IEEE Toronto Section

Silicon Photonics: High-Density Integration for Novel Functionality
2018-09-24 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | Room SFB 560, 10 King’s College Rd, Toronto, ON M5S 3G4
Monday, September 24th 2018, Wei Jiang, Professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University, and an Associate Director of Optical Communications Systems & Network Engineering Research Center of Jiangsu Province will be presenting “Silicon Photonics: High-Density Integration for Novel Functionality”.
Day & Time: Monday September 24th, 2018
2:00 p.m. ‐ 3:00 p.m.
Speaker: Wei Jiang
Professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Nanjing University,
Associate Director of Optical Communications Systems & Network Engineering Research Center of Jiangsu Province
Organizers: Amr S. Helmy and IEEE Toronto Circuits & Devices Chapter
Location: Room SFB 560
10 King’s College Rd,
Toronto, ON M5S 3G4
Contact: Mengqi Wang
Abstract: Silicon photonics can potentially transform the photonics technology owing to its low-cost fabrication and large-scale integration advantages. Integration can open up new opportunities, such as solid-state LIDARs for autonomous vehicles and chip-scale optical interconnects. To realize these opportunities, reducing device size and increasing integration density will be crucial. Towards these directions, this talk will discuss our recent experimental work on novel micro/nano-photonic structures, including photonic crystals, waveguide superlattices, and free-form structures. (1) A waveguide superlattice is introduced to enable low-crosstalk, high-density waveguide integration at half-wavelength pitches, which opens the door to high-performance optical phased arrays, next-generation LIDARs, and high-density space-division multiplexing. (2) Novel free-form structures are explored to create an ultra-short waveguide “taper”. Interestingly, the evolutionary algorithm yields an optimal structure with anomalous shapes. Through wavefront analysis, the role of a subtle “semi-lens” is identified. (3) Further opportunities in slow-light photonic crystal switches/modulators will also be briefly discussed. In many cases, underpinning physics needs to be fully understood first, and then be formulated into precise theory to guide experiments and achieve viable results.
Biography: Wei Jiang is a professor in the college of engineering and applied sciences at Nanjing University, and an associate director of Optical Communications Systems & Network Engineering Research Center of Jiangsu Province. Prior to working at NJU, he was an associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA. His current research interests include silicon photonics, photonic crystals, nanophotonics, and their applications in optical interconnects, communications, sensing, and computing. He contributed to the fundamental understanding of silicon electro-optic and thermo-optic devices, high-density waveguide integration, slow light, superprism effects, and photonic crystal interface properties. He received his B.S. degree in physics from Nanjing University, and his M.A. degree in physics and his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Texas, Austin. Prof. Jiang received the DARPA Young Faculty Award, and IEEE Region I Outstanding Teaching Award, among other honors.

IEEE Canada Women in Engineering Panel: “Creating a Diverse Smart Grid Sector: Challenges and Opportunities”
2018-10-11 17:00 - 18:00 | 350 Victoria St Toronto, Ontario Canada M5B 2K3
Thursday, October 11th 2018, Jessie Ma, Neetika Sathe, Shadi Chuangpishit, and Sheldon Williamson will be participating on the IEEE Canada Women in Engineering Panel – “Creating a Diverse Smart Grid Sector: Challenges and Opportunities”.
Day & Time: Thursday October 11th, 2018
5:00 p.m. ‐ 6:00 p.m.
Speakers: Jessie Ma
Senior Research Fellow, Ryerson Centre for Urban Energy
Neetika Sathe
Vice President, Advanced Planning at Alectra
Shadi Chuangpishit
Senior Consultant at Quanta Technology
Sheldon Williamson
Professor and NSERC Canada Research Chair in Electrical Energy Storage Systems for Transportation Electrification, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Women in Engineering
Location: Library Building, Library Lecture Hall – LIB72, Ryerson University
350 Victoria St
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5B 2K3
Contact: Manar Jammal
Register for Free: https://goo.gl/7cwkqv

Iguana Interface Engine, A day in the life of an integration engineer
2018-10-12 10:30 - 11:30 | Centennial College, Progress Campus, Room A3-15
Iguana interface engine allows integration with EHRs and other healthcare applications. Several EHRs systems can be connected via Iguana: Epic, Allscrips, Meditech, athenahealth, Cerner, etc. Iguana can process any data format and supports all protocols.
Date & Time: Friday, October 12, 2018 at 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Speakers: Amandeep Aujla, Integration Engineer at iNTERFACEWARE
Location: Centennial College, Progress Campus, Room A3-15
Organizer: Education Committee, IEEE Toronto Section
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour

Control of Power Electronics Systems Using Predictive Switching Sequences and Switching Transitions
2018-10-12 16:00 - 17:00 | BA 4287, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S2E4
Friday, October 12th 2018, Sudip K. Mazumder of University of Illinois at Chicago, will be presenting “Control of Power Electronics Systems Using Predictive Switching Sequences and Switching Transitions”.
Day & Time: Friday October 12th, 2018
4:00 p.m. ‐ 5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Sudip K. Mazumder
Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Power Electronics Chapter
Location: Room Number: BA 4287
Building: Bahen Centre for Information Technology
University of Toronto 40 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S2E4
Contact: Mahdieh Taghizadeh
RVSP: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/176071
Abstract: This presentation provides a fundamentally different perspective to the control of solid-state semiconductor-device-based switching power-electronic systems (PESs). It is based on controlling the time evolution of the feasible switching sequences and controlling the switching transitions of PESs. The former – that is, the switching-sequence-based control (SBC) – yields rapid response under transient condition, optimal equilibrium response, and yields seamless transition between the two dynamical modes. Further, by enabling integration of modulation and control, SBC precludes the need for ad-hoc offline modulation synthesis. In other words, an optimal switching sequence for a PES is generated dynamically without the need for prior determination of a modulation scheme (which generates a pre-determined switching sequence) as evident in most conventional approaches. This presentation will provide the mechanism to carry out SBC synthesis and how it leads to multi-scale optimality leading to enhanced PES performance. Subsequent to the outline of SBC, the presentation will focus on switching-transition control (STC). The primary objective of STC is to demonstrate how key PES parameters including and stress, switching loss, electromagnetic noise emission can be controlled dynamically by modulating the dynamics of the power semiconductor devices. Both electrical and newly developed optical-control mechanisms to achieve STC will be briefly outlined. Finally, envisioned mechanism for monolithic integration of SBC and STC will be illustrated. This presentation will demonstrate, along with results, multiple practical applications (currently of high priority in the power/energy space) where the radically new control concepts make a tangible and substantive difference.
Biography: Sudip K. Mazumder received his Ph.D. degree from Virginia Tech in 2001. He is a Professor and the Director of Laboratory for Energy and Switching-Electronics Systems in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as the President of the small business NextWatt LLC. He has over 25 years of professional experience and has held R&D and design positions in leading industrial organizations and has served as a Technical Consultant for several industries. His current areas of interests are switching-sequence and switching-transition based control of power-electronics systems and interactive-power networks; power electronics for renewable energy, micro/smart grids, energy storage; wide-bandgap (GaN/SiC) power electronics; and optically-triggered wide-bandgap power semiconductor devices. His research has attracted about 50 sponsored-research projects from leading federal agencies and industries, and yielded over 210 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious tier-one international journals and conferences, 10 patents, 10 book chapters and 1 book, and 88 invited/plenary/keynote lectures and presentations. He has guided/guiding 11 post-doctoral researchers and 16 Ph.D. and 11 M.S. students. He is the recipient of University of Illinois at Chicago’s Inventor of the Year Award (2014), University of Illinois’ University Scholar Award – university’s highest award (2013), IEEE International Future Energy Challenge Award (2005), ONR Young Investigator Award (2005), NSF CAREER Award (2003), and IEEE PELS Transaction Paper Award (2002). In 2016, he was elevated to the rank of an IEEE Fellow and he was invited to serve as a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE PELS beginning in 2016. He served/serving as the Guest Editor-in-Chief/Editor for IEEE PELS/IES Transactions between 2013-2014 and 2016-2017, as the first Editor-in-Chief for Advances in Power Electronics (2006-2009), and as an Associate Editor for IEEE IES/PELS/TAES/TII/JESTPE Transactions (2003-/2009-/2008-/2016-/2016-). Currently, he serves as the Chair for IEEE PELS TC on Sustainable Energy Systems. He is also the incoming (starting 2019) Editor-at-Large for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. He is the Chair for IEEE PEDG’21, the TPC Chair for IEEE DEAS’19, and the Tutorial Chair for ECCE’19.

