The Seminar Series highlights the Extraordinary Science performed in IEEE Societies and Councils by Extraordinary Women. Each Society and Council was asked to select a “champion” to present her work throughout the year. The series wishes to encourage attendees to participate in this highly interdisciplinary event and hopes to be a seminal moment of inspiration for women, girls, and young researchers interested in STEM.
Seeing the Light: My Career Journey from Academia to Industry
28 January 2022
This talk will tell the story of the transition of Dalma Novak’s technical career from a University Professor in Australia to working at a venture-backed start-up in the US, and eventually co-founding her own company where she develops advanced radio-over-fiber systems.
Dalma Novak
IEEE Entrepreneurship Exchange Community
Dalma Novak is VP of Engineering at Octane Wireless where she develops high-performance RF-over-fiber technologies for commercial and defense wireless applications. She is also an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Dalma has over 30 years of experience working in the optical and wireless communications fields and is internationally recognized for her work in microwave photonics and fiber radio technologies. She has contributed several book chapters on the design of fiber-wireless communication systems and has more than 300 publications in these areas, including several book chapters and patents. In 2007 Dalma was elected to the grade of IEEE Fellow for her contributions to enabling technologies for the implementation of fiber-radio systems. In 2018 she received the IEEE Photonics Society Engineering Achievement Award.
Prior to co-founding Pharad, now Octane Wireless, in 2004, Dalma spent 12 years as a Professor and Chair of Telecommunications in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Melbourne, Australia. From June 2001 – December 2003 she was a Technical Section Lead at the venture-backed Dorsál Networks, Inc. and later at Corvis Corporation where she led cross-disciplinary R&D teams developing hardware for long-haul transmission systems. Dalma received her Bachelor of Electrical Engineering (with First Class Honors) and Doctor of Philosophy from The University of Queensland, in 1987 and 1992, respectively.
Dalma is a member of the IEEE Board of Directors as Director of IEEE Division X for 2021– 2022 and is the 2021–2022 Chair of the IEEE Technical Activities Board (TAB) Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (CDI).
Why Academics and Industry Must Work Hand in Hand for the Benefit of Humanity
11 February 2022
The discovery of fuzzy systems at their very beginning gave me the chance to work in an emerging field where everything was to be built. Their success has been essentially based on the cooperation between theoretical and methodological advances of academics, and the attractiveness and efficiency of industrial applications. As a senior researcher, a university teacher and the head of successive research teams or departments in the Université Paris 6-Pierre et Marie-Curie, I was able to lead research in the area of decision making and artificial intelligence. I led or participated in 20 research and development projects involving a number of academic and industrial partners. I was also the supervisor or co-supervisor of 52 PhD students, 25 of them being financially supported by an industry grant from my direct collaboration with companies. I strongly believe that academic and industrial advances foster each other. The IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, which I chaired in 2020-2021, recently created a Committee for Industrial and Governmental Activities with the goal of attracting more practitioners and companies and highlighting real-world applications of Computational Intelligence, especially those at the heart of most of the currently popular applications of Artificial Intelligence. We will give examples of real-world applications of Fuzzy Systems and, more generally, Computational Intelligence.
Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier
IEEE Computational Intelligence Society
Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier is a director of research emeritus at the National Centre for Scientific Research and Sorbonne University, the former head of the department of Databases and Machine Learning in the LIP6 laboratory. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-based Systems and the Co-executive director of the IPMU International Conference held every other year since 1986. B. Bouchon-Meunier is the (co)-author of five books and the (co)-editor of 30. She has (co)-authored more than 400 papers on the applications of fuzzy logic and machine learning techniques to decision-making and data science.
She was elected President of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society for 2020-2021. She is an IEEE Life Fellow, an IFSA Fellow and an Honorary Member of the EUSFLAT Society. She received the 2012 IEEE CIS Meritorious Service Award, the 2017 EUSFLAT Scientific Excellence Award, the 2018 IEEE CIS Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award and the 2019 Outstanding Volunteer Award of the IEEE France Section.
