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The Global Challenge is back

It’s back! The second IET Young Professionals Global Challenge was launched in November 2016 at the Innovation Awards ceremony. The competition, held in association with RedR, encourages young professionals and students to test their technical know-how by devising a solution to a real world engineering problem. It enables young engineers to develop their technical, problem-solving and presentation skills and, as we have seen from the first competition, it can lead to some incredible opportunities within industry.In the first Global Challenge, 30 innovative ideas were submitted from all over the world for a portable, economical laptop cooling system for humanitarian aid workers to use in the field. One solution, called hipsterIce, was the clear winner due to its sheer simplicity, low levels…

Former Community Member
EngSpire A reminder

A reminder to all in the Ottawa LN to consider helping with EngSpire. The link may be found here: http://www.engspire.org/nem2017/volunteer/ . Here is the introduction from Rose Almond, Chair of the Toronto LN: The workshop theme for this year is 'Super engineers' and is pre-designed with all materials provided - so no costs to the volunteers. The story behind the theme is that you and all your Super engineer friends have been kidnapped by the Evil Genius and are trapped in his island fortress. You have to use the various engineering skills of your group ( software, electronics, mechanical) to escape. Workshops are a fun mix of games and hands on activities and run with kids ages 5-14. We do provide online training on the program for volunteers which we always try and keep as short as possible…

Former Community Member
Medical Engineering In the Next 50 Years

The Ottawa LN provided a talk at the Toronto LN Christmas dinner in 2016. It was an opportunity for the speaker, Dr Frank Johnson, to return to his alma mater, where he studied for his Masters and PhD in the early 1970's. He used the chance to review the progress of medical engineering during the intervening years and then cheerfully project forwards by another 50 years to estimate where medical engineering would be in 2060. Fortunately the probability of feedback of the veracity of his predictions is low, even given the current level of expertise of medical engineering. The video of his talks may be found at http://bit.ly/IETxmasFJA and http://bit.ly/IETxmasFJB

Former Community Member
MOU signed between Ottawa LN, Chennai LN and KCG College in Chennai

The Ottawa LN, Chennai LN and the KCG College in Chennai have signed an MOU to "twin" the two networks and provide a source of mentoring for the engineering students at KCG College in Chennai. This agreement has stemmed from regular visits of Ottawa LN member Frank Johnson to Chennai where he has addressed the Chennai LN, taken part in their panel discussions and, when he visited in 2016 with his daughter, assisted with the assessment of final year projects on the Internet of Things. Both Ottawa and Chennai have strong interests in emerging technologies, cybersecurity and communication. Connections such as those made through this MOU help enlarge the vision for engineers in both centres. The terms of the MOU are ambitious but pragmatic: Establish a collaborative space to share ideas and project…

Former Community Member
First Prize for Backstreet Builders FLL team sponsored by Ottawa LN

A team of six 9 to 12 year olds designed and programmed a robot for entry into the First Lego League tournament for "Animal Allies 2016". They achieved a score of 138 on the robot challenge, well ahead of the next team in the field of 19 high-school entries. They were awarded the prize for the best robot performance A video of their award-winning run may be found here: http://bit.ly/BackstreetBuilders2016 Despite a wide lead (the next team only scored 89 points) on the challenge board, the Backstreet Builders were not selected to advance to the next round of the competition since their entries in the other components of the challenge were not strong enough. Oddly the judges were unable to provide a ranked score for those other components, which could be considered unrealistic as an assessment…

Former Community Member
STEM in the Kitchen

To illustrate the breadth of enterprise of the Ottawa LN, a guide book was published on Amazon Kindle on the topic of STEM in the kitchen. It is a reprint of a book first published 25 years ago as "The Principles of Cooking" it has been brought up to date for this electronic version. It includes consideration of critical path management, disaster response, and Key Performance Indices. It is a healthy alternative to using microcomputing to introduce new and budding engineers to the applications for the subject, and may assist in domestic arrangements for those more used to working at a keyboard. Details may be found at: http://bit.ly/CookingPrinciples

Former Community Member
Community Manager - a look back and a look ahead

2016 was quite a year what with Brexit,the Olympics, Zika outbreak, American Presidential Elections, not to mention, sadly, the sheer number of celebrity deaths. Here in the Project Controls network it was a successful year for us with two brilliant and well attended events. Our first event of 2016 was held in January on the subject of Smart Cities, after which a Techbite was produced, which is available for download : During the event a quite frightning statistic was revealed: In London alone, the population is growing by one full tube train every three days!! November saw the network deliver a fantastic event on Crossrail Learning Legacy, with two excellent speakers, Simon Benett and Walter Macharg. The audience kept the speakers on their toes with a quite extraordinary amount of questions…

Joanne Longton
Towards 5G Mobile Technology – Looking Back And Looking Forward

We’re only 2 weeks away from the Towards 5G Mobile Technology – Vision to Reality event at Savoy Place, London and we here at the IET are very excited. With the government pledging £740m for 5G in the budget late last year, 5G has been put on the main stage and this event is a chance to hear from those on the forefront of making it happen. In the lead up to the event, I thought I would post some of the highlights from the last one which took place just over a year ago: Andy Sutton - End to end and top to bottom network design… Maziar Nekovee - 5G Mobile Communications: Timelines, Key technologies, Recent R&D Simon Saunders - Bridging the 5G gap – Can the mobile industry really reach new vertical markets? For those registered for this year’s event, we are looking forward to seeing you there…

