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By Jeff Woodard

During the meeting, we took a very important first step by appointing our officers:

Chair – Sarah Beckman

Vice Chair – Keaton Looney

Secretary – Kate Landow

Treasurer – Peter Moschetti

Thanks to our officers who are stepping in to fill these roles as we build a successful IEEE WIE affinity group in Denver!

The group is already underway planning some great activities for the year to get involved in our community.  On April 14th, we will be hosting a table at the Colorado School of Mines E-Days Carnival from 12 p.m.-3 p.m. to garner interest and support from people out celebrating Orediggers and engineering. Please stop by and introduce yourself to our volunteers if you are out that way!

Additionally, now that we have our officers in place, we will launch an official kick-off meeting during the first week of May to get more activities planned, discuss technical speakers for the year, and to get the WIE affinity group really moving.

We have an excited and passionate group of women; and we are looking for more women and men to join our group and develop a great network of people and support through IEEE.  We look forward to expanding our team, hosting engaging events, and developing a larger support network for women in the engineering industry.

If you are interested in joining, please e-mail WIE@ieee-Denver.org for more information and to sign up for notification.

by Sarah Beckman

IEEE Denver Section teamed up with BlueStamp Engineering, MSU Denver, and Sparkfun Electronics on Saturday February 24th for a fourth annual 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 66 students hadn’t soldered before. The help from the IEEE members and students from CU and Metro was outstanding — we had 24 of volunteers and they really enjoyed inspiring the young kids. The volunteers helped the students and parents get started on their chosen projects, with advice on safety, soldering, identifying and placing components, and testing. IEEE also hosted lunch for the students and their parents to meet the volunteer engineers and to chat about careers in electronics.

One engineer held a raffle of several donated electronic projects, including a Sphero BB. Other volunteers setup Discovery Tables to demonstrate the Physics of Light, and involve kids in a biology experiment in DNA extraction. It was a great time for everyone!

A volunteer and professional photographer, Mike Carcz, great job in capturing the event on camera: https://photos.app.goo.gl/fzULGYqLxnMWl1tr1

by Jim Harrer   

The 11th Global Symposium on Millimeter-Wave (GSMM) takes place May 22nd-24th in Boulder, Colorado. The main theme of the GSMM 2018 is Millimeter-wave Propagation: Hardware, Measurements, and Systems. It covers millimeter-wave and THz devices, circuits, systems, and applications, with a special focus on mmWave propagation. The conference will include keynote talks, technical sessions, panels, and exhibitions. GSMM 2018 is accompanied by the 5G summit this year. For more information on the conference, keynotes, and registering or becoming a sponsor, visit the GSMM 2018 website below.

GSMM is sponsored by IEEE MTT-S and they are seeking volunteers from the IEEE Denver Section to help with registration, guiding attendees, and other administrative roles. For information on volunteering, please use the contact form on the GSMM website or reply to this newsletter with “GSMM 2018 Volunteer” in the subject line

GSMM 2018 Website

by Ruoyu Sun, Tim Samson, and Jeff Woodard  

If you haven’t gotten involved with your local IEEE community yet, you might be missing out on the most rewarding part of membership. Meeting in person gives you the chance to network with like-minded peers, find mentors, and discuss new developments in your field. A study by psychology researchers at Nottingham Trent University found that the more people felt connected to a group, the more satisfied they felt.

A great way to get connected with local IEEE members is to join one of the active groups below.

Full List of Affinity Groups

Women in Engineering (WIE)

Professional Activities Committee for Engineers (PACE)

National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE)

Consultants Network

Microwave Theory and Techniques Society

Antennas and Propagation Society

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society

Life Member Affinity Group

Study

Original Article by Amanda Davis

Condensed and Updated by Jeff Woodard 

by Jeff Woodard

Call for Participation

•  Registration Now Open: https://fccm.org/2018/accommodation.html

The IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM) is the original and premier forum for presenting and discussing new research related to computing that exploits the unique features and capabilities of FPGAs and other reconfigurable hardware.

For 25 years, FCCM has been the place to present papers on architectures, tools, and programming models for field-programmable custom computing machines and applications that use such systems.

FCCM 2018 will feature a rich program of workshops, technical paper presentations, panels, hardware demos, and posters. Major highlights include:

•  Two Sunday Panels: “FPGA Machine Learning research in the next decade” and “A Panel Discussion: Identifying startup opportunities within your research”
•  Technical paper sessions in Computation, Security, Machine Learning, High-Level Synthesis, Memory and Applications
•  Best paper award announcements
•  Interactive poster sessions
•  Xilinx workshop on FPGA-based Accelerated Cloud Computing with AWS EC2 F1 and SDAccel
•  Intel workshop on Introduction to Deep Learning using Intel FPGAs

Each year at FCCM we have an informal show-and-tell called Demo Night. This year it’s Monday evening, April 30th, 2018 at 6:30pm. Paper and poster authors and commercial vendors bring their FCCMs, hardware, gateware, slideware, software, tools, chips, and set up demos. Attendees circulate, enjoy the demos, and engage with the presenters while enjoying the food and drink at this stand-up and learn event. It’s always informative for demoers and demoees, great networking, and lots of fun too.

by Graham Schelle

Worthman described how Machine Learning is based on algorithms that compare data and implement “what if” scenarios.  These algorithms can be supervised with predefined data sets, or unsupervised where the goal is to find trends in the data.  Sometimes the training of the machine is done with reinforcement, where rewards (points) are given when the computer gets the correct answer.  The computer can then update its policy (learning.) Worthman discussed some of the limitations and current uses of ML.

Machine Intelligence is similar to ML but able to also rewrite the algorithms in real time. Some places MI is starting to be used are robotics, network optimization, healthcare, and natural language processing.

Finally, Worthman also discussed Deep Learning (DL) as a part of AI.  DL allows a deeper analysis with layers: each layer is a set of algorithms that are used to train and deploy.  DL is used to find objects in images, words in sounds, and features in data.

All of these topics are an outcome of Big Data and the need to find trends and make sense of data.  The field will continue to grow with the Internet of Things (IoT) and as faster computers become more available.

by Michele Miller

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