Space Environments and Effects
25 February 2022
Advances in integrated-circuit design and technology offer capabilities for space systems that could not be imagined when humans first began exploring outer space. However, the use of advanced technologies in space requires careful assessment of the space environment and mitigation of space environment effects. The space radiation environment and its solar induced changes interact with spacecraft and instrument components and cause observable effects that can be temporary or permanent. Often spacecraft anomalies are caused by these radiation-induced effects, causing loss of data, degradation of capability, service outages, and, in extreme cases, the loss of spacecraft. The effects are usually classified into three categories: total ionizing dose damage that accumulates over a period of time, accumulated damage from atoms being displaced from the material lattice structure, and single event effects that occur as a result of charge being generated along the path of a primary or secondary ionizing particle, collected on circuit nodes, and disrupting (at least temporarily) normal circuit response.
Janet L. Barth
IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society
Janet L. Barth is retired from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). At her retirement she served as the Chief of the Electrical Engineering Division (EED) at GSFC where she was responsible for the delivery of spacecraft and instrument avionics to several of NASA’s science missions, including, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the SWIFT Burst Alert Telescope, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, and the James Webb Space Telescope. She also oversaw development of microwave and optical communications systems and suborbital avionics systems at the Wallops Flight Facility. She was a member of the team that developed NASA’s systems engineering approach to radiation hardness assurance for emerging technologies. Starting in 1999, she worked on the development of NASA’s Living With a Star (LWS) Program as a member of the science pre-formulation/proposal team and the LWS Program Science Architecture Team. In 2001 she was selected as the Project Manager for the LWS’s Space Environment Testbed and in 2002 to 2008, she was a branch manager in the EED. She currently works for Cornell Technical Services as a subject matter expert on evaluation panels for future NASA missions.
Janet is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), was the President of IEEE’s Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) from 2013-2014, and currently serves as the Past-chair of the Society’s Radiation Effects Steering Group. In 2014 she was presented with the IEEE/NPSS Radiation Effects Award. She is actively involved with the IEEE Nuclear and Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC) teaching the Short Course in 1997 and serving as the Guest Editor of the Transactions on Nuclear Science from 1998-2000, the Technical Program Chair in 2001, and the General Conference Chair in 2006. She is a regular participant in the European Radiation and its Effects on Components and Systems (RADECS) Conference.
Cognitive Radars: The Present and the Challenges for the Future
3 March 2022
Over the past fifteen years, “cognition” has emerged as an enabling technology for incorporating learning and adaptivity on both transmit and receive to optimize or make more robust the radar performance in dynamic environments. The term ‘cognitive radar’ was introduced for the first time in 2006, but the foundations of the cognitive systems date back several decades to research on knowledge-aided signal processing, and adaptive radar design. The core of cognitive radar systems is the ‘perception-action cycle’, that is the feedback mechanism within the transceiver architecture that allows the radar system to learn information about a target and its environment and adapt its transmissions so as to optimize one or more missions, according to a desired goal. Such radar systems are sometimes called “fully-adaptive”, to highlight the main novelty of these new systems compared to the classical “adaptive” ones. The adaptivity is not anymore only on receive, but also on transmit. But a truly cognitive radar should not be only able to adapt on the fly its transmission waveforms and parameters, based on internal fixed rules and on what learned about the environment, but it should also be able to optimize these rules learning with time from its mistakes, as a biological system does (see for instance bath and dolphin sonar system). And this is still a big challenge for radar experts.
This talk will provide an overview of the main concept, and methods for modeling cognitive processes in a radar system. Some challenges to advancing the current state-of-the art will be discussed, and insights into future directions of research will be provided.
Maria Sabrina Greco
IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society
Maria Sabrina Greco graduated in Electronic Engineering in 1993 and received the Ph.D. degree in Telecommunication Engineering in 1998, from University of Pisa, Italy. From December 1997 to May 1998 she joined the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta, USA as a visiting research scholar where she carried on research activity in the field of radar detection in non-Gaussian background.
