Chair’s Message, December 2016

Posted By: M. Nazrul Islam 2016-12-01

It is hard to believe that we are already in the month of December. We started the year with a lot of enthusiasm to achieve several goals and objectives. Though time passed very quickly, I think we have also accomplished significantly this year and been able to keep the Section along with its Societies and Committees active and serve the Members.

Among several plans and accomplishments we have made this year, I would like to share a couple of them with you.

  1. Section Officers’ meeting: The Section Officers have been meeting at least once a month, usually one week before the Executive Committee (ExCom) meeting, to discuss the policies and action items.
  2. Discussion at ExCom meeting: We have initiated a special discussion section on various urgent topics at each ExCom meeting and planned the action items.
  3. Website: The Section website has been updated with new design and features. Thanks to Davor Dokonal, James Colotti, Metodi Filipov and John Schmidt for their hard work and recommendations.
  4. Conferences: The Section has been involved in several technical conferences, including the following.
    1. Microwave Theory and Techniques (MTT) Symposium & Exhibits, April 2016
    2. Long Island Systems, Applications and Technology (LISAT) conference, May 2016
    3. Long Island Photonics Conference, October 2016
  5. Workshop: This year we started offering workshops on the state-of-the-art technological topics. The first workshop was on Linux based embedded systems design on February 29 – March 9, which was a great success.
  6. IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (DL): The Section has been successful in inviting a couple of DLs and gave lectures at the conference/seminars organized by the Signal Processing Society, Photonics Society, and Microwave Theory and Techniques Society.
  7. Engineers Week: A seminar series was held in February.
  8. Awards Banquet: This year, in addition to recognizing the significant contributions of our volunteers, we honored six Region 1 awardees and nine Section awardees in different categories. A new item in the awards program was a special citation to the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe.
  9. IEEE Region 1 Board of Governors’ meeting: The Chair and the Treasurer the day-long meeting and presented our Section activities on August 6, 2016, in Mystic, Connecticut.
  10. Nikola Tesla’s 160th birthday: Our Section was invited, and we gave a special citation to Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe at birthday celebration event held on July 10, 2016.
  11. Membership Enhancement: A sub-committee was formed at the beginning of the year to identify the challenges and propose solutions to membership retention and enhancement.
  12. Association of Old Crows (AOC): The Section Officers was invited to the AOC Awards Banquet held on November 11, 2016.

The slate for election of the Section Officers for 2017 is published. Looking forward to having an efficient new team to lead the Section.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday.

Best,

Nazrul Islam, PhD
Chair, IEEE Long Island Section