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April 2017
Volume 8 Issue 2
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Section Officers
| Chair: |
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| Treasurer: |
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| Secretary: |
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 Excom Meetings3rd Tuesdays of the Month*
- 6:00 pm: Supper and Networking
Original Brooklyn’s
2644 West Colfax Ave.
Denver, CO 80204
*Except July & December
- Why be an IEEE Volunteer Elevator Speech
- 2017 Goals / Plan
- Social Media – stepping up use of Facebook
- Major refresh of the website
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Open Positions
The Denver Section currently has the following open positions
– Newsletter Editor
– Life Member Chapter
– Fall Event Planner
– Awards & Recognition
– Conference Planning
– Nomination and Appointments
– Communications
– Multimedia
– Marketing
– Public Relations
– Education Activities
– Distinguished Lecturers
– Seminars & Tutorials
– Young Professionals
– Consultants Network
Actually just about anything you can think of, we’re interested in talking to you!
If you are interested in volunteering, please send email to chair@ieee-denver.org. Positions will be open until filled.
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Try Something New!
Whether you are active in IEEE ExCom, are a chair of a technical society, or just a paying member, we thank you for being a part of something that we think is pretty great. If you want to get more involved, you know where to find us! And if you just want to enjoy the hard (and not-so-hard) work of our volunteers by attending our events we would love that even more! Take advantage of the monthly volunteering efforts we have put together for you. Try something new, meet some new people, and learn something new by listening to a distinguished lecturer. Oh, and thank you for being a reader of our newsletter!
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Editors:
Ian MacMillan
Steven Peliotis
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| Denver Section Wins IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Large Section Award for 2016 |
Denver Section received the 2016 IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Large Section Award at the April 1 R5 Annual Meeting Banquet held at the Denver Marriott Tech Center. Denver Section was cited for its work on the 2017 GreenTech / R5 Annual Meeting, particularly the Student Competitions where the Robotics Competition was the major focus.
Also noted were the monthly Dine and Learn programs, our K-12 outreach with the Build Something Cool events, and our support of school projects at Cherry Creek High School and the St. Vrain Valley School District in the Longmont area, covered in our previous newsletter.
Murali Baggu, 2016 Denver Section Chair, is presented the 2016 Outstanding Large Section Award by Francis Grosz, R5 Director
by Ian MacMillan
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| Jackie Adams Awarded IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Educator of 2016 |
| Jackie Adams, Denver Section’s PACE Chair and Social Media Guru, was awarded the IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Educator of 2016 at the April 1 R5 Annual Meeting Banquet at the Denver Marriott Tech Center.
After completing her Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, Jackie served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania, Africa teaching high school math in Swahili.
Jackie is the co-founder and served as the Lead  Adviser of SPARC [scholarships], a scholarship speaking series hosted by Case Western Reserve University that awards selected students who present on key social issues. Jackie conceived the idea for creating this scholarship speaking series when she personally experienced struggles as a woman in the field of engineering.
Jackie founded SecondStar Solutions in 2016 with the goal of providing organizations
with a more effective approach to employee training. Her company services clients in the United States and internationally.
Jackie Adams is presented IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Educator of 2016 Award by Francis Grosz, R5 Director
by Ian MacMillan
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| Build Something Cool a Hit with Kids and Parents |
| IEEE Denver Section teamed up with BlueStamp Engineering, MSU Denver, and Sparkfun Electronics on Saturday February 25th to again offer the Build Something Cool Event for students in 6th to12th grades. Denver Section provided an opportunity for Denver area students to build (and keep) projects of their own, for free. The students selected project kits like Simon Says Games, Portable USB Chargers, and LED Blinky Projects.
Most of the 45 students hadn’t soldered before. Thanks to the thirteen IEEE members who volunteered, everyone was able to safely learn how to use the tools, test, troubleshoot, and complete their projects. IEEE also hosted lunch for the students and their parents to meet the volunteer engineers and to chat about careers in electronics.
It was a great time for everyone!