Former Staff Member
IET Policy on CPD: CPD Return for 2016

In October 2013, The Engineering Council announced an aspiration that by January 2017 all Professional Engineering Institutions will have introduced a Policy of random reviewing of Professionally Active Registrants’ CPD Returns. The IET’s Board of Trustees have now agreed that we should meet this aspiration, extending it as a benefit to all IET Members. CPD is the ongoing process of tracking and documenting the skills, knowledge and experience that you gain both formally and informally as you work. This includes Training courses, Work experience, Academic study, Volunteering, attending Events and Self-Study (“TWAVES”). As a Member you have already committed to keeping your knowledge and skills up-to-date through planned professional development, as explained in the IET Rules of Conduct…

Nouman Abid Chuhan
2017! The Year Of The Field.

The last 10 years has seen mainstream adoption of TCP/IP based networks. The XML/WAP stack was one of the first modern methods to introduce location based services on phones that had vendor specific OS’s. This early attempt to make mobile services to the masses had its own limitation, namely interaction. The availability of TCP/IP networks across cellular devices has changed that ( Java / Boss has helped too) . Now those cellular devices serve as computers and a phone. For the next 3 years, we are likely to see inter app collaboration within the same phone as a normal activity. Apps will help each other to function. Yes - the open stack endeavours and licensing of OS's like Andriod make development efforts more justifiable as there is an instant market waiting to use your app-based creation…

Rimesh Patel in Computing
Can I blog?

Frank's Videos are both in here so that you can access them both from within this Blog. I hope it works and I hope to get some feedback.

David Mann
New Year, New Start? Submit Your 2016 CPD Record Now.

Whilst December was a month for reflection on the year that had passed, January is often a time for new beginnings, and as we start a new year many of us will be making new year's resolutions for what we want to achieve in 2017. So whilst you're thinking about your new year's resolutions for 2017, why not take a moment to reflect on your achievements from 2016 and plan the next steps in your development for 2017. You can make a good start on this by considering your Continuing Professional Development. Now is the time to Submit your 2016 CPD return. The window to submit your 2016 CPD returns opened on 3rd January 2017. You may be chosen to have your record reviewed as part of our CPD monitoring policy. You can submit your CPD return via Career Manager . If you are unsure how to use…

Kathryn Bain
IoT At CES17

CES17 took place in Las Vegas last week. As always, it was well attended by a multitude of tech companies, showing off their latest designs. I’ve picked out 5 of the top IoT products that were showcased during the 4 day event. 5. Fridge Cam This camera is mounted in your fridge (unsurprisingly!) and detects what’s in there, when it expires and gives relevant meal suggestions. The idea behind this is that it will help to cut down on food waste, preventing people from forgetting what they have tucked away in the back of their fridge and providing ideas on how to use those random ingredients that we all seem to find in our fridges! Food waste is a huge problem, especially in Western countries and this would be very useful for those who struggle to stay on top on sell by dates. However it does…

Former Staff Member
Two Days Workshop on PCB Designing and Fabrication at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Abbottabad, Pakistan

A two day workshop on "PCB Designing and Fabrication" was commenced at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Abbottabad, Pakistan on 10 - 11 Dec 2016. The Trainers were Assistant Professor Dr.Jawad Saleem and Assistant Professor Dr.Abdul Majid of CIIT Abbottabad. Stage Projector Screen Trainer DR.Jawad Saleem Guests Pannel at Stage Audience and Participants of Workshop Trainees Designing the PCBs Female Trainees Designing PCBs PCBs Etching Process PCB Drilling Ready PCBs Soldering SMD Components mounted on PCB The Workshop contained Two Sessions: (i) Simulation Session In Simulation Session, there was a detailed lecture on Simulation to implement a circuit by using Proteus Software. Participants also practiced the whole learning by their own to get a handsome experience…

Nouman Abid Chuhan
Did You Know The New Ayrshire College Has An Engineering Academy?

Ayrshire College has joined Strathclyde University’s Engineering Academy as a partner college. The Engineering Academy is a pioneering programme that offers an alternative route into university and employment as a Strathclyde student. The first year is an enhanced HNC programme with direct transfer into second year of one the engineering degrees. The Academy is a collaboration between the University of Strathclyde, partner colleges and the engineering industry. As part of the University’s outreach objective, the Academy was established to increase widening access participation by delivering various pathways to a range of engineering degrees in our leading Faculty of Engineering. Find out how the academy works, entry requirements, key benefits and industry sponsorship and placements.

Lynsay Callaghan
Innovation and Realism

The press demand for more innovation in the rail industry may be welcomed by many but those who shout loudest rarely know what is entailed. Innovation takes many forms and so often much effort and energy is expended into what turns out to be nothing more than a pipedream. To bring some realism to the topic, the IET annual railway lecture in November 2016 invited Adrian Shooter to give his views on innovation with some practical examples of past success and failure. Adrian will be known to many, having been the mastermind in transforming the Chiltern Railways franchise and the brainchild behind the conversion of ex LU District Line stock into a low cost DMU. He is essentially a railway mechanical engineer with a long career history in both engineering and operational rail management. So what…

Lynsay Callaghan
Cyber Security thoughts from CES17

CES17 is currently taking place in Las Vegas and as ever there is an excess of companies showcasing their latest tech developments. Internet of Things is big this year, with lots of companies, big and small, launching their connected goods. All these exciting new devices got me thinking about the security of them. With cyber-attacks on the rise, the chances of people’s fridges or toasters being attacked is becoming increasingly likely. This connected shower looks like a great idea for warm showers on chilly winter mornings, but it if gets hacked and leads to a freezing cold shower – definitely not good! So what can be done to prevent these attacks? This infographic suggests a few basic things that consumers can do to protect themselves, including secure passwords, keeping firmware up to…

Former Staff Member in Cybersecurity
A Band you should know - bIaEnTd!!!

In the autumn of 2010, there are some young people who have passion in music in an engineering society. Leaded by their chairmen(band leader), the bIaEnTd is formed! The bIaEnTd is a word formed by “band” and “IET”, which represent the band formed by the IET members. After their kick off show in the AGM of Younger Members Section (Session 2009-2010), the bIaEnTd became popular in various IET functions like the conference dinners, AGM, as well as anniversary celebration functions. The key members, band leader-drummer, pianist, guitarist, bassist and singer are the founder of the bIaEnTd, throughout the 6 years, new engin-musician had joined and the bIaEnTd will becomes stronger and stronger. President's Address 2016 in Hong Kong - bIaEnTd was our guest performer of the night (From the left:…

Former Community Member
Member News Article: The Americas Round-up, 2016

(This text has been taken from the December 2016 issue of Member News) IET volunteers, with support from IET staff, are continually working to increase the presence of Local Networks (LNs) in the Americas. At the heart of this work is the IET’s mission: to inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community, supporting technology innovation to meet the needs of society. Here’s a roundup of the latest activities in the Americas region. New England The New England LN recently collaborated with the local IEEE Chapter at two major events: The World Maker Faire in New York and the Women in Engineering Eastern Forum. At both events, and for the first time, the Network made IET torch kits with children. They were a huge hit, introducing engineering and the IET to the next generation…

Former Community Member
IET Merseyside And Western Cheshire Events Newsletter - January 2017 To September 2017

The latest IET MWC Newsletter is now available as an online flip book. Please click the link! IET Merseyside and Western Cheshire Newsletter - January 17 to September 17 Edition

Rob McDonald
Expression Of Interest - Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund Engagement Workshops From Innovate UK

This may be of interest to some of you in the Northern Ireland area - please note that the date for places to be allocated in 11th January, so register your interest quickly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) was announced by the Prime Minister at the 2016 CBI Annual Conference, and further detail of this new cross-disciplinary fund was included in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement as part of the National Productivity Investment Fund. Innovate UK and the Research Councils are beginning to define a first round of challenges to be addressed by the ISCF, and will soon be in a position to seek input from industry and the research base into their development. To gather input from…

Lynsay Callaghan
Expression Of Interest - Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund Engagement Workshops From Innovate UK

This may be of interest to some of you in the Scotland South West area - please note that the date for places to be allocated in 11th January, so register your interest quickly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) was announced by the Prime Minister at the 2016 CBI Annual Conference, and further detail of this new cross-disciplinary fund was included in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement as part of the National Productivity Investment Fund. Innovate UK and the Research Councils are beginning to define a first round of challenges to be addressed by the ISCF, and will soon be in a position to seek input from industry and the research base into their development. To gather input…

Lynsay Callaghan
Society Insights: December 2016 - Trains, Planes And Power

The IET Society Insights Blog summarises some of the key areas identified by Local Networks at their events that will have an impact on society now or in the future. This month we tackle the latest from the engineering community on trains, planes and power and there is has an interesting section from the Surrey LN on Opening a new railway – a 21st Century challenge. Opening a new railway – a 21st Century challenge Surrey Local Network One of the most important rail projects in recent years, Crossrail will make a metamorphic difference to travel within the UK’s capital. “London’s been growing hugely since the eighties and London Underground has been struggling for some time to cope. By building a railway that has the capacity to put a train with 1,700 people through the city’s central…

Lynsay Callaghan
Getting Your Digital Self In Order...

New Year, new you… or so the saying goes. Every year many of us (like myself) make New Year Resolutions which are usually broken by the first week of January . But this year, it’s going to be different. Firstly, my NYR’s this year are a little more generic than specific. ‘I will not drink any more coffee’ is just too specific and doomed from the start especially as my journey takes me past the coffee machine every morning as I walk through the office to my desk and I’m already drinking my second cup of the day as I type this... This year it’s going to be all about decluttering my life both physically and digitally. I’ve already made a start on clearing out the ‘physical’ with my attic and getting rid of the stuff that has accumulated up there, old ornaments, books I don’t read anymore…

Lisa Miles in Computing

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