News


Competition Heats Up To Fill European Tech Jobs

Europe’s down economy is having little effect on hiring qualified engineers

 

By Ron Schneiderman / March 2012

 

Early in 2011, Intel put out the word that it planned to hire 1000 software engineers by the end of the year in the U.S. It beat its deadline. Now, it wants to do the same thing in Europe.

Aiming to strengthen its R&D capacity in the greater Europe region (Europe, Russia, and Israel), Intel expects to hire about 1000 software engineers in 2012, with most of them based in Poland, Finland, France, Romania, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Intel’s is particularly interested in software and test developers familiar with C/C++, wireless integration software and hardware engineers, analog and process engineers, and design, validation, and verification engineers. “We would expect these profiles to have appropriate technical skills, including programming skills in languages such as C-shell, Perl, Scheme, tcl/Tk, and C, a knowledge of static timing analysis and knowledge of DFT, and strong ASIC, and SoC [system on a chip] design experience,” says Stephanie Lee, Sales/Marketing Group European Account Manager for European Staffing for Intel Corp. UK Ltd.

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Continuing Education (CE): Technical English Programme (TEP)

A webinar on the IEEE’s Continuing Education (CE) – Technical English Programme (TEP) was organized on 10 January 2012. The organizing team was comprised by Saurabh Sinha, IEEE Region 8 Vice-Chair: Technical Activities, Steve Welch, Director of CE, Educational Activities Division (EAD), Niovi Pavlidou, IEEE R8 Lead Volunteer for CE (Educational Activities Subcommittee (EASC)), and Burt Dicht, Director of University Programs, Educational Activities Division (EAD).

The web-based seminar was offered to relevant officers in Region 8: Section Chairs, Chapter Chairs, Region 8 EA officers, the Chapters Coordination Subcommittee (ChCSC) and several interested (invited) members in the Region.

The duration of the webinar was one hour, the lectures and discussion slots as a whole.

Saurabh Sinha welcomed the participants and introduced various subcommittees relating to technical activities, including educational activities in Region 8. Niovi Pavlidou described in brief the scope and the first activities of the newly formed CE team in Region 8. After that, Burt Dicht covered the topic: Technical English Programme (TEP)- “In-Person” or face-to-face workshop, a provision of the University Activities Committee (UAC), Educational Activities Board (EAB), focusing on successful examples like the event in Abu Dhabi, UAE 2010.  Steve Welch continued with the: Technical English Programme (TEP), an IEEE new initiative (funded by the IEEE New Initiatives Committee (NIC)) – an upcoming online product, and a provision of the Continuing Professional Education Committee (CPEC), EAB stating that the module will be ready by the end of March 2012. Region 8 Section volunteers are invited to partner with us in the in-person or online editions of TEP, such that our members can benefit from this.

After the presentation a questions and answers slot was offered to the participants.  The slides, supported by the recording of the webinar, are available from the IEEE Region 8 (Technical activities, Educational activities) website.

The event was organized on WebEx facilities and the attendance has been improved in relation to the last CE event.   Based on the obtained experience some new proposals for future events are now being considered.

Prof. Niovi Pavlidou
IEEE R8 Lead Volunteer for Continuing Education
IEEE Greece Section Membership Development Officer
IEEE VTS&AESS Joint Greece Chapter Chair


Student projects conference in Serbia (Niš)

IEEESTEC – 4th International Student’s Projects Conference was held on 30 November 2011 at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš, Serbia. Hosted by EESTEC LC Nis, IEEE Student Branch Niš and Faculty of Electronic Engineering Niš, the conference offered a platform for students of electrical and computer engineering to discuss and exchange research ideas and projects.

The event was supported by IEEE Electron Devices/Solid – State Circuits Chapter, IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Chapter. The conference was dedicated to the 40th anniversary of IEEE Serbia and Montenegro Section, which supported the conference, too.

The opening speech was delivered by Danijel Danković, chairman of the conference, Vera Marković, secretary of IEEE Serbia and Montenegro Section and Zoran Perić, the vice dean of Faculty of Electronic Engineering Nis. The conference was very successful, gathering an audience of about 200 students and academic staff.

The conference schedule contained a total of 34 papers which covered a wide range of topics.The member reviewers selected the best projects for the three top prizes. After students briefly orally presented their projects, all participants had the opportunity to show demonstrations of their projects. This year, Gold Paper Award was assigned for hundredth paper from the beginning of the conference.