In 1993 she joined the Dept. of Information Engineering of the University of Pisa, where she is Full Professor since 2017. She’s IEEE fellow since Jan. 2011. She was co-recipient of the 2001 and 2012 IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society’s Barry Carlton Awards for Best Paper, co-recipient of 2019 EURASIP JASP Best Paper Award, and recipient of the 2008 Fred Nathanson Young Engineer of the Year award for contributions to signal processing, estimation, and detection theory and of IEEE AESS Board of Governors Exceptional Service Award for “Exemplary Service and Dedication and Professionalism, as EiC of the IEEE AES Magazine”. In May-June 2015 and in January-February 2018 she visited as invited Professor the Université Paris-Sud, CentraleSupélec, Paris, France.
She has been general-chair, technical program chair and organizing committee member of many international conferences over the last 10 years. She has been lead-guest editor for the special issue on “Advances in Radar Systems for Modern Civilian and Commercial Applications”, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, July/September 2019, guest editor of the special issue on “Machine Learning for Cognition in Radio Communications and Radar” of the IEEE Journal on Special Topics of Signal Processing (J-STSP), lead guest editor of the special issue on “Advanced Signal Processing for Radar Applications” of the IEEE J-STSP, guest co-editor of the special issue of J-STSP on “Adaptive Waveform Design for Agile Sensing and Communication,” and lead guest editor of the special issue of International Journal of Navigation and Observation on” Modelling and Processing of Radar Signals for Earth Observation. She’s Associate Editor of IET Proceedings – Sonar, Radar and Navigation, and IET-Signal Processing, and Editor in Chief of the Springer Journal of Advances in Signal Processing (JASP). She’s member of the IEEE AESS Board of Governors and has been member of the IEEE SPS BoG (2015-17) and Chair of the IEEE AESS Radar Panel (2015-16). She has been as well SPS Distinguished Lecturer for the years 2014-2015, AESS Distinguished Lecturer for the years 2015-2020, and AESS VP Publications (2018-2020). She’s now IEEE SPS Director-at-Large for Region 8.
Her general interests are in the areas of statistical signal processing, estimation and detection theory. In particular, her research interests include clutter models, coherent and incoherent detection in non-Gaussian clutter, CFAR techniques, radar waveform diversity and bistatic/mustistatic active and passive radars, cognitive radars. She co-authored many book chapters and about 200 journal and conference papers.
Distributed Measurements and IoT
6 May 2022
Climate change is accelerating the paths of green and digital transition in order to create ways of life that, thanks to technology, are more sustainable. The introduction of renewables and ICT technologies is changing electrical grid in a more sustainable way, as well as ICT infrastructures can promote greener lifestyles, in accordance with the so-called Smart Living. Distributed measurements, i.e. sensor networks, is evolving in the Internet of Things, including more types of device, reducing waste, and increasing data for artificial intelligence algorithms. Starting from existing IoT systems, emerging application fields as mobility will be explored. Born about 20 years ago, the concept of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) foresees a network in which vehicles can communicate each other to manage traffic, emergencies and to limit pollution. To demonstrate the feasibility of such vision, some low cost commercial devices, suitable for current vehicles, show a time latency on the order of tens of seconds.
Alessandra Flammini
IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society
Alessandra Flammini graduated with honors in Physics at the University of Rome in 1985. After 10 years spent in industries in the digital electronic systems, in 1995 she joined University of Brescia, where she is a Full Professor since 2016. Her research activity mainly deals with electronic instrumentation, digital processing of sensor signals, wireless sensor networks, Real Time Ethernet, Software Defined Radio, smart grids and smart living; a particular attention is given to real time applications together with synchronization methods among nodes. General Co-Chair of several international IEEE conferences, she has been elected for a four-year term 2013-2016 in the AdCom of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society. Since 2014 she has been responsible for many Smart City projects (smart grids, water management, lifestyles, sustainable mobility). She is in charge of the eLUX interdepartmental laboratory on smart grids and smart living. Since 2019 she is the chairman of the council of the aggregate study program. Since 2020 she is Coordinator of the PhD in Technology for Health. She is the author of more than 300 international publications, including journals, patents and conference proceedings. Since 2019 she is in the Top Italian Scientists list and since 2021 is in the Guide2Research.
