The second annual SPAC (Student Professional Awareness Conference) will be held this Saturday beginning at noon! Hear presentations from two professors as well as an IEEE-USA speaker. Prof. Lynford Goddard will be talking about his research in Optoelectronics, Prof. John Rogers will be talking about his research in Stretchable Electronics, and Daniel Biank (of IEEE-USA) will be talking about how to mix passions with work in his speech entitled “Balancing Work with Life.”

SPAC will be held in the Plym Auditorium of Temple Hoyne Buell Hall (room 0134), located near the Education Building.

Visit our website for more information and to register! http://ieee.ec.illinois.edu/spac09

written by Mike

The second annual Student Professional Awareness Conference is coming up on September 26! This year we will again have three speakers – Prof. Lynford Goddard, Prof. John Rogers, and Daniel Biank (from IEEE national branch). There will also be an informal panel discussion following the presentations.

If you’re interested in learning about your own future, then please visit the SPAC website at http://ieee.ec.illinois.edu/spac09 for more information and to register. We hope to see you there!

SPAC is free to attend, but please register on the website beforehand!

Questions? Email spac.ieee@gmail.com

written by Mike

UPDATE: As of 1AM on September 15, the course is officially full. e-mail me at dziems@ieee.org if you are interested, and you will be put on a waiting list in the event someone changes their mind. IEEE is proud to announce that this semester, we will be offering a 12-hour course as an Introduction to AVR Microcontrollers. This course will begin the first week in October and end just before fall break (time and place to be determined, though Friday evenings 5-6:30 somewhere in Everitt are most likely). That represents 8 weekly meetings, and 90 minutes per meeting.

The course syllabus can be found here in PDF form. If you read the syllabus, you will see that this course is not intended to be rigorous and in-depth, but rather a gentle introduction into the world of microcontrollers. There will be no required homework, and only minimal time requirements outside of class (if any).

This course is open to ALL students. However, a background in C is strongly encouraged to gain the most out of this course, as all coding will be done in C. If you do not know C, but still want to take this course, I strongly recommend learning on your own time. It is not a particularly hard language to learn, and you do not need to be a C guru to understand this course; knowledge of how variables, functions, and mathematical operators work, as well as proper syntax, should be sufficient.

I strongly encourage participants to bring their own laptop. Any OS will work, but Atmel only provides its software development suite for Windows, so Mac and Linux users will need to use open-source command-line programs.

The cost will be $65 for IEEE members, and $75 for non-IEEE members. This gets you an I/O board with a variety of sensors and displays, as well as a USB microcontroller programmer and two AVR microcontrollers. All items are yours to keep after the course is done, though if you decide you do not want the I/O board, and it is in good working condition, we will buy it back from you for $20

Sign-ups are open now. Sign-ups are closed Class size is limited to 20 students, so if you are interested, please sign up as soon as possible. Since we need to order materials, sign-ups will only be open until September 18th. Also, we are requiring people to pay for the course in full by September 18.
If you are on the sign-up list, but have not paid by September 18th, your name will be removed. We will order a few extra materials in the event something is defective, but a seat in the course will not be guaranteed.

written by Donald

IEEE is going to be having its first general meeting of the semester on Wednesday, September 2 from 5-7PM in 151 Everitt Lab. Everyone is invited to come to see what IEEE has planned for this semester, and to get involved with our various committees. FREE PIZZA.

Also, on Tuesday, September 1 from 7-8:30 PM in DCL L440, IEEE will be hosting a free workshop on test driven development, presented by Doug Bradbury and Micah Martin of 8th Light, Inc. Test Driven Development is a software development practice where test are written first, then production code is written. Learning this technique will quickly help you write better code faster and with fewer bugs. Kiss you debugger goodbye! The workshop will be presented in C, but the idea is applicable to any language.
No sign-ups are needed, but space is limited, so please try to arrive early to ensure you get a seat.

written by Donald

The Spark is a magazine which talks about on campus student led projects from all disciplines of engineering.

We plan to post it online to gain a wider audience. My committee is currently working on putting the articles together and getting our layout and title page set. We currently have articles from IEEE Seeds and ACM Sigs. We are also expecting to receive articles from BMES and UMO.

I would also like to thank our sponsors–Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Infinera Corporation–for their generous donations to help get our project started.

I am currently looking for more articles and ideas to include in the magazine. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact Mahir Gosalia (mgosal2@illinois.edu)

written by Mahir