IEEE Madison Section - 1999 Meeting Archive
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Speaker: Michael Bryant, Sonic Foundry
This presentation will cover the topics related to preparing video and audio for delivery via the Internet. The purpose is to outline the basic steps and offer suggestions for simplifying the process.
Michael Bryant is the Training Manager at Sonic Foundry. Sonic Foundry is a media solutions company developing software for creating, editing and delivering audio and video content as well as Internet authoring tools.
Speaker: Melvin Siedband, Ph.D., P.E., Certified Medical Physicist (ABMP)
Hippocrates' admonition must be remembered when designing machines for patient care and diagnosis. What happens when a patient is injured on an x-ray machine and what steps can be taken to prevent such injuries are the subjects of this talk. Several injury cases will be described and the role of the engineering expert will be discussed. A few of the steps which can be taken during the design of the machine to assure patient safety and avoid or minimize the costs of lawsuits will also be covered.
Mel Siedband is Emeritus Prof. of Medical Physics at the UW. He has degrees in Math from the U of Washington (1952) and Johns Hopkins (1970), and a PhD from the Medical College of WI (1994) obtained only thirty-five years after he started. He is a PE from MD and WI and a Certified Medical Physicist (ABMP). Before coming to the UW, Mel was Engineering Manager at the Westinghouse X-ray Div. in Baltimore. He has around 50 patents. He's a real ham (you'll know from the bad jokes) and a licensed ham (N9HXP).
Speaker: Deepak Divan, Soft Switching Technologies
The impact of poor power quality on industrial equipment and processes will be discussed. In particular, the realization that voltage sags are the dominant problem on the US electrical grid, has led to a new category of power quality solutions. Some of the new solutions, which have been developed at Soft Switching Technologies, a UW spin-off company, will be discussed.
Deepak Divan (Fellow IEEE) was a Professor at UW Madison in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for 13 years. In 1995 he started Soft Switching Technologies, a high tech power electronics company. SST is located in Middleton, WI, and designs and manufactures power conversion and power quality products for a variety of industrial and defense applications.
This meeting will kickoff our fall schedule with a social, dinner and tour of the Capital Brewery, located in downtown Middleton. We will also be presenting our 1999 awards.
The Capital Brewery was founded in 1984 and it produced its first brew in the spring of 1986. Currently, it produces fourteen different beers. Most of its beers are produced under the strict "Reinheitsgebot". These are the German beer production purity laws, which date back to the 1500s.
Much of the brewing equipment currently used in the brewery, including the two copper brewing kettles, came from the Hoxter Brewery in Germany. At the heart of the operation is an excellent refrigeration system that enables the brewery to produce extremely high quality lager beers, prompting many to refer to Capital Brewery as the finest lager brewery in America. The brewery has received many awards for its beers and was named the #1 Brewery in America at the 1998 Beverage Testing Institute's World Beer Championships in Chicago. It is a publicly held company that currently produces approximately 15,000 barrels annually and has distribution in three midwestern states.
Speaker: Walter Trzeciak, Phd.
The Aladdin SRC is a national research facility that produces bright ultraviolet light and soft X-rays for research in basic science and technology. Such an intense light source makes it possible to reveal the complete information about electrons at surfaces and in novel materials, such as high temperature superconductors and magnetic nanostructures. It is also used to produce cutting-edge semiconductor devices by X-ray lithography, to calibrate data from space telescopes, such as the Hubble, and many other applications.
The SRC is operated as a national facility by the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin - Madison with funding from the Division of Materials Research of the National Science Foundation. Construction of Aladdin's 1 Gev Storage Ring began in 1977 and it became operational in 1985. Research at SRC has had an impact on many fascinating areas, including (but not limited to) high resolution optical absorption spectroscopy of solid and gases, photoinduced luminescence in solids and gases, photoelectron diffraction, X-Ray lithography, micro-machining, X-Ray microscopy and scattering. Walter Trzeciak, PhD, of the SRC staff, will provide a short presentation at 7 PM, just prior to the tour. Join us for what promises to be a fascinating visit.
Speaker: Dr. Sarah Pfatteicher, UW-Madison College of Engineering
As professionals whose work shapes every aspect of our lives, engineers have an obligation to their profession and to the public to act ethically. Engineers have accepted this obligation, in part because it comes as a necessary complement to the professional authority and autonomy that many engineers enjoy. But does this obligation extend to the professional societies that engineers have formed? In other words, do engineering societies have an ethical obligation to promote and enforce ethical behavior?
This program will begin with a brief presentation by engineering historian Dr. Sarah Pfatteicher on several ways in which professional societies can support ethical behavior and discourage unethical behavior, and the reasons why they might or might not choose to do so. For the remainder of the session, Dr. Pfatteicher will lead an audience discussion of specific ethics case studies, with a focus on whether and how a professional society should respond to each case. Cases will include such topics as whistleblowing, intellectual property rights, and affirmative action.
Speaker: Dr. Sarah Pfatteicher works in the College of Engineering at the UW-Madison, where she is the director of assessment and a lecturer in engineering ethics. Her main duties involve helping to prepare the college for its upcoming ABET re-accreditation visit in November 2000 and teaching ethics for engineering students. Dr. Pfatteicher earned her Ph.D. in the history of science from the UW-Madison (1996) and also holds a degree in physics and mathematics. Her research focuses on the history of engineering disasters and their relationship to engineering ethics.
Speaker: Darren Cox, Marketing, USWest
Darren Cox will discuss distance learning and high-speed Internet access, DSL, ISDN, ATM, frame relay, wireless extension, and will also touch on corporate technology assisted learning.
Speaker: Craig Beardsley, Advanced Technology Specialist for Sony Broadcast and Production Group
Craig Beardsley is Advanced Technology Specialist for Sony Broadcast and Production Group and is based in the Chicago area. His role is track emerging core technologies and key applications (such as DTV migration paths) and provide ongoing technical training to Sony sales staff. He is also involved educational and technology presentations to Sony's customer base.
His broadcast experience, prior to coming to Sony, includes work as a broadcast TV staff engineer at several stations and as Chief Engineer of WSNS-TV in Chicago, and later as a systems engineer for NBC Network in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Implementing the new US ATSC standard for Digital Television in both the production and consumer environments involves dealing with a number of challenges in technology, manufacturing, and marketing. This presentation will outline the challenges posed by the ATSC standard, and the design decisions that Sony has made in an effort to meet these difficult challenges. Covered will be the pertinent standards, systems issues, and what Sony has done to produce cost effective products for this new digital medium.
Speaker: Michael Johnson, Power System Engineering, Inc.
Michael Johnson is a project coordinator in the Automation Technology Department of Power System Engineering, Inc. in Madison and has been with PSE since January of 1995. He was educated in England at St Helens College and the University of Warwick, studying combined electrical and mechanical engineering to the equivalent of a 4 year degree.
This presentation will be an overview of a short course subject prepared by PSE.
It will include discussion on:
