[IEEE Boise Section] Fall 2024 Newsletter

IEEE-Boise Section Newsletter

October 2024

Upcoming Events in our Section

All times are in Mountain Time zone.

  •        October Boise IEEE OpComm In-Person meeting. Oct 18th, 6pm to 8:00pm. Come meet our section officers and our other wonderful volunteers and have a say in the future events in your section! All section members are welcome to this and all OpComm meetings. Food will be provided. Micron Center for Materials Research, Room 105, 1435 W University Dr., Boise State University. Visit https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/440124 to RSVP for the food order.
  •         Boise State Presents Soldering Night, Oct 29th, 4:00pm to 7:00pm. Join Boise State’s IEEE student branch and solder Christmas trees with tricolor LEDs together. No experience needed! See https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/436576 for more information.
  •         Energy Storage to Support Renewable Generation. In-person presentation on Nov 15th, 12:00pm to 1:00pm. Organized by Boise Power & Energy Society Chapter. Speaker Joydeep Mitra (Ph.D., FIEEE) of Michigan State University. See https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/439654 for more information.
  •         Instrument Fundamentals Seminar. No-cost in-person seminar on Oct 30th, 11:00am to 3:00pm. Provided by Rohde & Schwarz and sponsored by the IEEE Boise section. See https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/437666 for more information.
  •         Careers in Technology speaker series. Webinar on Oct 22nd, 6:00pm to 7:00pm. Speaker Al Shpuntoff of the Nebraska Section. Organized by Northwest Florida Computer Society Chapter and co-hosted by the Boise Computer Society Chapter. See https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/434309 for more information.
  •         Careers in Technology speaker series. Webinar on Oct 29th, 6:00pm to 7:00pm. Speaker Khandakar Nusrat Islam of the Albuquerque Section. Organized by Northwest Florida Computer Society Chapter and co-hosted by the Boise Computer Society Chapter. See https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/434310 for more information.
  •         Effects and Significance of Power Quality Issues. Webinar on Oct 22nd, 8:00pm to 9:00pm. Speaker Sepehr Zarrabi. Organized by San Fernando Valley Power and Energy Society Chapter and co-hosted by the Boise Power and Energy Society Chapter. See https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/434309 for more information.

Section Picnic

Our annual section picnic was held on Sept. 13th at Julia Davis Park. It was a fun picnic with perfect weather and a nice turnout. Huge thanks to the Boise State and NNU student branches for organizing and catering the event. You can see more pictures from the picnic here.

 

Meet & Greet - Treasure Valley Young Professionals

The IEEE Young Professionals (YP) Affinity Group in the Boise Section organized a "Meet & Greet – Treasure Valley Young Professionals" event on August 23, 2024, at Lucky 13 in Southeast Boise. This event rekindled the IEEE YP Affinity Group in Boise and attracted many young professionals to network and find a community among fellow professionals. The event was successful with participation from 26 people, of which 20 were IEEE members and 6 were non-members. Following the event, several existing members and non-members who were new to the Boise area enquired and expressed interest in volunteering opportunities. The event highlighted the presence of the IEEE YP affinity group in the Boise section and identified future opportunities for continued engagement. Members interested in volunteering for the IEEE YP Affinity Group or organizing similar events in other parts of the Treasure Valley are welcome to reach out to Karthik Srinivasan (YP Chair) at karthiksrinivasa@boisestate.edu.

Section Election

We have an election this Fall for section officer positions – chair, vice chair, secretary, and treasurer. The first slate of candidates has been announced:

Chair: Nidish Vashistha
Vice Chair: Randy Rannow
Secretary: Jigyasa Chauhan
Treasurer: Chris Gunning

The deadline for petition candidates was on Oct 15th. As happens all too often in volunteer organizations, only one volunteer stepped forward to run for each position. If you are eligible to vote in this election (professional member or graduate student member of the section), you will receive an email in early November with voting instructions. Voting will be done online using the IEEE vTools Voting tool. Please contact section election committee co-chair Kristen Hopper <kmmcnair@ieee.org> with any questions.

Boise Computer Society chapter election

The Boise chapter of the IEEE Computer Society is currently taking nominations for chapter officer positions (chair, vice chair, secretary) for 2025. The nomination deadline is Nov. 1st. Self-nominations are encouraged. Contact the chapter election chair Gary Stringham (gary@garystringham.com) to nominate yourself or another member. Volunteering to be a chapter officer is a great way to help give back to the engineering community. With nominations, we ask each candidate to provide a biography and a position statement.