The full set of photos from the event can be seen at:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bluestamp/albums/72157663762853811
by Dave Young
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| VPKI Hits the Highway – May 9 Dine and Learn Program |
| With the increasing prospects of deploying vehicular networks, there are significant technical challenges and debates. Viable deployment models, different air interfaces, spectrum sharing issues, and security and privacy concerns are among the most topical issues of industry debate. This talk presents a condensed account of the ten-year effort to develop and deploy vehicular public-key infrastructure (VPKI) as a security infrastructure for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) intelligent transportations systems (ITS). An examination of the Secure Credential Management System (SCMS) will highlight the ways in which government, industry, and academia have converged to secure the promise of vehicular networks as ITS emerges as a 21st-century reality. A case study of the current US Department of Transportation’s Connected Vehicle Pilot will be the focus of the presentation.
Dine and Learn: VPKI Hits the Highway
Tim Weil is a Senior Member of the IEEE and Security Editor for IT Professional magazine (IEEE). In the areas of Vehicular Networks, his work includes the IEEE 1609 (WAVE) standards and the US DOT VII/Intellidrive and Connected Vehicle programs. He is an author and speaker on topics in Security for Vehicular Networks. His interests include “Service Management for Vehicular Networks Using WAVE (IEEE 1609) Protocols” and topics related to the PKI models for implementing IEEE 1609.2 (WAVE Security). Mr. Weil is an industry-certified security professional (CISSP/CCSP, CISA, PMP), past chair of the IEEE Denver Communication Society Chapter, and maintains the ‘Security for Automotive Networks’ research portal for international ITS programs. |
| Sensational 2017 IEEE R5 Student Robotics Competition! |
| At the 2017 R5 Annual Meeting, the IEEE again hosted the IEEE Robotics Competition, last held in Denver in 2013. Over the past ten years, universities from southwestern states have participated in this annual IEEE-sponsored Robot Competition. These competitions are organized and run by volunteers from the community and the local IEEE. On April 1st, twenty-eight teams of undergrads from universities in Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Missouri met in Denver to compete and solve a unique challenge. Student teams each designed and built a robot that executed an autonomous tunnel-mapping scenario on the surface of a game field. Below the clear plastic surface of each game field, there was a tunnel and hidden caches that the robots searched for.
For their robots to map the tunnels and find the caches, students integrated devices such as metal sensors, ac voltage sensors, capacitor sensors, “tap” sensors, and edge sensors and developed intelligent software that enabled their robots to follow the buried cables and line cords through the tunnel. These robots were small, less than twelve cubic inches, but equipped with Arduinos, Raspberry Pi’s, or other embedded devices. Robots functioned effectively on the eight-foot-square game field, which was reconfigurable to increase game complexity. During each of three six-minute rounds, a robot searched the game field to map the tunnel, find the caches, and return to home base. Teams were awarded points based on how accurately their robot recorded the tunnel map and cache contents.
Ten IEEE committee members from the Denver metro area helped design the game, write the rules, distribute drawings, and execute and judge the competition. The IEEE also was charged with raising local university awareness and participation along with raising funds to build the fields, award prizes, and provide volunteers for game day operations. Local sponsors were Arapahoe Library Makerspace, SparkFun, the Denver EMBS, and the Denver Chapter of AOC. Together with national and international sponsors, Denver Section raised over $8,000 to fund competition operations while IEEE provided $2,900 in prizes. Together with other volunteers from the community, twenty-one people joined the effort to make this event a great success. Special thanks to Robotics Chair Mike Mattice and team members Mike LaBree, Pooja Ramesh, and Kevin Mattice, who contributed time, professional engineering skills, and creative talents to make the competition an exceptional engineering learning experience.
The Rocky Mountain Event Center in the Denver Marriott Tech Center provided about 12,000 square feet for thirty student workstations and four competition fields.
2017 Robotics Competition at the Denver Marriott Rocky Mountain Event Center
A robot on a Game Field searching for the subsurface tunnels and hidden caches along the perimeter. A tunnel is formed by the foam blocks beneath the clear Acrylic surface.
