March 2023 Newsletter
Upcoming Events in our Section
- WMED 2023 – 20th IEEE Workshop on Microelectronics. March 31st, 2023, all day. Boise EDS chapter. Sponsored by IEEE-Boise Section. https://ieeeboisewmed.org/
Other upcoming events of interest
- FIRST Robotics FRC Idaho Regional. 49 teams of highschoolers will come together to compete at the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa. They will show their mechanical, electrical, coding skills; their business acumen and talk about their community footprint. It is inspiring and we would love for you to be inspired by the next generation as well! Qualification Matches on Friday March 31st 9am-5:45pm and Saturday April 1st 9am-12:15pm. Playoff Matches and Awards Ceremony Saturday April 1st 1:30pm-4:30pm. https://idahofrcregionaldotorg.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/idaho-program-2023-for-press.pdf
- Specialization and the End of Moore’s Law, Neil Thompson, Director of FutureTech research project at MIT’s CSAIL. Sponsored by IEEE Computer Society and GBC/ACM. Online 5pm MDT, Thursday, March 23rd. Register in advance for this webinar at
- https://acm-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/3616750322594/WN_2k-jR3BqSvihFD8EnJnIzQ
- Sustainable Alternative Materials to Plastics in Electronics. SusTech 2023 March Talk by Prof. Yael Vodovotz, Ohio State University. March 28, 2023, 7pm-8pm MDT. https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/351852
- SusTech 2023 10th Conference. April 19-22 in Portland, OR. SusTech 2023 features a 3 1/2 day program on sustainability topics with workshop, poster contest, receptions, dinner, technical presentations, keynotes and plenary talks and panels. Attendee early registration ends March 30th. Remote options available. https://ieee-sustech.org/
- Cyber Idaho Security Summit 2023, Wednesday, May 10 at 9am-3pm. https://www.idahotechcouncil.org/event/cybersummit2023/?utm_campaign=Cyber%20Idaho%20Summit%202023
FutureCity competition results
The Future City Program combines an engineering challenge with a “hands-on” application as sixth through eighth grade students present their vision of a city of the future by working in teams along with their teacher and a volunteer engineer mentor. More details are at https://futurecity.org/idaho.
The IEEE Boise Section is proud to be a platinum sponsor of the Idaho Regional Future City Competition this year. We sponsored the special award for best application of IoT technologies for addressing climate change challenges.
The 19th Idaho Regional Competition was held on January 28th at Boise State University. Congratulations to the Cquit City team from Syringa Middle School for winning the IEEE special award. And a huge thank you to our IEEE-Boise volunteers Bob Davidson, Chidi Agbo, Sunny Sadana, Chandra Danana, Sandra Capri, and Nidish Vashistha for judging at the competition.
Greetings from the Chair (Sean Collison, scollison@gmail.com)
Thank you for your membership in IEEE. If you’ve already renewed for 2023, thank you! If you haven’t, renew now at https://www.ieee.org/membership/renew.html so you continue to receive all your IEEE benefits.
You are receiving this newsletter because you are a member of the IEEE-Boise section. Previous newsletters are on our section website at https://site.ieee.org/boise/archive/ .
Find out about more upcoming IEEE events at these links:
- IEEE Virtual Events Calendar – Major upcoming events and those now available on demand. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-virtual-events-calendar
- MGA Scoop – Monthly newsletter about upcoming events and member benefits: https://mga.ieee.org/news/32-ieee-news
- Region 6 (western US) web site: https://ieee-region6.org/events/category/meetings/
- IEEE App. For a comprehensive listing of all IEEE events, including chapter, section and student branch meetings, use the IEEE app available on Google Play and Apple’s App Store. Download the IEEE app today. https://app.ieee.org/
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 .
About your section
The Boise section covers southwest Idaho and portions of eastern Oregon. We have approximately 400 members in the section, including 27 undergraduate and 11 graduate student members. 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 .
2023 IEEE-Boise Section Officers and Activity Chairs
Your 2023 section officers and activity chairs are:
Section Chair – Sean Collison
Vice Chair – Randy Rannow
Treasurer – Patrick Miesen
Secretary – Nidish Vashistha
Young Professionals (YP) Chair – Zongyin Chi
Membership Development Chair – Randy Rannow
Professional Activities Chair – Chris Gunning
Student Activities Chair – Nadar Rafla
Nominations and Election Chair – Kristen Hopper
Thank you so much to our 2022 officers and activity chairs for everything they’ve done for the section last year. Congratulations to our new officers and activity chairs who have stepped up to volunteer in 2023.
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.
Elisa Barney Smith selected as Computer Society Distinguished Visitor
Dr. Elisa Barney Smith, a long-time volunteer from our section, has been selected for the IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor Program (DVP) for 2023-2025. Congratulations to Dr. Barney for her selection to this prestigious program.
Several IEEE societies have DVP or similar programs. These programs give local chapters the ability to invite the most accomplished leaders in tech to speak at their chapter events, either online or in person. We hope to have Dr. Barney talk at one of our Computer Society events later this year.
For Dr. Barney’s biography and more information about her presentations, see https://www.computer.org/profiles/elisa-barney-smith .
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!