One-Cycle Control and Beyond
20 May 2022
Switching converters are nonlinear, so linear feedback control does not always yield good stability and a desirable result. Dr. Smedley invented the One-Cycle Control (OCC) method that copes with the nonlinearity of most switching converters to achieve high performance. In this speech, Dr. Smedley will talk about her exploration in power electronics control and highlight some applications. With the capability to reject switching noise and power supply ripple, OCC delivers the HiFi performance of class-D audio, leading to commercialization in the professional audio market. After that, Dr. Smedley’s team developed OCC universal 4-quadrant power converters performing PFC, APF, inverter, and VAR compensation operations with unmatched dynamic speed. OCC universal power converters are essential for harnessing renewable energy, controlling energy storage, stabilizing the power grid, and serving critical infrastructure.
Keyue Smedley, Ph.D.
IEEE Power Electronics Society
Dr. Keyue Smedley received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in E.E. from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, and her Ph.D. degree in E.E. from Caltech, Pasadena, USA.
Dr. Smedley was in charge of designing power converters for all accelerator rings at the Superconducting Super Collider from 1990 to 1992. She is currently a Professor in the Department of EECS at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Director of the UCI Power Electronics Laboratory Director. She is also a co-founder of One-Cycle Control, Inc.
Dr. Smedley is the inventor of the One-Cycle Control (OCC) method for high-performance switching power conversion. This method has resulted in a high-fidelity OCC class-D amplifier with dramatically higher efficiency in the professional market. The OCC method also led to OCC universal 4-quadrant converters with unmatched dynamic performance to serve the modern power grid. Dr. Smedley’s team invented the Hexagram converter, the first multilevel converter with minimum capacitor requirement and high fault tolerance for motor drive applications. Dr. Smedley led a consortium to demonstrate a 15kV 2,000A (20,000A fault current) class fault current limiter in the commercial power grid for the first time in U.S. history. Her recent work includes general full-range regulation methods for resonant switched capacitor converters to reduce and potentially eliminate the magnetics.
Dr. Smedley’s work resulted in more than 200 technical publications, numerous U.S. and international patents, two start-up companies, and wide ranging industrial applications. Dr. Smedley is a recipient of the UCI Innovation Award 2005. She was selected as IEEE Fellow in 2008 for her contribution to high-performance switching power conversion. Her work with One-Cycle Control, Inc. won the Department of Army Achievement Award in the Pentagon in 2010. She is currently a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Power Electronics Society.
The Art of Transdisciplinary Research in the Information Systems and Technology Disciplines: Reflections from the Field
3 June 2022
Batteryless environmental and health sensors are increasingly appearing in our homes. Future Networks (e.g., 6G) devise protocols to continuously enhance wireless data communications. Emerging though is the seamless integration of wireless RF powering via the access points. As the optimal conditions for high-efficient energy harvesting and high-speed data communications diverge, multi-disciplinary challenges are to be overcome. The waveform transmitted by the access point has to be re-engineered to reach a good balance between data throughput and power conversion efficiency. Also, new hardware architectures for IoT sensor nodes are to be researched to enable joint data communications and energy harvesting in a highly energy-efficient way. This talk will provide a glimpse on on-going research in this fascinating area.
Dominique Schreurs
Seamless Integration of Wireless Powering in IoT Networks
Dominique Schreurs (IEEE Fellow) received the M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium. She has been a Visiting Scientist with Agilent Technologies (USA), ETH Zürich (Switzerland), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA). She is a Full Professor with KU Leuven, where she is also the Chair of the Leuven ICT (the Leuven Centre on Information and Communication Technology). Her current research interests include the microwave and millimeter-wave characterization and modelling of transistors, nonlinear circuits, and biological materials, and system design for wireless communications and biomedical applications. Prof. Schreurs served as the President of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (2018-2019) and was an IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer. She also served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques and is presently a member on IEEE PRAC. She has also served as the President of the ARFTG organization (2018-2019). She has been strongly involved in organizing conferences for IEEE MTT Society and ARFTG, and is presently
Chair of the Conference Portfolio Review Committee in IEEE.