Audio and Acoustics Signal Processing: The Quest for High Fidelity Continues
2018-10-16 16:00 - 17:00 | Room BA 4287, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S2E4
Tuesday, October 16th 2018, Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg, Professor at the Institute for Media Technology, Technische Universität Ilmenau, will be presenting “Audio and Acoustics Signal Processing: The Quest for High Fidelity Continues”.
Day & Time: Tuesday October 16th, 2018
4:00 p.m. ‐ 5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg
Professor at the Institute for Media Technology, Technische Universität Ilmenau
Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, Ilmenau
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Industry Application Society (IAS)
Location: Room Number: BA 4287
Building: Bahen Centre for Information Technology
University of Toronto 40 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S2E4
Contact: Sanaz Kanani
RVSP: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/176976
Abstract: The dream of high fidelity continues since more than 100 years. In the last decades, signal processing has contributed many new solutions and a vast amount of additional knowledge to this field. These include:
– Simple solutions like matrix multichannel systems.
– Audio coding which changed the world of music distribution and listening habits.
– Active noise control.
– Active modification of room acoustics.
– Search and recommendation technologies to find your favourite music.
and many more …
So are there any problems left to be solved? Among others, I see two main research areas:
– Music Information Retrieval (MIR), helping us to find and organise music, or teaching playing musical instruments.
– Immersive technologies for movie theatres and eventually our homes, creating the illusion of being at some other place.
For such systems we use our knowledge about hearing, especially how ear and brain work together to form the sensation of sound. However, our knowledge about hearing, about psychoacoustics is still far from complete. In fact, just in the last few years we have learned a lot about what we don’t know.
The talk will touch on a number of the subjects above, explain some current work and its applications and finally talk about open research questions regarding psychoacoustics and the evaluation of audio quality.
Biography: Dr. Karlheinz Brandenburg has been a driving force behind some of today’s most innovative digital audio technology, notably the mp3 and MPEG-AAC audio coding standards. He is acclaimed for pioneering work in digital audio coding, psychoacoustics and 3D-Audio
His honors include the AES Silver Medal and the “IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronic Award”, Furthermore he is member in the “Hall of Fame” of the Consumer Electronics Association and of the Internet Society. He holds three honorary Ph.D. degrees.
Dr. Brandenburg holds about 100 patents. He is professor at the Institute for Media Technology, Technische Universität Ilmenau, and director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau, Germany

Surgical Robots: Innovation, Opportunities, Challenges
2018-10-17 14:00 - 17:00 | Autodesk Toronto, 661 University Avenue Toronto, ON M5G 1M1
Wednesday, October 17th 2018, the GYBO Robotics Network will be hosting a symposium “Surgical Robots: Innovation, Opportunities, Challenges”.
Day & Time: Wednesday October 17th, 2018
2:00 p.m. ‐ 5:00 p.m.
Organizers: GYBO Robotics Network, IEEE Toronto Women in Engineering, IEEE Toronto Instrumentation & Measurement – Robotics & Automation Chapter, Autodesk, Synaptive
Location: Autodesk Toronto
661 University Avenue
Toronto, ON M5G 1M1
RVSP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/surgical-robots-innovation-opportunities-challenges-registration-50073521250?discount=IEEEWIE
Description: Canada is home to numerous initiatives in surgical robotics technologies including the commercialized work of Synaptive Medical, the research on KidsArm at Sick Kids and investment in innovation centres such as the CSTAR research group.
With its world-leading hubs in health research and innovation, Canada has a unique opportunity to combine key assets for innovation leadership; a highly concentrated health innovation cluster, engineering and technical talent to create the solutions of the future, and a single-payer system to support their larger scale adoption.
The symposium will explore home-grown Canadian innovations, invite technology users and adopters to highlight what opportunities exist for these technologies, and host a discussion on the challenges in bringing these technologies to market, including their validation, adoption, policy innovation and how they will transform the healthcare system and practice.
Agenda:
2:00 pm Networking
2:15 pm Surgical Robotic Technology Innovation in Canada – Technical Talks
– Leila Kheradpir​, M.Sc., P.Eng, Director, Hardware Engineering, Synaptive Medical
– Tim Fielding, Medical Product Development Manager, MDA
– Thomas Looi, Program Director, Centre for Image Guided Innovation and Therapeutic Intervention, Hospital for Sick Children
– Rajni Patel, Director of Engineering, Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics and Canada Research Chair in Advanced Robotics and Control, Western University
3:20 pm Surgical Robots: Needs, Opportunities and Gaps – User Talks
– Dr. Taymaa May, Gynaecologist, Oncologist, and Surgical Scientist, UHN Princess Margaret Hospital, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
3:50 pm Networking
4:10 pm Panel Discussion
– Cameron Piron, CoFounder and Member of the Board, Synaptive Medical
– Tim Reedman, Director, Commercial Systems, MDA Robotics
– Rajni Patel, Director of Engineering, Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics and Canada Research Chair in Advanced Robotics and Control, Western University
– Leila Kheradpir​, M.Sc., P.Eng, Director, Hardware Engineering, Synaptive Medical
4:50 pm Closing Remarks
5:00 pm Networking

