2007 Long Island Section Publicity Chair to everyone. Karoly proudly announced that New York Section is one of the most active sections in IEEE and he encouraged young members to be-come more involved and volunteer, because the section’s continuous operation rel ies heavily on the volunteerism of al l IEEE members who l ive and work in the metropolitan area. His humorous remarks further relaxed the atmosphere. At the end of his speech, Darlene Rivera, who is the Secretary of IEEE New York Section Executive Committee and the past chair of the NY IEEE WIE aff inity group, reminded the young attendees that this was a great opportunity to talk to people l ike Stanley Karoly, who is the Chief Electrical Engi-neer of New York City Transit CPM, and other sen-ior members who hold prominent posit ion in their organizations.

After the welcome speeches it was t ime for a game of speed networking. In the next thirty min-

utes, we were to have short conversations with many people in the room to exchange work back-ground information and business cards. By the end of thirty minutes, the person who collected the most business cards is rewarded with the al-ways coveted price — this t ime it was a 1GB flash drive. Even though I was not the winner of the night, I had delightful conversations with a couple of people and learned that they found out about this event through fr iends, from an advert isement in the NY IEEE Monitor or from the New York Section’s website:www.ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/.

Despite an unfortunate miscommunication about the location, this Mixer had a wonderful turnout. The evening was ful l of jokes, laughter and good drinks and food. Among the people who attended were students, engineering professionals and people with no engineering background, who just came to have a good t ime.

The following was submitted by Konal Kumar, who is the 2007 Treasurer for the NY Section GOLD chapter. Konal graduated from Polytechnic University with Bachelor De-gree in Electrical Engineering. He works for the MTA - NYCT for CPM as a Project Manager Intern and, for the past year has worked with the Systems Expansion Group for the design of Communications systems for the following mega-projects: Second Avenue Subway, 7 West Extension, Fulton Street Transit Center, and Cortlandt Street Station. Konal’s responsibilities include the review and coordination of consultant design for some of the following Communica-tions systems: Closed Circuit Television, Access Control, Public Address, Fire Alarm, and SONET/ATM. Konal is working towards acquiring his Professional Engineering license. 2007 GOLD-NY BOARD

K ai Chen is the 2007 Chair for the NY Section GOLD chapter. He fol lows in the footsteps of

Nick Nonis, who is now the new Regional 1 GOLD Coordinator. Kai is a Principal Engineer in the Capital Program Management (CPM) Department at MTA New York City Transit (NYCT). His respon-sibi l ity areas include new and expansion Transit projects in the following systems: Access Control, Closed-Circuit Television, Public Address, Secu-rity and Applications Systems Integration. He first joined IEEE in 1987 as a student, became a mem-ber in 1992, and was accepted as a senior mem-ber in 2006. Kai received his Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering from SUNY - Stony Brook and his Master ’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology. Prior to join-ing MTA NYCT Kai worked in a number of indus-tr ies, including semiconductor processing, intell i-

Photo by Matt Nissen

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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gent transportation systems, aerospace/mil itary and wireless communications at f irms such as IBM, NYS Thruway Authority, BAE Systems, Mo-torola, the Port Authority of NY&NJ and MTA Bridges and Tunnels. Kai is a l icensed Profes-sional Engineer in the states of New York and Pennsylvania.

Jignasa Ray serves as Vice-Chair of New York GOLD chapter in addit ion to her role as Vice-Chair of NY Section WIE aff inity group. Jig-nasa is an electrical engineer with the CPM De-partment for the MTA-NYCT, and she is responsi-ble for designing f iber optics systems for substa-tions and communication rooms. Jignasa also works with consultants for major projects such as the Times Square Shuttle Rehab and 7 West Ex-tension for design guidelines, coordination and review. Jignasa holds a Bachelor Degree in elec-tr ical engineering technology from DeVry Institute of Technology and Exec21 Construction Manage-ment Certif icate in Construction Management from Polytechnic University. She expects to com-plete her Master ’s Degree in transportation man-agement from Polytechnic University in June 2007. Jignasa completed her FE exam and is pursuing her Professional Engineering l icense.

Kai and his team intend to provide programs geared towards recent graduates in developing their ski l ls for transit ion to the workplace and f inding their niche within IEEE technical societ ies and chapters. They wil l continue to collaborate with WIE in the organization of ‘SIGNALS’ net-working events – the next one is scheduled for May 17, 2007.

In April the New York City published its “Inventory of New York City Greenhouse Gas Emission”. Get your copy on www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/ccp_report041007.pdf. According to the report New York City produces nearly one percent (1%) of the nation's green-house gas emissions. The report sets the base-line to which the city wants to measure future im-provements. The NY IEEE Monitor is interested in hearing from companies and people who are working in the New York Metropolitan area with solar energy, wind energy and other alternative power sources. What are your concerns? What are the stumbling blocks? Can we contact you for an interview? Please send e-mail with contact in-formation to NYMonitor@ieee.org.