Education and Sustainable Development – A Research Perspective
24 June 2022
Education is listed as one of the sustainable development goals of United Nations. It is made up of ten targets which talk about equal and universal education, nurturing the skills and responsibility of the teachers. Moreover, there are other SDGs which have direct reference to education. An understanding of the SDG and their targets is very much necessary for all the stakeholders if the goal is to be achieved. Education is not something constrained to an institution or university but every one of us gets educated throughout our lives. The sources of education have the responsibility to make it meaningful and all impacting. The importance of sustainable development goals is being recognised more and more by the governments, professional bodies and industry. It has become imperative to create awareness on the importance of education, the reason for education being a goal for sustainable development and how it can be achieved. This talk will be a discussion on the ten targets of Education SDG, contribution of stakeholders to achieve the targets and some sample projects with the impacts measured.
Ramalatha Marimuthu
IEEE Computer Society
Ramalatha Marimuthu, Director, iExplore Foundation for Sustainable Development graduated from Anna University, Tamilnadu, received her PhD from Magadh University specializing in Very Large-Scale Integration. She worked as an educator for 35 years in Engineering Colleges leading Electronics and Information Technology Courses. She served on Board of Studies of various Indian universities and has introduced novelty in the curriculum and teaching like introducing animation and gaming, industry electives and project-based service learning. She introduced International Relations and collaborative education in her university through MoU with US universities paving the way for technology, faculty and student exchange.
She introduced assistive technology and social outreach as part of education. She founded and is running for six years the Youth Endeavours in Social Innovations through Science and Technology (YESIST12), an international Talent show to innovate solutions for social issues. She served as Chair of WIE Committee (2011- 2012) and introduced novel programs like WIE Leadership Summits, Inspiring Member Award and Returning Mothers Conference. She was the Secretary of IEEE Computer Society in 2021 and Ombudsman this year. She has received many awards from IEEE, Lions Club, Anita Borg Institute and Government of Tamilnadu and has given talks in universities and conferences all over the world and Google, Mountainview on her research. Recently she received the Larry K Wilson Transnational Award 2021.
The Art of Transdisciplinary Research in the Information Systems and Technology Disciplines: Reflections from the Field
1 July 2022
In this seminar we will present research that we have jointly been engaged in since 2005 with respect to public sector information systems and emerging technology. We will begin by defining interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinary research, and then offer our own unique perspective on the potential for transdisciplinarity in a complex socio-technical ecosystem. We will reference some of our early work on public sector information availability, followed by research on the topic of location-based services with respect to both regulation and emergency management (e.g. pandemic outbreaks). We will then highlight the outcome of this work through the demonstration of a theoretically and methodologically grounded process that can be applied to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things. We will extend the discussion to aspects relating to long-term collaboration across a range of projects, emphasizing the virtual and cross-institutional contexts, and the role of IEEE through the editing and publication process.
Katina Michael & Roba Abbas
IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology
Katina Michael is a professor at Arizona State University, a Senior Global Futures Scientist in the Global Futures Laboratory and has a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence. She is the director of the Society Policy Engineering Collective (SPEC) and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. Katina is a senior member of the IEEE and was the founding chair of the first globally accredited Masters of Science degree in Public Interest Technology at ASU. She has worked for OTIS Elevator Company, Andersen Consulting, and Nortel Networks between 1994-2001. At the University of Wollongong, Katina was the Associate Dean – International for the Faculty of Engineering and Informatics. She has been funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States and the Australian Research Council for research into citizen-centred smart cities and smart living, adaptive AI robotic training systems, and location-based services.