Utility Protection Relay Fundamentals
2018-10-17 17:30 - 19:30 | Ryerson University 341 Yonge St, Toronto M5B 1S1
Wednesday, October 17th 2018, Eric Stark, Sr. Engineering Training & Consulting with RNItechnology, will be presenting “Utility Protection Relay Fundamentals”.
Day & Time: Wednesday October 17th, 2018
5:30 p.m. ‐ 7:30 p.m.
Speaker: Eric Stark
Sr. Engineering Training & Consulting with RNItechnology
Organizers: IEEE Toronto & IEEE Ryerson
Location: Ryerson University 341 Yonge St
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5B 1S1
Building: Student Learning Centre (SLC)
Room Number: Collaboratory Zone (3rd Floor)
Contact: Sadeed Bari
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/177825
Biography: Eric Stark is currently a Sr. Engineering Training & Consulting with RNItechnology. Eric’s mission is to educate the masses on how to protect a smart grid, something he is more than qualified for considering his 31 years of experience in electrical engineering, control, automation and protection. He is a sought after expert and trainer for Protection & Control, Engineering and Project management with expert knowledge in Protection & Control relays and SCADA. In addition, Eric has organized, consulted and delivered successfully, achieving 100% customer satisfaction on numerous engineering events and training around the globe like USA, Canada, Malaysia, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana and Middle East.

IESO Operating the Power System: New Challenges Call for New Approaches
2018-10-19 17:00 - 18:00 | Room Number: BA1230, 40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Friday, October 19th 2018, David Short, Director of Power System Assessments for the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), will be presenting “IESO Operating the Power System: New Challenges Call for New Approaches”.
Day & Time: Friday October 19th, 2018
5:00 p.m. ‐ 6:00 p.m.
Speaker: David Short
Director, Power System Assessments for the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO)
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Industry Application Society (IAS), IEEE Toronto Women in Engineering
Location: Room Number: BA1230
Building: Bahen Centre for Information Technology
University of Toronto 40 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S2E4
Contact: Hoda Youssef
Abstract: Distributed energy resources. Changing supply and demand patterns. Advanced grid technologies. The complexities of operating the system have never been greater – but with new challenges come new opportunities to help shape the province’s electricity sector. From leveraging innovation to drive cost-effectiveness and efficiency, to building a market that will meet system and consumer needs at the lowest cost, learn about the IESO’s experience in operating today’s system and how we are laying the foundation for an evolving energy landscape.
Biography: David Short holds the position of Director, Power System Assessments for the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). In this role, his teams are responsible for managing power system changes within the IESO, operational analysis, and engineering studies that define our system models and operating orders. Mr. Short has over 25 years of industry experience in Ontario and British Columbia. He holds a Bachelor of Science (Electrical Engineering) from Queen’s University and is a registered Professional Engineer in Ontario. He also holds the Certificate of Authorization for engineering services at the IESO.