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WIE/GOLD Meet IEEE NY Executive Committee members and colleagues; participate in our famed speed network-ing contest — bring plenty of business cards! — hors d'oeuvres will be served.

RSVP: WIE Chair Alexandra Gagliotta

Alexandra-WIENY@ieee.org or

GOLD Chair Kai Chen: k.t.chen@ieee.org

for last minute updates: www.ieee.org/nywie/

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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NY SECTION WIE UNDER NEW LEADERSHIP Beside my duties as managing editor for the IEEE New York Monitor I am also the acting Webmaster of the NY Women In Engineering (WIE) affinity group and therefore I want to make a pitch for them. Do you know that less than one percent of the NY Section Women IEEE members are a member of WIE? If you are not one of them I recommend that you join. You can sign-up online when you visit the NY Section WIE website to keep up with news and upcoming events. http://ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/wie/

A s Darlene River , the founder of the NY Sec-tion WIE aff inity group has taken the respon-

sibi l ity of Secretary for the NY Executive Commit-tee; Alexandra Gagliotta has taken the role of Chair of the IEEE WIE NY Section Aff inity Group. Alexandra is employed at MTA New York City Transit with the Department of Capital Program Management. She is the immediate past Vice-Chair of the IEEE WIE NY Section Aff inity Group. Alexandra took the opportunity to introduce her team during the f irst WIE Presentation of the year on January 23rd 2007.

Vice-Chair, Jignasa Ray is employed with the Department of Capital Program Management at MTA New York City Transit. Jignasa designs Fiber Optics Systems for Substations and Communica-tion rooms. She holds a Bachelor in Electrical Engineering Technology from DeVry Institute of Technology and she earned the Exec21 Construc-tion Management Certif icate in Construction Man-agement from Polytechnic University.

Treasurer, Heba Elsayed is employed as a Programmer for the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. She earned a Bache-lor of Arts, Summa Cum Laude, with Honors in Computer Science from Fordham University and a Master of Science in Computer Science from Co-lumbia University School of Engineering and Ap-plied Science. She previously served as Secretary of the IEEE WIE NY Section Aff inity Group. Heba

is also the Editor of the E-notice monthly events calendar to which you can subscribe.

Secretary, Ajda Ozyurt holds a Bachelor's of Science degree from City University of New York of CUNY in Computer Engineering. She works at Sharp Electronics as an Account Executive.

Online Newsletter Editor, Amelie Gong is employed at MTA New York City Transit as an As-sistant Electrical Engineer. She received a Bache-lor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from SUNY - Binghamton. In addit ion, she cur-rently is the IEEE New York Section Awards and Recognit ion Chair. She is a regular contributor to the NY Monitor.*

Alexandra plans to promote IEEE membership and the retention of its women members. She wil l hold technical presentations and seminars to pro-vide knowledge to WIE members so that they may enhance and advance their careers.

*See Amelie’s report on the WIE/Gold event on page 10 this issue.

Left to right: Darlene Rivera, Amelie Gong, Heba Elsayed, Jignasa Ray, Marlen Waaijer and Alexandra Gagliotta . Photo by Kai Chen

Audience participation during the January 23, 2007 presentation of the Professional Development for Engineers & Scien-tists guide by Dr. Mary Lanzerotti. Photo by Kai Chen

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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P.A.C.E. NY Section

Cordially Invites You to Attend a Special Presentation

PLANNING FOR YOUR RETIREMENT YEARS

What will be the sources of your retirement income? What are the advantages of tax-deferred investing? How can the sound principles of financial planning help you achieve your retirement goals? How should you manage your lump-sum distributions?

Guest Speaker: Jeremy A. O’Brien Financial Advisor, Financial Planning Specialist

Smith Barney, Citigroup Global Markets

Tuesday May 22, 2007 — 5:30pm

Urban Engineers Empire State Building 350 5th Ave Suite 6024 New York, NY 10118

Refreshments will be served! Your friends and colleagues are welcome!

Seating is limited. Please reserve your seat(s) today. Smith Barney does not provide tax or legal advice. For such guidance, please consult a qualified tax advisor.

Please RSVP by Thursday, May 17th, 2007 to: Joy Oberstein at (631)755-8858, joy.oberstein@smithbarney.com or Martin Izaak, Chairman of NY PACE at (212) 736-1255 X2760

©2006 Cit igroup Global Markets Inc. Member SIPC. Al l r ights reserved. Smith Barney is a division and service mark of Ci t igroup Global Markets Inc. and i ts af f i l iates and is used and registered throughout the world. CITIGROUP and the Umbrel la Device are trademarks and service marks of Cit igroup Inc. or i ts aff i l iates and are used and registered throughout the world.