Roba Abbas is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Program Director with the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She has a PhD in location-based services regulation and has received competitive grants for research addressing global challenges in areas related to co-design and socio-technical systems, operations management, robotics, social media and other emerging technologies. Her current research interests include methodological approaches to complex socio-technical systems design. More recently, she has delivered talks and co-organized panels for Yale University, The Alan Turing Institute, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Arizona State University and Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences. Dr Abbas is Co-Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society and was the Technical Program Chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS20) hosted by Arizona State University in November 2020. From 2005 to 2010, she was a Product Manager with Internetrix, Wollongong.
Human System Engineering: From Human Views to Human Readiness Levels
12 September 2022
This talk discusses the role of Human System Engineering (HSE) within the System Engineering (SE) discipline. It describes two HSE initiatives that are enabling better integration of humans and systems. The Human Views comprise a system architecture viewpoint that provides a perspective on the human roles, activities and information flows required by a complex system. The Human Readiness Levels assess the degree to which human-focused requirements are incorporated into design decisions and the readiness of a system to interact with its human operator. Together these two efforts encourage SE for the total system by supporting a comprehensive integration of the human component into the systems engineering effort, which is critical to the design, development, and operation of successful systems.
Holly A. H. Handley, PhD, PE
IEEE Systems Council
Holly A. H. Handley is an Associate Professor in the Engineering Management and System Engineering Department of Old Dominion University (ODU). Her research focuses on developing models and methodologies to better represent the human component during the architecting and design of socio-technical systems. She is the author of The Human Viewpoint for System Architectures along with over 75 publications on topics of human system engineering. She received her PhD from George Mason University in 1999 and is a Licensed Professional Engineer. Her education includes a BS in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson College (1984), a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley (1987) and a MBA from the University of Hawaii (1995). Prior to joining ODU, Dr. Handley worked as a Design Engineer for Raytheon Company (1984-1993) and as a Senior Engineer for Pacific Science & Engineering Group (2002-2010). Dr. Handley is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Senior Grade, the International Council on System Engineers (INCOSE) and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. She is currently the chair of the IEEE Systems Council Women in Systems Engineering Committee and was recently named an HFES Science Policy Fellow (2018) and ODU Provost Fellow (2020).
Snake Robots – and How Snake Robotics Research Led to a New Class of Marine Robots
30 September 2022
Snake robots are motivated by the long, slender and flexible body of biological snakes, which allows them to move in virtually any environment on land and in water. Since the snake robot is essentially a manipulator arm that can move by itself, it has a number of interesting applications including firefighting applications and search and rescue operations. In water, the robot is a highly flexible and dexterous manipulator arm that can swim by itself like a sea snake. This highly flexible snake-like mechanism has excellent accessibility properties; it can for instance access virtually any location on subsea energy installations, move into the confined areas of shipwrecks, inside ice caves, or be used for observation of biological systems. Furthermore, not only can the swimming manipulator access narrow openings and confined areas, but it can also carry out highly complex manipulation tasks at this location since manipulation is an inherent capability of the system.
In this talk, I will present our research on snake robots, and how this has led to a new class of marine robots in the subsea industry.
Kristin Y. Pettersen
IEEE Control Systems Society
Kristin Y. Pettersen (S’93-M’98-SM’04-F’17) received the MSc and PhD degrees in engineering cybernetics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway, in 1992 and 1996, respectively. She is a Professor in the Department of Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU, where she has been a faculty member since 1996. She was Head of Department 2011-2013, Vice-Head of Department 2009-2011, and Director of the NTNU ICT Program of Robotics 2010-2013. She is Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI). In the period 2013 – 2022 she is also Key Scientist at the CoE Centre for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems. She is a co-founder of the NTNU spin-off company Eelume AS, where she was CEO 2015-2016.
She has published four books and more than 300 papers in international journals and conference proceedings. Her research interests focus on nonlinear control of mechanical systems with applications to robotics, with a special emphasis on marine robotics and snake robotics. She was awarded the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award in 2006 and in 2017. She was awarded an ERC-AdG-2020 Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, and received the IEEE CSS 2020 Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize.