Working at Hydro One – Professional Event by IEEE Industry Applications
2018-10-26 17:00 - 18:00 | BA 1230, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S2E4
Friday, October 26th 2018, Bruno Jesus of Hydro One, will be presenting “Working at Hydro One – Professional Event by IEEE Industry Applications”.
Day & Time: Friday October 26th, 2018
5:00 p.m. ‐ 6:00 p.m.
Speaker: Bruno Jesus
Director of Strategy and Integrated Planning at Hydro One Networks Inc.
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Industry Applications
Location: Room Number: BA 1230
Building: Bahen Centre for Information Technology
University of Toronto 40 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S2E4
Contact: Hoda Youssef
RVSP: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/176071
Abstract: Bruno Jesus, the Director of Strategy and Integrated Planning at Hydro One Networks Inc., will provide an overview of what it is like working at Hydro One, the strong culture that is embraced across the organization as well as the training and development opportunities that are available. By diving into the history of Hydro One’s transmission and distribution business as well as taking a look at where we are today, Bruno will be able to speak to the broad range of opportunities for all types of engineers across Hydro One.
Biography: Bruno Jesus is the Director of Strategy and Integrated Planning at Hydro One Networks Inc. With over 30 years of experience, Bruno has had the opportunity to work in various groups within Planning and Operations such as Asset Strategies and Standards as well as Station Sustainment Capital Planning. Bruno’s current accountabilities include developing transmission and distribution strategies, investment planning, business processes, secondary land use, joint use wire agreements, new technology and innovation (R&D) and reliability reporting. Bruno graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1987 and is a registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario.

DEWCOM 2018: The 3rd International Workshop on Dew Computing
2018-10-29 - 2018-10-30 | Hilton Toronto / Markham Suites Conference Center and Spa, Meeting Room Elm 1., 8500 Warden Avenue, Markham, Canada L6G 1A5
Dew computing is a new computing model appeared after the wide acceptance of cloud computing. While cloud computing uses centralized servers to provide various services, dew computing uses on-premises computers to provide decentralized, cloud-friendly, and collaborative micro services to end-users. Dew computing is an on-premises computer software-hardware organization paradigm in the cloud computing environment, which is complementary to cloud computing. The key features of dew computing are that on-premises computers provide functionality independent of cloud services and they also collaborate with cloud services.
This year, DEWCOM 2018 will be held at the same venue with the 28th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (CASCON 2018). One of the goals of this arrangement is for Dew Computing researchers to exchange ideas with industry partners. Welcome researchers, professionals, and students currently working in any areas to participate this event and to be pioneers of this new research area.
Day & Time: October 29th – 30th, 2018
Organizers: IEEE Computer Society Dew Computing Special Technical Community (DewCom STC), IEEE Toronto WIE
Location: Hilton Toronto / Markham Suites Conference Center and Spa, Meeting Room Elm 1.
8500 Warden Avenue, Markham, Canada L6G 1A5
Parking voucher is available upon request.
Register: http://www.dewcomputing.org/index.php/dewcom-2018/
Contact: dewcom2018@easychair.org
Schedule:
Session 1 (Tutorial/Presentations): Oct. 29, 3:15 – 5:15pm.
Session 2 (Presentations): Oct. 30, 8:30 – 10:00am
Nutrition Break: 10:00 – 10:15am.
Session 3 (Presentations): Oct. 30, 10:15am. – 12:00pm
Lunch: 12:00 -1:00pm.
Session 4 (Presentations/DewCom STC Committee Meeting): Oct.30, 1:00 – 3:00pm.
Nutrition Break: 3:00 – 3:15pm.
Session 5 (DewCom STC Committee Meeting): 3:15 – 5:15pm.

App-a-thon
2018-11-10 10:00 - 2018-11-11 10:00 | Room ENG 303 – George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre Ryerson University Toronto, ON M5B 1Z4
Saturday November 10th, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. the “App-a-thon” is starting – a competition in which students are challenged to create a Mobile Application within a span of 24-hours. This is an open-ended hackathon where creativity and technical skills are encouraged to develop a unique App.
Day & Time: 10:00 a.m. Saturday November 10th – 10:00 a.m. Sunday November 11th, 2018
Organizers: IEEE Ryerson Student Branch, IEEE Toronto WIE
Location: Room ENG 303
George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
Ryerson University
Toronto, ON M5B 1Z4
Register: https://goo.gl/qEKyU4
Contact: ieee.ryersonu@gmail.com
For regular updates checkout, the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/203391940542115/