TechGirlz 2024

TechGirlz was held on Tuesday, Oct. 15th, at the College of Idaho. It is a FREE, one-day career discovery day for middle school girls. The IEEE Boise section, in conjunction with IEEE Region 6, was proud to sponsor this event. The event is entirely run by volunteers with real careers in STEM. It included workshops like Tech Challenge, in which the 400 attendees divided into teams of ten to learn about and apply design thinking to a real-world problem. Volunteers from our section helped as mentors during Tech Challenge and also as floaters and wayfinders throughout the day. TechGirlz is put on by Women Innovators (W.IN). Perry Lea, our IEEE-Boise section educational activities chair, is a member of the W.IN board.

Volunteer Judges needed for Future City Competition

The Boise Section and the Boise Power and Energy Society Chapter are pleased to once again be sponsors for the Idaho Future City competition. Future City gives 6th-8th grade students a way to bring their creative solutions to life as they imagine, design, and build cities of the future. Visit http://futurecity.org to learn more about the program.

The 21st Idaho Regional Competition will take place on Saturday, January 25, 2025 in the Jordan Ballroom of the Student Union Building at Boise State University. We need volunteers to help judge teams for the IEEE special award. Special awards judging will be in person from approximately 8am to noon. It’s a lot of fun to interact with the student teams. Please contact Nidish Vashistha nidish@ieee.org if you’d like to help.

ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer at Boise Section

The section recently had the pleasure of having an in-person visit and presentation by Dr. Kumar Vijay Mishra of the US DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory. Dr. Mishra is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). His talk was on signal processing for integrated sensing and communications, and it covered many interesting topics including 5G and the spectrum crunch, Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) advancements, radars for self-driving cars, and more. Thank you to Jigyasa Chauhan for serving as the emcee for the talk.

Greetings from the Chair

Thank you for your membership in IEEE. You are receiving this newsletter because you are a member of the IEEE-Boise section.

Have you renewed your membership yet for 2025? Renew now to keep access to all the benefits of membership. If you renew your IEEE Membership by 1 November 2024, you'll be entered to win one of ten US$500 digital gift cards – see details here.

Find out about more upcoming IEEE events at these links:

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to any of your friends and colleagues who may be interested in what IEEE has to offer. Let them know one benefit of joining IEEE is the opportunity to network with other professionals in your local area or within a specific technical interest. There’s much more information about the benefits of IEEE membership at https://ieee.org/join .

Sean Collison, scollison@gmail.com, IEEE Boise Section Chair

 

About your section

The Boise section covers southwest Idaho and portions of eastern Oregon. We have two student branches, one at Boise State University and one at Northwest Nazarene University.

You are encouraged to join technical societies and affinity groups that match your interests. We have five local technical chapters: Power and Energy (PES), Electron Devices, Computer, Solid-State Circuits, and Signal Processing/Robotics & Automation. We also have a WIE (Women In Engineering) Affinity Group and a YP (Young Professionals) Affinity Group.

Our section web site is at https://site.ieee.org/boise. You can find out who our volunteers are at https://site.ieee.org/boise/contact . 

You can follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/IEEEBoise .

2024 IEEE-Boise Section Officers and Activity Chairs

Your 2024 section officers and activity chairs are:

Section Chair – Sean Collison
Vice Chair – Randy Rannow
Treasurer – Patrick Miesen
Secretary – Nidish Vashistha
Educational Activities Chairs – Perry Lea, Randy Rannow
Membership Development Chair – Randy Rannow
Professional Activities Chair – Chris Gunning
Nominations and Election Chair – Kristen Hopper
Women In Engineering (WIE) Affinity Group Chair – Jigyasa Chauhan
Young Professionals (YP) Affinity Group Chair – Karthik Srinivasan
Student Activities Chair – Omiya Hassan

Thank you to our newest volunteers: Karthik Srinivasan is our new Young Professionals (YP) Affinity Group Chair and Omiya Hassan is our new Student Activities Chair.

Volunteering for IEEE is a great way to serve your fellow members and the community. If you can help by volunteering in our section, please contact Sean Collison, our section chair, at scollison@gmail.com or Nidish Vashistha, our section secretary, at nidish@ieee.org .

Future Newsletters

If you have a topic you’d like to suggest or an article you’d like to contribute to a future newsletter, please send it to Chris Gunning at cgunning@ieee.org . Thank you!

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