She was an elected member of the IEEE Control Systems Society Board of Governors 2012 – 2014 and is also an elected member 2022 – 2024. She is a member of the IFAC Council and the EUCA Council, and has has held several board positions in industrial and research companies. She has served as Associate Editor of IEEE Control Systems Magazine, and as Associate and Senior Editor of IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. She is IEEE CSS Distinguished Lecturer 2019-2022, IEEE Fellow, member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences, and member of the Academy of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
Automotive Communications: Current and Future Trends
14 October 2022
In the past, the primary function of the car was to move people efficiently. Today, novel functions are introduced to improve the safety and comfort of the car occupants, thanks to reliable hardware components and software technologies. More and more applications are added to cars, from diagnostics to infotainment, from Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) functionalities to Automated Driving. Addition of new services is now realized by software update. The car has therefore developed from a purely physical system based on mechanics to a Cyber-Physical System which embeds electronic components with processing capabilities, communication and control systems to improve performance and safety. In-vehicle networks play a crucial role in providing automotive applications with properties such as communication reliability and timeliness.
In addition to legacy protocols, such as CAN, LIN, MOST, etc., automotive Ethernet has recently become a key enabling communication technology for modern cars.
In this context, the Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) set of standards defined by the Time- Sensitive Networking task group of the IEEE 802.1 working group is a useful tool set that enables reliability, determinism and time synchronization in automotive communications over Ethernet links. TSN networks consist of IEEE 802.1Q bridges with special features, such as time-synchronization, enhanced scheduling and traffic shaping, path selection and reservation and fault-tolerance. These features make TSN networks very suitable for supporting deterministic communications in automated driving.
The talk will address the current automotive networks and will give a perspective on the future, with a focus on the Time-Sensitive Networking standards and their usage in automotive.
Lucia Lo Bello
IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
Lucia Lo Bello is Associate Professor at the University of Catania, Italy. She qualified as Full Professor in the Italian National Habilitation. She is the leader of the Real-time Systems and Networks research group. Prof. Lo Bello was Guest Professor at IDT- Malardalen University, Sweden in 2014, supported by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation through a funded Project. Previously, during the academic year 2000 to 2001, she was Visiting Researcher with the Department of Computer Engineering, Seoul National University, Korea.
Prof. Lo Bello has 25+ years of research experience in automotive and industrial communications, wireless sensor networks, real-time embedded systems and networks.
She published more than 170 papers in international peer-reviewed conferences, journals, books.
Prof. Lo Bello is the Responsible for the University of Catania of several European and National projects, and of research contracts with companies on real-time communications for factory automation and automotive applications. She has co-authored US Patent US2019/0199641 A1 on “Method for managing traffic in a network based upon Ethernet switches, vehicle, communication interface and corresponding computer program product”. Prof. Lo Bello is IEEE Member since 2000, Senior Member since 2009. She was the recipient of the Industrial Electronics Society 2008 Early Career Award and of the IEEE Rudolph Chope Research and Development Award in 2021.
She is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics and of the Industrial Electronics Magazine. She was the Chair of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES) Technical Committee of Factory Automation for two terms (2014-2015, 2016-2017).
She is the current Vice-Chair of the regular SubCommittee on In-Vehicle Embedded Systems within the IES Technical Committee on Factory Automation.
Prof. Lo Bello served and continues to regularly serve as Program Chair and General Chair of IEEE conferences, such as, ETFA, WFCS, HSI, IECON, ICPS, INDIN, ISIE.
Currently, Prof. Lo Bello is the Secretary of the IES (first term 2020-21, re-elected for the 2022-2023 term) and the Women in Engineering representative of the IES. She is the founder and Chair of the “Women in IES” initiative.