IEEE Toronto Section Annual General Meeting 2018
2018-11-10 18:00 - 22:00 | Room Brûlé C, 21 Old Mill Rd, Toronto, ON, Canada
On behalf of the IEEE Toronto Section, you are cordially invited to join us in our annual IEEE Toronto Section AGM/Dinner event. The AGM is a special occasion to celebrate the achievements of the Toronto Section, made possible by its dedicated volunteers and members.
Date: Saturday, November 10, 2018
Time: 6:00 p.m. – 10:30 p.m.
Location: Room Brûlé C, 21 Old Mill Rd, Toronto, ON, Canada
FREE Registrations (by Oct. 25): Please fill out the registration HERE – space is limited and we anticipate a high demand.
– Each Chapter/Affinity group should register two representatives for the AGM (typically the Chair and Vice-Chair or other team member) and two guests of your choice.
– Each student branch should register two students representatives for the the AGM and two guests of your choice, in addition to the Branch counsellor and one guest.
– Please fill out a single registration form for you and your guest.
– You may also register for free if you have received a personal invitation from the Section Officers.
– Since space is very limited please do not register unless you are committed to attend.
PAID registrations: Additional tickets may be available in limited supply; please contact Maryam Davoudpour for special requests.
Keynote Speaker: We are delighted to announce that this year’s keynote speaker is Mr. Jim Balsillie’s, one of the most prominent tech entrepreneurs in Canadian history. This is a unique opportunity to hear his insights on the global tech landscape.
Biography: Jim Balsillie’s career is unique in Canadian business. He is a former Chairman and co-CEO of Research In Motion (BlackBerry), a Canadian technology company he scaled from an idea to $20 billion in sales globally.
He is a co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking based in New York City and the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) based in Toronto. He currently chairs the Board of Directors of Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and CCI. He is also the founder of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, the Balsillie School of International Affairs and Arctic Research Foundation and founding co-chair of the CIO Strategy Council.
Mr. Balsillie was the only Canadian ever appointed to US Business Council and the sole private sector representative on the UN Secretary General’s High Panel for Sustainability. He is the only Canadian member of the US Council on Competitiveness and an internationally renowned voice on innovation strategy, competitiveness and international economic policy. He testified to the US Senate on America Innovates Act, a landmark legislation for management of intellectual property.
His awards include: several honorary degrees, Canadian Business Hall of Fame, Mobile World Congress Lifetime Achievement Award, Time Magazine’s World’s 100 Most Influential People and three times Barron’s list of “World’s Top CEOs.

We look forward to seeing you all on November 10, 2018!

Voith Hydro Coil Factory Tour
2018-11-14 12:00 - 14:00 | 2185 N Sheridan Way Mississauga, Ontario Canada L5K 1A4
IEEE Dielectric and Electrical Insulation Ontario has arranged a facility tour of Voith Hydro Coil Factory in Mississauga on Wednesday, November 14th, 2018.
Day & Time: Wednesday November 14th, 2018
12:00 p.m. ‐ 2:00 p.m.
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Dielectrics & Electrical Insulation Chapter
Location: 2185 N Sheridan Way
Mississauga, Ontario
Canada L5K 1A4
Contact: Ali Naderian, PhD., P.Eng., SM IEEE
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/177080
Abstract: Voith Hydro Mississauga has been serving many customers and all Voith Hydro locations worldwide by manufacturing coils and delivering distinctive services. The location combines both a high-tech facility, which was completely modernized in 2009, and highly experienced and specialized staff. The forward-looking decision in 1990 to relocate the old Westinghouse Hydro Generation Service to Mississauga was a great success. This helped us to innovate our products and create new jobs”, explains Peter MacLennan, COO of Voith Hydro Mississauga.
Please register by Oct 2 2018 in order to attend.