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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Tappan Zee Subsection Getting Connected and Staying Connected

Overview of Today's IPTV

Presented By Dr. Lai-Tee Cheok

Harmonic Inc. e-mail: Lai-Tee.Cheok@harmonicinc.com

T elevision is evolving and viewers today are watching TV in different ways. Delivering TV content over an IP-based platform instead of

through traditional means allows for interactive and personalized services such as video-on-demand (VOD) and network personal video recorder (nPVR). This new exciting vision of TV is fueling the growth of the IPTV mar-ket. In fact, the recent entrance of the telcos into the video delivery industry with their bundling of IPTV, voice and data services (triple play) has further accelerated this trend. In this presentation, I will give a general overview of IPTV VOD services and cover the underlying video technologies behind its operation.

Dr. Cheok received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. Her background is in MPEG-4 Systems, video encoding, processing and delivery. She was a contributor to the MPEG-4 systems standard and currently works on developing MPEG-2 video processing solutions in Harmonic Inc., a leading provider of video products to cable, satellite, telcos and wireless operators.

Polytechnic University, Westchester Campus 40 Saw Mill River Road, Hawthorne, NY 10532

Room 23

Thursday, June 14, 2007 — 7:00PM - 8:00PM (Refreshments at 6:30 PM)

For directions & information, please visit the IEEE Tappan Zee Subsection website

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/tz/

ALL ARE INVITED

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 5 — May 2007

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LOWER HUDSON VALLEY ENGINEERING EXPO 2007 Report by Balvinder Blah

S tudents from middle and high schools at-tended the 4th annual Lower Hudson Valley

Engineering EXPO 2007 at Westchester Commu-nity College on March 30. They found about 35 businesses, 25 colleges and 7 engineering or-ganizations including IEEE. Walking around the expo, I realized that many businesses had mini-competit ions to attract students and st imulate their interest in engineering. Entergy's competi-

t ion challenged the students by asking them to design a fan out of the aluminum foil . The fan that rotated the fastest and had the greatest amount of upward motion won. Another challenge included required the students to explain why a black and white fan rotated when placed in front of a l ight source. The expo also had bridge build-ing, tower building and boat making competi-t ions. All these competit ions had some awards for the f irst f ive winners. I t really motivated the students to be creative and have fun with engi-neering tasks.

As an IEEE representative, I presented pic-tures from IEEE projects such as robotics compe-tit ions, pictures from my work at Con Edison and other conferences representing electrical engi-neering and the IEEE. At our table, we had pro-fessionals from different area of electri-cal engineering. The IEEE Tappan Zee Subsec-t ion was represented by computer programmers and computer engineers. While Bob Pellegrino and myself represented the power engineers. Warner Johnson from ABC studios spoke about electrical engineers in the television profession and Darlene Rivera spoke about Women in Engi-neering. I t was surprising to see a lot more young women at the expo interested in math and science.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR OFFICERS FOR THE NEW YORK SECTION FOR THE YEAR 2008

The Nomination Committee of the New York Section of the IEEE:

Paul Sartori — Chair

Ralph Tapino

Robert Pellegrino

Benjamin Schall

hereby solicits nominations for off icers of the Executive Committee of 2008 for the fol lowing posit ions:

If you wish to nominate a fellow member you should know that any member in good stand-ing of the New York Section, membership grade of member or higher, is el igible for nomination. If you are interested to become part of the NY Section leadership you should express your interest to the Chair, Stanley Karoly (stkar@ieee.org) or the Secretary of the Executive Committee, Darlene Rivera (drivera938@ieee.org.) Nominations should be postmarked no later than June15, 2007 and mailed to:

Paul Sartori, Chair of the nominations committee Con Edison 4 Irving Place, Room 1500 New York, NY 10003 E-mail: p.sartori@ieee.org

Elected Committee Chairs By-Laws Chapter Organization Managing Editor Monitor Historian Long Range Planning Publications Special Events Web Master

Executive Committee Chair Vice Chair – Section Operations Vice Chair - Section Activities Treasurer Secretary

Two students from NYCTC with Balvinder Blah and Warner Johnston at the IEEE information table. Photo by Ken Vought

NY Monitor Vol. 55 No. 4 — April 2007

The staff of the NY IEEE MONITOR and the Executive Committee of the IEEE NY Section c o n g r a t u l a t e t h e N Y W O M E N I N E N G I N E E R I N G

on their

2 0 0 6 W I E A F F I N I T Y G R O U P O F T H E Y E A R

A W A R D