A robot is photographed to record the tunnel map displayed on the LED matrix
Final adjustments to a robot before the next round
 Lunchtime
Checking on the Drive Assembly
Robotics Team waits for next round
Onlookers watch as a Robot runs the Gamefield
One of the Game Clock screens used to time events and report team standings
Other Pictures:
IEEE Denver Facebook
Inuktun
by Jim Harrer, Senior Member, IEEE
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| Dine and Learn: Photoacoustic Glucose Monitoring |
| Cherry Creek High School students presented the results of their studies of Photoacoustic Glucose Monitoring to a standing-room-only crowd at the April 11th Dine and Learn. Twenty-three clearly excited, engaged students presented on the specific study areas of their projects, the results, challenges, and what they would like to see improved to make this solution a viable wearable technology.
Photoacoustic Glucose Monitoring uses laser beams to stimulate glucose and water in the solution to produce measurable acoustic waves that are used to determine glucose concentration in the solution. IEEE Denver Section provided partial funding for the Cherry Creek High School project.
by Ian MacMillan
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| Underwriters Laboratories April 25th Free Seminar: IEC 62368, Radio Equipment Directive, Global Market Access |
| Across the United States, Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is delivering a half-day series of three presentations about the new IEC 62368-1 safety standard, the Radio Equipment Directive, and Global Market Access, all of which are oriented ITE/Consumer Electronics manufacturers. The format has had positive feedback so UL has scheduled a free four-hour seminar at the Omni hotel in Broomfield, Colorado on April 25th at 10:00 a.m. For more information, select the UL Seminar Link.
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| IEEE Involvement with Universities |
| I returned to college to pursue a PhD fairly late in my career and was quite impressed with the respect that I received from younger students. I was years removed from my initial engineering student experience, with computer printouts and queuing stacks of program cards. I found myself needing mentoring in many of the new design tools, something I wanted to learn to enhance my career. I also felt useful because I could help fellow students to better grasp the practical meaning of the almost limitless data available in both simulation and measurement relative to actual hardware. As with many areas of technology, information saturation can happen easily. As a mid-career experience, I learned the need to constantly improve communications with my fellow engineers. I found myself attracted to greater involvement with the IEEE as I wanted to experience more camaraderie in the university setting.
I was pleasantly impressed with the openness of universities to practicing engineers and of the IEEE to novice members. In my previous volunteer experience, I had worked as a president of a homeowners association where I found myself frequently mediating angry disputes over parking and snow removal. By comparison, volunteering to work for the IEEE or for universities is a delight by comparison. Colleagues are interested in your observations and not bringing any agenda but learning. The public universities in particular in Colorado, have become highly motivated to ask the public for input about what products are needed, especially as state funding has declined. Universities, much like the IEEE, always have tried to provide information about the latest developments so engineers can improve their contributions to society.
One of the programs I encountered at Colorado State University that is becoming more popular is the Engineer in Residence, where volunteers work directly with student teams to improve their projects. Most universities finish their academic year with a Capstone project for seniors that is presented to their peers and to the public. Check into such events at a university close to you and experience again the joy of solving that first complex problem, because we sometimes lose our youthful excitement in the grind of schedules and presentations. The experience might get you excited again about that career choice you made before you understood exactly what your life would become.
by W. Neill Kefauver
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| Startup Weekend Denver | IoT 3.0 and Smart Cities |
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Have you ever seen a new product, app, or business and thought to yourself, “that was my idea a few years ago”? If you have, that means you did not have a process for taking that idea from concept to creation. Startup Weekend is your chance to learn how to take any idea from concept to creation within a matter of days!
Internet of Things + Smart City edition means we will be focusing the ideas we select on solving problems in the space of IoT. With the explosion and growing number of internet enabled devices for just about any realm of life, this edition will be as broad as your imagination allows and focused on addressing the problems and opportunities related to these devices. Whether you are interested in the IoT + Smart City or not, the ultimate objective of the event is to empower you with a powerful process for taking any idea, IoT/Smart City-related or not, from concept to creation!
https://www.up.co/communities/usa/denver/startup-weekend/10649
by Ryan Diebel
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