Recent Activities in the ComSoc Southwestern USA Region 5

By T. Scott Atkinson - North America Region Board Member, USA

This is a summary highlighting some of the ComSoc Chapter activities in IEEE ComSoc Southwestern USA Region 5, which includes the states of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and parts of New Mexico and South Dakota.

IEEE Central Texas Section COMSOC/SP Austin Joint Chapter

The Austin Chapter hosts technical meetings regularly during the year. Following are the topics of the most recent meetings.
September: “Multicore Processor Solutions for Smart Factories, Smart Cities and Smart Energy.” Presenter: Mr. Altaf Hussain, Business Development Manager, Freescale’s Digital Networking group.
October: “Machine Learning and Signal Processing Methods in Live Business Intelligence Operations.” Presenter: Dr. Choundur Lakshminarayan, Principal Research Scientist, HP.
November: “Trustworthy Hardware.” Presenter: Distinguished Prof. Ramesh Karri, Prof. ECE, Ploytechnic Institute, NYU.
In November, chapter members celebrated their two ComSoc awards:
•2015 ComSoc North America Region Chapter Achievement Award.
•2015 ComSoc Chapter of the Year Award

IEEE Central Texas Section COMSOC/SP San Antonio Joint Chapter

In February, the chapter hosted Distinguished Lecturer Prof. Koichi Asatani at a joint meeting with the San Antonio Life Members Group and the Student Branch at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
In June, at a meeting held jointly with the San Antonio Life Members Group, Scott Atkinson spoke on the topic of NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Project.
In October the ComSoc/ SP Joint Chapter participated in the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Chapter Distinguished Lecturer meeting, along with Computer Society members. Dr. Michael Jirjis spoke on “Diffusion Tensor Imaging of the Central Nervous System Following Spinal Cord Injury and Stem Cell Transplant.”

IEEE ComSoc Galveston Bay Chapter

The August Section/Chapter meeting focused on a seminar presentation on the topic “A Glimpse of the Future World: When Integrated Unmanned Systems Meet Artificial Intelligence,” presented by Hao Xu, Ph.D., Director of the Unmanned Systems Laboratory (TAMUCC-USL).
Unmanned systems (US) (unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), unmanned ground vehicles (UGV), and unmanned underwater robots) are smart mission-based agents equipped with well-developed on-board sensors, microprocessors and communication devices (e.g. lasers, GPS, HD-cameras, sonars, optical/RF transceivers, etc.). USs can successfully complete numerous tasks such as disaster search/rescue, emergency response in extreme environments, etc., which human beings would not be able to finish easily. Recently, different types of USs have been integrated to cover broader operations. However, due to a lack of effective integration methods, emerging integrated unmanned systems (IUSs) are still very difficult to be implemented into practical systems. To overcome this challenge, the cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technique is being adopted to work with IUSs. This talk covered the background of USs and AI and their potential IUS applications, enumerating their applications and challenges. Effective AI-based algorithms will be developed to improve the performance of IUSs, leading to their future applications.
In October, the Chapter supported the Section in the coordination of the Section’s annual DUAL Conference of Innovation and Automation 2015.
In November, a unique seminar was organized by the Chapter for the Section meeting. The topic of the seminar was “Engineering Contributions to Medicine: What Else Can Be Done?” The presenters were Paul Frenger, MD, SM-IEEE, SM-ISA, LM-ACM (practicing physician); Reese Terry, Life Fellow-IEEE, retired founder and CEO of Cyberonics; John Crisciones, MD, Ph.D., associate professor, Texas A&M; and Ershad Sharifahmadian, Ph.D., visiting professor, University of Houston Clear Lake.

IEEE ComSoc Tulsa Chapter

The IEEE ComSoc Tulsa Chapter offers a weekly seminar (Tuesday 11:45 AM-1:00 PM) for all IEEE ComSoc Tulsa Chapter members. These weekly seminars are presented by The University of Oklahoma–Tulsa’s MS or Ph.D. students, or occasionally by a guest lecturer. These seminars are related to telecommunication technologies such as wireless communication, quantum communication, image processing, etc. Following are titles of the most recent seminars:
•October 6, 2015: “Research and Analysis of Medication Adherence in an Adult Type 2 Diabetes Cohort.”
•October 13, 2015: “Big Data!”
•October 20, 2015: “Secure AES Key Transmission Using Polarization Encoding Over Optical Fibers.”
•October 27, 2015: “Development and Implementation of a Versatile Real-Time Traffic Monitoring System Using Wireless Smart Sensors Networks.”
•November 3, 2015: “Multi-Photon Tolerant Approach for Satellite Communications.”

IEEE ComSoc New Orleans Chapter

February: Distinguished Lecturer Tour. Topic: “Realizing FTTH, G-PON is widely adopted, international standards on FTTH, G-PON in particular, have been established and are being further developed.” Presenter: Dr. Koichi Asatani, IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE Fellow, IEICE Fellow, Ph.D., lecture professor, Nankai University, Tianjin, China; professor emeritus, Kogakuin University, Tokyo, Japan.
May: Joint Section/ComSoc Chapter Meeting. Topic: “Cellular and Wi-Fi communications systems design that were installed in the Mercedes Benz Louisiana Superdome and Arena prior to the 2013 Super Bowl and the engineering involved with this effort.” Presenters: Leo L. Holzenthal, Jr., P.E., ACFE Fellow, president and engineering manager for M S Benbow and Associates; Ken M. Wright, P.E., manager of technology and telecommunications for M S Benbow and Associates.
Conference Coordination: The ComSoc Chapter supported the Section in hosting the IEEE WCNC 2015 conference, as well as the 2015 Region 5 GreenTech Conference in New Orleans.