The full-day event ended with the handing of the special awards for best project according to the choice of the authors of papers. The conference was helped by many sponsors. For more information about IEEESTEC Student’s Projects Conference, please go to http://ieee.elfak.ni.ac.rs.

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Humanitarian Technology Webinar: AIDG Product Development for the Other 90%

Get more information

Register Now!

I can’t make it

Please register for our next FREE Humanitarian Technology Webinar:

Product Development for the Other 90%: Lessons Learned

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Presented by: Peter Haas, AIDG Executive Director

Date: Thursday, 15 December 2011
Time: 10:00 a.m. New York, EST

About this Webinar:

Peter Haas is the executive director of AIDG, which helps small and medium sized companies providing infrastructure related products and services for emerging markets. From 2004 to 2010 AIDG ran an R&D division working with universities and other engineering groups on developing new products for the other 90%. Results of this work got featured in Discover, NPR, wired and other news outlets This webinar will delve into product development for the poor, what works, what doesn’t, and what are the common pitfalls?”


How well can you withstand Life’s Greatest Risks? : Take the Survey

How many people depend upon your income to afford housing or education?  How would you recover if your property was destroyed by a natural disaster?  If a job opportunity led you to live abroad, would your home country insurance scheme follow you? These are some of the questions IEEE members ask themselves on a daily basis. To better support our members throughout their career and global assignments, IEEE is working in cooperation with Clements Worldwide, to conduct a risk and resilience assessment of the IEEE membership. This assessment will help ascertain what types of risks members face, and their potential impact on their lives. This initial survey will focus on members based in the Asia Pacific region, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

IEEE has engaged Clements Worldwide, the leading provider of insurance solutions to the international community, to conduct the Acuity Risk Assessment of IEEE members. The survey focuses on the types of risks members may face and their ability to withstand the effects of adverse events.

IEEE members are encouraged to take the Acuity Risk Assessment, a confidential and anonymous survey, so that we may gather some preliminary data for product development purposes.

Please access the confidential Acuity Risk Assessment by clicking HERE.

The risk assessment will be available online until 19 December 2011.

Please send your questions or comments to [email protected].

Survey URL: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MXV6CWD


IEEE Mourns Board Member Roger Pollard

4 December 2011 – Below is the official message from IEEE President Moshe Kam regarding the death of Roger Pollard.

[singlepic id=1367 float=right]Dear Colleagues:

It is with great sadness that I have to report the untimely death of Roger Pollard, 65, a prominent British engineer and educator, who was a long-time volunteer of IEEE. Dr. Pollard died on Saturday, 3 December having been diagnosed with a terminal disease in October this year. At the time of his death, Dr. Pollard was the Secretary of IEEE and Member of the IEEE Board of Directors.

Dr. Pollard had served as Chair of the Technical Activities Board (2010) and as leader in several key IEEE volunteer positions – within the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (of which he was President in 1998), the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland Section (Chair, 1996-1999), Region 8, the IEEE Awards Board, the IEEE Finance Committee, the IEEE Strategic Planning Committee, and the IEEE Publications Services and Products Board.   In 2010 he was recommended by the IEEE Board of Directors to the membership as one of the candidates for 2012 President-elect.

Dr. Pollard always considered his most important IEEE achievement to be his contribution as Chair of the TAB/PAB Electronic Products Committee that led to the creation and launch of the online IEEE
Xplore platform. His work as Chair resulted in IEEE acquiring a leading position as a source of online authoritative technical information, and made IEEE’s intellectual property available to millions worldwide.

Until September 2010, Dr. Pollard served as the Agilent Technologies Chair in High Frequency Measurements and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Leeds. He was previously the Head of the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, where he had been a faculty member since 1974. He was an active member of the Institute of Microwaves and Photonics, and a well-known researcher of microwave passive and active devices. His personal research interests were in microwave network measurements, calibration and error correction, microwave and millimeter-wave circuits, terahertz technology, and large-signal and non-linear characterization. In these areas he had contributed to 10 books, authored over 120 refereed publications, and was awarded three patents. His activity had significant industrial collaboration; he served as consultant to many industrial companies, most notably since 1981 to Agilent Technologies (previously Hewlett-Packard Company) in Santa Rosa, Calif. For his scientific and engineering contributions Roger Pollard was elevated to IEEE Fellow (1997) and was elected to the UK Royal Academy of Engineering (2005). He was also a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET; formerly the IEE).

