Society News

SOCIETY NEWS
New IEEE Fellows 2008
The following CAS members have been elevated to the Fellowship grade effective from January 1, 2008 (names with asterisk (*) are elevated by the CAS Society):
Bemd Becker Joe Brewer Michael Bushnell
Krishnendu Chakrabarty Pau-Choo Chung* Nikil Dutt
Ling Guan* Dong Ha
Christian Jutten Ming-Dou Ker* Janusz Konrad Nam Ling*
Samiha Mourad
Bram Nauta
Sani Nassif Levent Onural* Fernando Pereira* Alexander Petroianu Markku Renfors* Massimo Rudan Yvon Savaria* Jyuo-Min Shyu* Rui Paulo da Silva Martins* Sergios Theodoridis* Laung-Temg Wang Jacob White*
Ja-Ling Wu* Hoi-Jun Yoo Xinghuo Yu Bin Zhao
Congratulations to all the new Fellows!
Editorial Board, IEEE CAS Society Newsletter

IEEE Mentoring Connection™ Program Seeks Members to Mentor Young Professionals

One of the top IEEE Societies with young professional members includes the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS). Many of these members would appreciate the opportunity to have an “online” mentor to help guide them in their career planning and professional development. Mentor participation in the IEEE Mentoring Connection Program is open to all IEEE members above the grade of Student Member. Gary Hinkle, a mentor in the program, says “Helping young engineers develop in their careers is very rewarding. Working with some of these individuals has proven to be quite a challenge, because of the diversity among those seeking mentors. I’m glad to be contributing to this program.”
The program enables the mentee to select their mentoring partner online from a list of individuals who have volunteered to serve as mentors. Many members of the CASS Board of Governors actively participate in the program. After mentors are identified as a potential match, they are contacted and asked to begin establishing a relationship. Interested members can visit http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/mentoring/index.html for information on the roles and responsibilities of each mentoring partner, including additional program information and an FAQ page. Potential mentors are asked to review the time and effort commitment to the program necessary to ensure a successful mentoring partnership. To access the IEEE Mentoring Connection site, please go to http://www.mentoringconnection.com and use the Group ID “IEEE2006” to enter. Once you enter the site, you will need to set your own user id and password. If you have any questions, please contact Cathy Downer, Regional Activities, at c.downer@ieee.org.

Newly Elected Board of Governors
The following CAS members have been elected to the Board of Governors of the CAS Society for the term starting January 1, 2008 till December 31, 2010. Gianluca Setti Takao Onoye Amara Amara
Malgorzata Chrzanowska-Jeske Sergios Theodoridis
Editorial Board, IEEE CAS Society Newsletter

Workshop Future Directions in Circuits and Systems Education

Motivation Many questions and open issues are related to the education in CAS: The role of CAS education has drastically changed with internet, computers, and globalization. New challenges of environmental issues, energy shortages, globalization offer new opportunities for CAS education. Is the link between research and teaching in CAS still important ? Balance between theory, design, simulation, practice and experimentation. Is the experimentation in hardware still valuable or is software sufficient ? What is the role of simulation tools like SPICE and MATLAB ? Should systems and circuits be taught together or in sequence ? Discrete time systems followed by continuous time systems or vice versa ? Can you find good textbooks, reference material (e.g. The circuits and filters handbook by W.-K. Chen) or is there a need for new ones or updates or other ways to bring together knowledge like Wiki's? Also there are several misconceptions circulate about CAS education: CAS is mature, basic and generic for EEs, so CAS can be taught by any EE professor. There is no need to introduce circuits or mathematics of circuits and systems (linear algebra, differential equations, Laplace, Fourier, z-transforms). There is no need to study CAS concepts like KVL, KCL, MNA, transfer functions, impedances, Bode diagrams.. but learn directly to simulate in SPICE. Industry is not interested in concepts and methods of CAS but in electronic products. Outline
The main topics, among others: The core content: what are essential ingredients of CAS education [ e.g. KVL KCL, Thevenin, Norton, Tellegen, energy, passivity, graph theory, analysis, filter design, impedances, hybrid parameters, ..] Methodology, dependencies [in 1984 Mac Van Valkenburg wrote:"No common agreement on what should be taught in a course on circuits" in "Teaching Circuit Theory", IEEE TCAS, Jan 1984] Impact of new technologies Impact of globalization and less developped countries Impact on educational reforms Format More extensive presentations by invited speakers (15 minute presentation and 5 minute discussion) Short statements by active participants (3 minutes presentation and 1 minutes discussion) Brainstorming on common action plan (open to all participants) Potential speakers Tentative list (desirable overlap with the panel members for the panel session on CAS Education at ISCAS): Josef Nossek, Technical University of Munich Yong Lian, National University of Singapore Tuna Tarim, Texas Instruments Mark Yoder, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute Randy Geiger, Iowa State University, Ames Ljiljana Trajkovic, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Mani Soma, University of Washington, Seattle Babak Ayazifar, UC Berkeley Schedule and planning More details about the workshop will be posted as the details become available on a webpage accessible from the ISCAS webpage. February 15 2008: deadline for submission of one page personal statement about any CAS education issues to be sent by email to Joos Vandewalle Joos.Vandewalle@esat.kuleuven.be March 15 2008: Notification of acceptance of the contributions April 15 2008: deadline for the registration for the workshop. Only participants with an accepted contribution can register (every participant should handle his/her hotel accommodation and cover the costs) (participants will not be charged other participation costs).
One day workshop on Thursday May 22, 2008 (8:30am - 4:30 pm) day after ISCAS in Seattle Expected outcomes Conceptual convergence on common approach for CAS education. Joint report/paper for the CAS Magazine on the education in CAS with intended audience educators in EE. Actions for making CAS more attractive to students like useful role models. Common targets benchmarks for courses common experimentation, global competitions, virtual experiments. Web based learning plans. Plans for setting up reference material and wiki material CAS concepts, insights, expertise, skills and competences needed by every EE and link with the criteria for accreditation. Need for more permantent reflection and action on CAS education? Ideas for setting up a new Technical Committee on CAS education? Links with other IEEE education initiatives and structures. Action towards accreditation bodies like ABET. You are all invited to actively contribute.

Joos Vandewalle, VP Technical Activities, IEEE CAS Society (Email: Joos.Vandewalle@esat.kuleuven.be)