SSCS Distinguished Lecture: Considerations and Implementations For High Data Rate Interconnect
2018-11-15 13:30 - 14:30 | Bahen Centre Room B024, 40 St. George Street Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Thursday Nov 15, 2018 at 1:30 p.m. Dr. Daniel Friedman, Distinguished Research Staff Member, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, will be presenting “SSCS Distinguished Lecture: Considerations and Implementations For High Data Rate Interconnect”.
Day & Time: Thursday November 15th, 2018
1:30 p.m. ‐ 2:30 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Daniel Friedman
Distinguished Research Staff Member
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Solid-State Circuits Society
Location: Bahen Centre Room B024
40 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Abstract: Cloud computing requires many different interconnects. These links provide connectivity between and among CPUs, accelerators, memory, and switches; each link comes with its own distance and bandwidth requirements. Wireline transceivers are responsible for sending and receiving data from one chip to and from another, thus enabling required connectivity. Key specifications for such designs include data rate, power consumption, area, and connection distance. Distance and data rate specifications, in particular, drive the choice of physical channel to be used for the connection, which in turn drives requirements including the equalization capabilities of the transceiver. For short chip-to-chip channels with limited frequency-dependent loss, simple transceivers with little or no integrated equalization are appropriate, while for longer channels crossing backplanes and involving multiple transitions through connectors, complex transceivers with adaptive transmit and receive equalization are the right choice. As connection distances grow even longer, optical interconnect becomes an attractive option. In this talk, a framework for understanding serial link design will be presented, including a discussion of basic equalization strategies and key challenges. Next, several design examples will be presented, covering approaches to key classes of interconnect, from short reach channels to backplane channels to enabling highly integrated optical approaches. The talk will conclude with a discussion of emerging directions in this field.
Biography: Daniel Friedman is currently a Distinguished Research Staff Member and Senior Manager of the Communication Circuits and Systems department of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1992 and subsequently completed post-doctoral work at Harvard and consulting work at MIT Lincoln labs, broadly in the area of image sensor design. After joining IBM in 1994, he initially developed field-powered RFID tags before turning to high data rate wireline and wireless communication. His current research interests include high-speed I/O design, PLL design, mmWave circuits and systems, and circuit/system approaches to enabling new computing paradigms. He was a co-recipient of the Beatrice Winner Award for Editorial Excellence at the 2009 ISSCC, the 2009 JSSC Best Paper Award (given in 2011), and the 2017 ISSCC Lewis Winner Outstanding Paper Award; he holds more than 50 patents and has authored or co-authored more than 75 publications. He was a member of the BCTM technical program committee from 2003-2008 and of the ISSCC international technical program committee from ISSCC 2009 through ISSCC 2016; he served as the Wireline sub-committee chair from ISSCC 2012 through ISSCC 2016. He has served as the Short Course Chair from ISSCC 2017 to the present and is a member of the SSCS Adcom since 2018.

Experience with an on-line hydro generator expert system monitoring system
2018-11-15 18:00 - 19:00 | Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4, Canada
Thursday, November 15th 2018, IEEE Toronto Industry Application Society will be hosting a talk on “Experience with an on-line hydro generator expert system monitoring system”.
Day & Time: Thursday November 15th, 2018
6:00 p.m. ‐ 7:00 p.m.
Organizer: IEEE Toronto Industry Application Society
Location: Building: Bahen Centre for Information Technology
University of Toronto
40 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S2E4
Contact: Hoda Youssef
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/178319
Abstract: Current technological advances in condition monitoring are employing an increasing number of complex sensors and advanced monitors to diagnose the operating status and condition of hydro generators and turbines. Advanced systems routinely employed may include bearing vibration, air gap, shaft voltage, and current monitoring, partial discharge, and flux monitoring. Proper interpretation of this often complex information can lower operating and maintenance expenses, in addition to reducing unscheduled outages and catastrophic failures. However, the volume of available data from these monitors, and the extensive interpretation necessary to evaluate the complex waveforms and spectrums can overwhelm plant personnel and resources. Sophisticated software and algorithms are often necessary to correlate and interpret this data to establish the overall generator and drive train condition. HydroX™ (for Hydro Expert) is a commercial knowledge-based expert system program for on-line monitoring of hydro-generators. Working with the New York Power Authority, the system was developed over five years by Iris Power and GE -Bently Nevada. After a further two years of prototype evaluation at NYPA’s St. Lawrence Power Project on two 60MVA generators, the validated system is now commercially available and will be described.

