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January 2021

From the Chair (Randy Rannow)

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

It’s been several years since our section has published a regular newsletter. We’re bringing it back to combine announcements into fewer emails when possible and reduce the email burden on our members like you. We plan to publish it on a monthly basis.

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 .

If you have any questions or feedback about the IEEE-Boise section and our activities, please feel free to contact me at pi-boson@ieee.org .

About the section

The Boise section covers southwest Idaho and portions of eastern Oregon. We have approximately 500 members in the section, including 37 undergraduate and 21 graduate student members. We have two student branches, one at Boise State University and one at Northwest Nazarene University. We have five technical chapters: Power and Energy (PES), Electron Devices, Computer, Solid-State Circuits, and Signal Processing. We also have a WIE (Women In Engineering) Affinity Group and a YP (Young Professionals) Affinity Group.

You can also find out more about the section on our web site at https://site.ieee.org/boise/. You can also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/IEEEBoise.

Renewal Reminder

If you’ve renewed already for 2021, thank you! If not, don’t let your membership lapse. It’s easy to renew online at https://ieee.org/renew.

Your 2021 Officers

The section OpCom election concluded on Jan. 14th. Here are our 2021 section officers:

  • Chair: Randy Rannow
  • Vice-Chair: Nader Rafla
  • Secretary: Walter Bruehl
  • Treasurer: Sam Lester

You can find out more about our officers here: https://site.ieee.org/boise/files/2021/01/11260.pdf.

You can find a volunteer roster for all IEEE organizational units here: https://rosters.ieee.org/

Congratulations to our new and continuing officers, and thank you to our 2020 officers for their service.

OpCom Vacancies

We are currently seeking volunteers for the following positions:

  • Education Activities Chair (K-12 STEM outreach activities)
  • Student Activities Chair – Your principal responsibility is to promote student activities in all student branches within our section. You will be working with student officers and branch counselors as well as your Regional leadership team to ensure that our section has a strong and vital student activities program.
  • Signal Processing Society Chapter Chair

If you are interested in any of these positions or volunteering for another role within the section, please contact Randy Rannow at pi-boson@ieee.org.

PES Talk on Jan. 25th

The Boise PES chapter is hosting a talk titled “Capacity Contribution of Variable Resources Using a Probabilistic Approach” by Andrés Valdepeña Delgado of Idaho Power. The talk will be held on Monday, Jan. 25th at 12pm. More information, registration, and the webex link can be found at https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/258204.

Recent Supercomputing Talks now on IEEEtv

In December, the Boise section along with the section’s Computer Society and PES chapters held two talks about supercomputing at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The recordings from these talks are now available on IEEEtv:

2021 IEEE Workshop on Microelectronics and Electron Devices (WMED-2021)

WMED 2021 will be held Friday, April 23rd. It will be held virtually due to the pandemic. For more information, see https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2021-ieee-workshop-on-microelectronics-and-electron-devices-wmed-2021-tickets-91341096679 .

Future City

The Boise section and the Boise PES Chapter are proud to be sponsors again for this year’s Idaho regional Future City Competition. Future City is a free educational program for sixth, seventh and eighth-grade students run entirely by volunteers. It is a national program that fosters an interest in math, science and engineering through hands-on, real world applications. The Idaho regional competition will be held on Friday, January 22nd. For more information, see https://futurecity.org/idaho.

Rising Stars 2021

The annual IEEE Rising Stars conference went global and virtual this year. The conference brings together the most promising students and young professionals around the world to network and is inspired by each other. The conference consisted of two tracks: a technical track, bringing together experts on emerging technologies, and a professional track, inspiring attendees on how to succeed in their careers and develop as leaders. We had several students from our section attend. The conference is over but you can still access conference content by registering as an attendee. Find out more at https://ieee-risingstars.org/.

IEEEXtreme 14.0

The IEEEXtreme 14.0 24-hour global programming competition for college students was held on Oct. 23-24, 2020. This year the Boise section had two teams compete from NNU. NNU’s SParkeOfIndecency team — Hope Henry, Jason Hatfield, and Enoch Levandovsky — took first place in Region 6 (Western US) and placed 8th out of 102 teams in the US. Congratulations to all the students that competed and a big thank you to Kevin Hess, our section IEEEXtreme coordinator, and to all our section volunteers who helped proctor the competition. More information about the competition can be found at https://ieeextreme.org/.

Jan. 22 webcast – IEEE-USA Washington Update: 2021 Comes Into Focus

In Washington, personnel is policy.  President Biden’s leadership team is starting to take shape and we have a clearer picture of who the Congressional leaders will be in 2021.

On Friday, Jan 22nd, at 11am Mountain Time, Russell Harrison, Director of Government Relations, IEEE-USA, will discuss how this will likely affect technologists, the technology economy, and IEEE-USA’s political agenda this year.  Specific issues may include future COVID relief bills, federally funded research, NASA reauthorization, and high-skill immigration.

Facebook livestream: https://bit.ly/dc-update-1-22-fb

YouTube livestream: https://bit.ly/dc-update-1-22-yt

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!