Trust and Control: Humans Interacting with Automated Vehicles
21 October 2022
Even as vehicles become more automated with technology advances, they will still need to interact with humans. Both humans inside the vehicle, who may need to take over the driving, and humans outside the vehicle, such as pedestrians crossing the street, must be considered. How much humans trust the automated vehicles (AVs), by making themselves vulnerable to the AVs’ actions, can affect safety and performance. If drivers overtrust the AV’s capabilities, the risks of system failures or accidents increase. On the other hand, if drivers undertrust the AV, they will not fully leverage the benefits of the AV’s functionalities. Therefore, both types of trust miscalibrations (under- and overtrust) are undesirable. We consider the problem of maintaining drivers’ trust in an automated vehicle at a calibrated level—in real-time, while they are operating the vehicle. We also describe how pedestrians interact with AVs while crossing the street, and what factors affect their trust. We develop models that can predict pedestrian trajectories that can be used by the AV controller to plan safe paths. Results from human subject experiments (with simulated AVs) will be presented. A discussion of future research directions and practical considerations will conclude the talk.
Dawn M. Tilbury
IEEE Control Systems Society
Dawn M. Tilbury has been a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan since 1995, with a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering, and is a Core Member of the Robotics Institute. Her research interests lie broadly in the area of control systems, including applications to robotics and manufacturing systems. From 2017-2021, she was the Assistant Director for Engineering at the National Science Foundation, where she oversaw a federal budget of nearly $1 billion annually, while maintaining her position at the University of Michigan. She has published more than 200 articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings. She received her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. She is a Fellow of both IEEE and ASME, and a Life Member of SWE.
Sustaining the Semiconductor Revolution – Transistor Scaling and Beyond
2 December 2022
With the steady advancement of integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing technology the minimum size of transistors has shrunk over time so that the number of transistors incorporated on a single IC chip has roughly doubled every two years (following “Moore’s Law”), enabling exponential growth in chip functionality with exponential reduction in cost per transistor. The resultant proliferation of information and communication technology has had revolutionary impact on society – and today cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence are driving the digital transformation of all industries. Today the most advanced microprocessors pack more than 100 million transistors within an area of one square millimeter. In the first part of this talk I will discuss how the transistor structure will continue to evolve to enable ever higher device density. As practical limits for transistor miniaturization are reached, alternative approaches for improving chip functionality and energy efficiency at acceptable cost will be necessary. The second part of this talk with give examples of device innovation to sustain the semiconductor revolution.
Tsu-Jae King Liu
IEEE Electron Devices Society
Tsu-Jae King Liu earned her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering at Stanford University in 1984, 1986 and 1994, respectively. From 1992 to 1996, she was member of research staff at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). In 1996, she joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is now Dean of the College of Engineering.
Liu is internationally known in academia and industry for her innovations in semiconductor devices and technology, and is highly regarded for her achievements as an instructor, mentor and administrator. She is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, and Director of Intel Corporation and of Maxlinear, Inc. Her awards and honors include the Ross M. Tucker AIME Electronics Materials Award for seminal work in polycrystalline silicon-germanium thin films, the Intel Outstanding Researcher in Nanotechnology Award, the IEEE Aldert van der Ziel Award for distinguished educational and research contributions to the field of electronic devices and materials, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Significant Technical Achievement Award for her role in the development of the FinFET, an advanced transistor design used in all high-end computer chips today.
The Pursuit of Finding Life on Mars
9 December 2022
NASA and ESA are planning ways to bring the first samples of Mars material back to Earth for detailed study. The Mars Perseverance rover is currently collecting and caching samples on Mars, and an intricate international interplanetary relay team of spacecrafts is planned to bring the samples safely and securely back to Earth in the early to mid-2030s. These first collected and returned samples could answer a key question: Did life ever exist on Mars?
Join this talk to hear about the science and engineering of returning samples from Mars.
Dr. Mariko Sofie Burgin
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society
Dr. Mariko S. Burgin is an engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California, USA, and the 2023-2024 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) President. She received an M.S. degree in electrical engineering and information technology from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and an M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, USA. Her background is in applied electromagnetics and active/passive microwave remote sensing (radars, radiometers). She currently focuses on project systems engineering and mission formulation for Earth and Mars missions, and is the Mars Sample Return Break-The-Chain Domain Lead. Dr. Burgin is passionate about mentoring and founded the IEEE GRSS Women Mentoring Women program.