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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

February 2018, vol. 65, No. 2

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

Work expands so as to fill

the time available for its completion

Known as:

Parkinson’s First Law

-----------------

Sir Cyril Northcote Parkinson

British Naval Historian

Born July 1909; Died March 1993

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

Principal officers of the

IEEE New York Section

2018

Chair: David K Horn

Vice Chair, Chapter operations: Robert M Pellegrino

Vice Chair, Section Activities: Wilson M Milian

Treasurer: Thomas Villani

Secretary: Amy Batallones

Editor NY Monitor: Dr. Amitava Dutta-Roy

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

Currently, the New York Section of IEEE comprises of the following

Active Chapters of the IEEE Societies:

Broadcast Technology Society

Computational Intelligence Society

Computer Society

Communications Society

Technology Management Society

Engineering in Medicine and Biology SocietyInstrumentation and Measurement Society

Power and Energy Society

Industrial Applications Society

Solid State Circuits/Electron Devices Societies

Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society

Vehicular Technology Society

&

The following Affinity Groups as defined by IEEE

Consultants’ Network

Life Members Affinity Group (LMAG)

Women in Engineering

Young Professionals

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

CONTENTS

p.6 Quick date checks for the NY Section ExComm meetings

p. 6 From the keyboard of the Editor

p. 7 Reports on:

Engineers Week celebration at MESC

SMC Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Jim Bezdek

p. 7 Flyers for the upcoming technical meets:

23-24 March, Saturday and Sunday: 2018 R 1 Students Conference at NYIT, Westbury, Long Island, NY 11568 (see flyer)

27 March, Tuesday PES/IAS/LMAG presentation: TETRA Technology for Mission Critical Solutions, ConEd Building, 4 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003 (see flyer)

Computational Intelligence Society NY Chapter: Data Science for Better Science (no venue or times are announced)

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

QUICK DATE CHECKS FOR NY SECTION EXCOMM MEETINGS

The following are the presumed dates for the 2017 Executive Committee meetings at IEEE NY Section

(unless otherwise notified in advance, always held on the second Wednesday of the month)

10 January

14 February

14 March

11 April

No meeting in May due to

Award Dinner Dance (5 May)

13 June

No meetings during the months of July and August

12 September

10 October

14 November

12 December

********************

Unless otherwise notified, all ExComm meetings are scheduled for 12:30 pm at the ConEd Building, 4 Irving Place, New

York. All members of the New York Section are invited to participate in the ExComm meetings. However, for reasons of

security controlled by ConEd, the owner of the venue, all members desirous of attending any ExComm meeting must

notify the Section chair. Thank you for your understanding

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

FROM THE EDITOR’S KEYBOARD

he IEEE is a non-profit organization led by

volunteers and is administratively supported by a

paid staff. Our activities thus strongly depend on

the time the volunteers can devote to the cause of the

IEEE, availability of resources and, most importantly,

access to venues that the host entities can provide. The

IEEE considers a local chapter of any of its learned

Societies to be active if that chapter manages to organize

two meetings per year. That rule is, in my opinion, not

satisfactory. If a member, for reasons beyond personal

control misses a meeting of his/her Chapter then he/she

may have to wait ten months (maximum) to attend

another meeting. This may discourage some

members to remain interested and active. However,

all our volunteers have day-time jobs. There are

emergencies in professional and personal lives. In

spite of best of intentions chapter officers may not be

able to comply with their responsibilities. Then there

is the weather factor. During the winter months it is

tricky to keep to a schedule. But the principal hurdle

to overcome in a big city is the availability of suitable

venues. For our purposes they must be free of any charge

for holding a meeting, usually during the early evening

hours. As the cost of maintenance (heating, air-

conditioning, lighting and security) goes up more and

more institutions and commercial entities are reluctant

to offer their premises to the IEEE. The reader now may

realize that in big cities it is certainly not easy to offer

presentations or to hold networking events that would

reasonably cover all twelve months in a year. Can we

therefore call upon the Life Members who may have time

to take on some of the responsibilities of the younger

volunteers? The LMs may also have contacts through

whom they be able to get commitments to more venues

that would help our Section a great deal.

