PAC 2007 Activities

Amy Bell, PAC Chair

EAB Public Awareness Committee (PAC)

02/17/2007 Universal City, CA, USA

Introduction

Associate Professor ECE at Virginia Tech

Signal processing and image processing

Husband: Sanjay Raman also an ECE professor (RFIC)

Two sons: 7 and 3 years old

Primary 2007 Activity

Joint New Initiative with WIE

Increasing the Representation of Women in IEEE Fields of Interest

EAB-WIE New Initiative: Increasing the Representation of Women in ECE and CS

EAB-WIE New Initiative Two year project: 2007-2008 Total budget: $380,000 Approved for funding in 2007

Discovery-based projects for first-year ECE and CS students

Best teaching practices workshops for the ECE and CS classroom

New Initiative: Focus on High-Quality Undergraduate Education

IEEE will provide ECE and CS faculty with first-year, discovery-based, projects that focus on real-world problems whose solutions impact society

IEEE will provide ECE and CS faculty with online, self-study workshops on the best pedagogical techniques for the engineering/computer science classroom

Discovery-Based Projects

Novel: emphasis on contemporary, real-world technical projects where the benefit to society is explicitly addressed

Benefit: improve quality of undergraduate ECE and CS engineering education for all students; impact will be greater for students from under-represented groups

Example Projects

Power Engineering Blackout Prevention—the Big Picture

Computer Systems (Hardware) Energy-Efficient Tracking Devices for Container

Security Image Processing

Biomedical Tomographic Image Reconstruction Computer Systems (Software)

Simulating the Motion of the Bacterium E. Coli Microelectronics, Wireless Communications and

Networking Environmental Sensor Network for the Detection of

Toxic Heavy Metals in Groundwater

Signal Processing: Arrhythmia Detection Algorithms for Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators

Heart controlled by electrical impulses that govern the contract-relax cycle

Arrhythmia is an irregular heartbeat caused by disordered electrical activity

Person can faint, suffer chest pains, and even sudden death may occur

Heart can be converted back to a normal rhythm with an electrical shock

An implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) administers an electric shock to the heart; it is an effective treatment for people at high-risk

ICD must accurately and quickly detect when the rhythm becomes abnormal

Signal Processing Example (cont.)

A normal heart rhythm (left) is described by the “PQRSTU” wave. A ventricular fibrillation arrhythmia occurs (right) when abnormal electrical activity upsets the heart’s normal contract-relax cycle.

Example (cont.)

Hands-on project: the students will use Matlab to program and evaluate basic rate-based arrhythmia detection algorithms employed in ICDs

Evaluate their algorithms using real electrocardiograms Learn some statistical performance measures like sensitivity

Through their evaluation, the students will discover the impact of algorithm computational complexity on the real-time constraint that is critical to the ICD’s ability to save lives

Why Does IEEE Care?

“IEEE needs to better define its role in engineering education beyond its focus on outreach.”

“Too many industry managers do not recognize the value of IEEE.”

From “IEEE Strategic Challenges”

57th Intel International Science and Engineering Fair: 3 Grand Award Winners

1,500 students from 47 countries competed for $4M (US) in scholarships

Each young woman will receive the distinguished Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award

Each award includes a $50,000 scholarship

Women’s Persistent Under-representation

<10% of BS engineering degrees awarded to women in Japan, South Korea, Italy, Spain, Austria

19.5% in U.S. (2005, all BS engineering degrees) 15% of all Electrical Engineering degrees 12% of all Computer Engineering degrees Enrollment in BS engineering is declining

Why?: Few examples of how engineering helps people Lack of faculty interest and involvement

Reasons IEEE Cares

Industry managers are very concerned about hiring enough technically proficient engineers

Women represent the largest untapped population for ECE and CS degrees

Women’s persistent under-representation adversely impacts our profession, our technological proficiency, and countries’ economic stability

Best Pedagogy Workshops: Topics from Research on Learning

Design course around core concepts Employ real-world, contemporary applications (context) Address student diversity: learning styles,

background/preparation level, entering skills and knowledge, attitudes and expectations

Develop problem-solving skills through use of hands-on projects and case studies

Use collaborative learning techniques to help students work effectively on teams (one example: pair-programming)

Effective (contrasted with ineffective) assessment techniques

Foster community and create a supportive learning environment

Generating High-Quality Project and Workshop Submissions

Two-step, peer-reviewed, competitive selection process

Author award: $5000 development grant Honor—serve a term in the “IEEE

Education Academy” Recognition and promotion of work

Promoting Use of Projects and Workshops

High-quality, free, material for use in ECE/CS curriculum

Educators who use these products awarded a certificate of achievement

Educators would have access to other users’ experiences and results—thereby creating a virtual community

Evaluating Impact

Educators would “register” to access the projects and workshops

Educators given assessment tools to administer and report back on results

Primary impact on student outcomes: retention, satisfaction, and enrollment (all students, but expect greater impact on women)

How You Can Help

Help promote initiative generate many high quality project and workshop submissions

Promote use of projects and teaching workshop methods in undergraduate curriculum by IEEE members