To his friends in IEEE, Roger Pollard exemplified the dedicated and fully committed IEEE volunteer. He has given to the organization of his time and intellectual effort, generously and consistently, for more than 25 years. He was a well read and broadly educated man, and very often raised the level of conversation with his wide knowledge of literature, language and the arts, and with his substantial understanding of law, political history, and economics. He was known as a passionate advocate of the organizational units which he served, and of the ideas and causes he favored. He was a highly eloquent and persuasive speaker, not shying away from expressing strong opinions and decisive plans that often flew in the face of conventional wisdom and challenged the existing order. Yet he was open to persuasion and to hearing and learning from individuals of different opinions, and was frequently the architect of compromises that resulted in widely-supported decisions based on consensus. He was a strong proponent of globalization of IEEE, and supported structural reforms in the way IEEE is organized – to increase the organization’s effectiveness and diversity. Of special note in this regard are his contributions to the 2009 and 2010 ad hoc committees on IEEE Board Transformation, for which he worked indefatigably.

We express our heartfelt condolences to Roger Pollard’s family, colleagues and friends over their great loss. We take some solace in the many initiatives and projects he had led to success, and whose substantial and positive impact will continue to benefit IEEE and its constituents for many years to come.


Seminar on “Introduction to Writing Technical Papers”

Summary

In the seminar basic rules for writing technical papers will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on papers for IEEE transactions and conferences. A recommendations will be given concerning the structure of the manuscript as well as on the layout and the expected content in each part of it. It also will deal with language problems of authors for whom English is not their first language. This in particular may lead to often made errors and eventually to the rejection of the manuscript by the reviewers.

Finally, the participants will be interactively involved in drafting an abstract and/or an introduction.

Usefull files:  telforintroductiontowriting


IEEE Annual Election Results

IEEE President-Elect, 2012

Candidates Votes
Roger D. Pollard (Nominated by IEEE Board of Directors) 17,038
Peter W. Staecker (Nominated by IEEE Board of Directors) 21,406

Continuing Education Offerings from the IEEE R8

A webinar on the IEEE’s Continuing Education (CE) offerings was organized on the 2nd of November, 2011. The organizing team was comprised by Saurabh Sinha, IEEE R8 Technical Activities Vice-Chair, Steve Welch, Director of CE, Educational Activities Division (EAD), Niovi Pavlidou, IEEE R8 Lead Volunteer for Continuing Education (Educational Activities Subcommittee (EASC)), and Alex Torres, Product Manager of CE Programs, EAD.

The seminar was offered to relevant officers in Region 8: Section Chairs, Chapter Chairs, Region 8 EA officers, the Chapters Coordination Subcommittee (ChCSC) and several interested (invited) members in the Region.

The duration of the webinar was one hour, the lectures and discussion slots as a whole.

Saurabh Sinha welcomed the participants and introduced various subcommittees relating to technical activities, including educational activities in Region 8. Niovi Pavlidou described in brief the scope and the first activities of the newly formed CE team in Region 8. After that, Steve Welch, with the assistance of Alex Torres, covered topics to key CE offerings. The scope and services and offerings of CE includes the Education Provider’s Programme (http://cep.ieee-elearning.org), the IEEE Webinar Platform (http://info.ieee-elearning.org) based on the Blackboard collaborate Platform, through which the same webinar took place with full of success, and on the IEEE eLearning Library (http://ieee-elearning.org/) were presented in detail.

After the presentation a questions and answers slot was offered to the participants.

Besides its content, the event offered a valuable experience for assessing the quality and friendliness of such collaboration in very dispersed environments in time zones, mother languages and actual infrastructure.

The webinar has been recorded and can be viewed offline at:

http://ieee-elearning.org/outreach/course/view.php?id=960

The attendance is considered as moderate, since this was one of the first trials for webinars on the offerings of IEEE and ways to promote future participation in similar events are examined.

Prof. Niovi Pavlidou
IEEE R8 Lead Volunteer for Continuing Education
IEEE Greece Section Membership Development Officer
IEEE VTS&AESS Joint Greece Chapter Chair