Being agnostic to the agents of development of

technology for the benefit of the society, we at the New

York Monitor, try to disseminate information

on all events with which we can identify

ourselves as complimentary organization

though those events may not even be directly

sponsored by the IEEE. In February there was

one such event organized by the Metropolitan

Engineering Societies Council or MESC. Inside,

you will find a short report on the celebration of

Engineers’ Week, a national event observed in

most states and at Washington. One other event that our

Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (SMC) NY

Chapter offered a Distinguished Lecture presentation

visualizing clustering of Big Data by Jim Bezdek. Read

all about these two events. Happy reading!

T

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

ENGINEERS’ WEEK CELEBRATION: PRESENTATION AND DINNER

uring the past several years we wrote about the

Engineers’ Week (18 – 24 February)

celebrations here in New York and elsewhere.

http://sites.ieee.org/ny-

monitor/files/2017/03/COMPELETE-EDITION.pdf p.6

The prime mover for this celebration in New York is the

Metropolitan Engineering Societies Council, an assembly

of 26 engineering societies that have sections of chapters

in New York. Apart from offering regular technical

presentations the MESC also takes pride in organizing

the annual weekly gathering of active members of the

constituent engineering societies at which a talk of

topical interest is presented. It is a good opportunity for

IEEE members to network with the members of other

societies and develop strategies of attracting more young

people to the engineering profession.

This year the event was opened by Wasyl Kinach, MESC

Chairman. He showed and read us the traditional

PROCLAMATION from the mayor Bill Blasio.

Thereafter, David Weiss of our own NY Section

introduced the keynote speakers. The theme of the

keynote speech was “The New NY Bridge Project

Across the Hudson River.” Two of the HDR’s project

managers: Kumar Santhosh and Marco Buyson

enlightened us with illustrated details of the project, the

details that the public don’t usually get to see. Both of

them have extensive experience in designing bridges. We

learned so much about the mechanical and structural

considerations in the design of the bridge, costs, impact

on the environment, traffic flows and how and why

traffic was directed one way or the other.

D

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

Members of the IEEE New York Section

Wasyl Kinach, Salvatore Galletta and Ray Girgis opening the Engineers Week

Mayor’s Proclamation is being read

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

David Weiss introducing the Keynote speakers

2018 Officers of the MESC, New York

Sukumar Alampur with MLK at the Engineers Week Event

DISTINGUISHED SMC LECTURE ON

VISUAL CLUSTERING APPLICATIONS IN BIG DATA

On 23 February Systems, Man and Cybernetics chapter

of the IEEE New York Section invited Dr. Jim Bezdek to

give a lecture on Visual Clustering Applications in Big

Data. Dr. Bezdek, IEEE Life Fellow, very well known in

the field of data clustering and IEEE recognized

Distinguished Lecturer to give talk on Data Clustering.

Bezdek is a good lecturer. He knows how to make a dry

and complex topic interesting by mixing witty and funny

comments and slides. As it was evident during the Q&A,

those who are conversant with the topic must have found

the lecture enlightening. (I must confess that I could not

follow the lecture except some short snippets.) Dr.

Bezdek frequently flies all over the world giving talks and

helping younger colleagues in their research.

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

Prof Ping-Tsai Chung, SM, professor at LIU presenting the IEEE SMC certificate of Distinguished Lecturer to Dr. Jim Bezdek

The attendees of the Distinguished Lecture and Dr. Jim Bezdek

SAMPLES OF DR. BEDEK’S SLIDES

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

UPCOMING EVENTS OF INTEREST TO IEEE MEMBERS

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

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IEEE NY MONITOR, Vol. 65, No. 2

The IEEE CIS New York Chapter will have the following two activities:

1. April 12, 2018(Thursday); Joint meeting with the ComSoc NY Chapter

2. April 26, 2018(Thursday); Speaker Professor Yike Guo, Director of the

Data Science Institute at Imperial College London in London, UK. He will

speak on " Data Science for Better Science ".

Details will be posted in the March NY Monitor

THE END