Next-Generation Protection Technologies for Power Systems: The Quest for Resilience
2018-11-16 09:30 - 11:00 | Ryerson University, Department of Computer Science, Room 288 George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON – M5B 2K3
Friday Nov 16, 2018 at 9:30 a.m. Dr. Ali Hooshyar, Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery & IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, will be presenting “Next-Generation Protection Technologies for Power Systems: The Quest for Resilience”.
Day & Time: Friday November 16th, 2018
9:30 a.m. ‐ 11:00 a.m.
Speaker: Dr. Ali Hooshyar
Editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Systems Chapter
Location: Ryerson University, Department of Computer Science, Room 288
George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
245 Church Street,
Toronto, ON – M5B 2K3
Contact: Mehrdad Tirandazian
Abstract: The resilience of power systems is known as their ability to predict, adapt to and quickly recover from various disruptive events. Power grids have always been subject to such events, but in the last few years, the frequency and severity of large-scale disruptions have increased due to the growing number of major climate disasters. In addition, the increasing reliance on the cyber layer of smart grids has diversified the causes of major disruptions. Attackers can exploit the grid’s cyber vulnerabilities to manipulate protection and control commands, as was the case with the 2015 and 2016 blackouts in Ukraine. These recent developments have intensified the efforts to improve grid resilience. Large-scale disruptions usually involve abnormal currents and voltages—to which the protection system of the grid is expected to respond—, or involve trip commands to circuit breakers, which can originate from protective devices. Furthermore, some of the strategies to increase grid resilience alter the short-circuit behavior of the grid. As a result, substantial upgrades in the protection system are necessary to meet the demands for higher grid resilience. This talk will highlight some of the major changes required to prevent large-scale disruptive events or improve the grid operation during such events. Various protection system challenges that the speaker has unveiled are discussed, followed by the proposed solutions. Two of these challenges are elaborated in detail: first, this talk focuses on the relation between grid resilience and protection of microgrids, which can ensure the continuity of power supply during major disruptions in the transmission system. The performance of existing commercial relays for microgrid protection is demonstrated, and the requirements to eliminate the shortcomings of these relays are identified. Afterwards, this talk shows how cyber-attacks on communication-assisted protection schemes can lead to wide-area disruptions throughout the grid. The vulnerabilities of such schemes and a new approach to address them are discussed.
Biography: Ali Hooshyar received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2014. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto in 2018. He was with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, York University, Toronto, from 2015 to 2018. His research interests include protection and control of renewable energy systems and smart grids. Dr. Hooshyar is an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery and the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid.

Photonics Integration for Applications in Astrophotonics and Quantum Information
2018-11-16 14:00 - 15:00 | Room SF1101 10 King’s College Rd, Toronto, ON M5S 3G4
Friday Nov 16, 2018 at 2:00 p.m. Mario Dagenais, Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, will be presenting “Photonics Integration for Applications in Astrophotonics and Quantum Information”.
Day & Time: Friday November 16th, 2018
2:00 p.m. ‐ 3:00 p.m.
Speaker: Mario Dagenais
Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Circuits & Devices Chapter
Location: Room SF1101
10 King’s College Rd,
Toronto, ON M5S 3G4
Contact: Mengqi Wang
Abstract: We will describe our work on optical integration on a chip, in particular how to realize a complex waveguide Bragg grating for rejecting several emission lines from the atmosphere for astronomical observation and how to implement an integrated spectrometer based on Arrayed Waveguide Gratings (AWGs) or on echelle gratings. We will also present our work for creating an on-chip ultra-high rejection filter (> 100 dB) for applications in quantum information.
Biography: Professor Dagenais’ research interests are in photonics integration, high efficiency photovoltaic conversion, and nitride optoelectronics. Professor Dagenais received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1978 working in Quantum Optics and photon correlations under the direction of Professor Mandel. Together with Jeff Kimble, he made the first observation of photon antibunching. He was a Research Fellow at Harvard University from 1978 to 1980, where he worked in nonlinear optics with Professor Bloembergen. From 1980 to 1987, he worked at GTE Laboratories on photonic switching and semiconductor lasers. He joined the University of Maryland in 1987 where he has been Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering since 1991. He has more than 300 archival and conference publications. He has co-chaired several national and international meetings. Professor Dagenais is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, a Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of the Electromagnetic Society.

IEEE Humber Programming Session #3 Fall 2018 Series
2018-11-16 17:00 - 19:00 | Humber College North Campus, Room F321
This is a series of programming sessions lead by instructor Andew Rudder designed to prepare our IEEE at Humber student branch for future coding challenges such as IEEE Xtreme. These sessions will be held at Humber College and will be interactive so please bring a laptop with you. Over the 6 weeks we will be practicing logic questions while learning new coding techniques from sorting to data structures. The sessions will also be open to questions and student ideas.
Day & Time: Friday November 16th, 2018
5:00 p.m. ‐ 7:00 p.m.
Speaker: Andew Rudder
Secretary, IEEE at Humber Student Branch
Organizers: IEEE Toronto WIE, Humber Student Branch
Location: Humber College North Campus, Room F321
Contact: IEEE Humber
Abstract:
We will be having our 3rd programming session! The session will be held in F312, in one of the hive rooms. As usual donuts will be served!
This week we will be practicing what we learned in the first couple of sessions. So if you haven’t attended the first 2 sessions, this is your chance to catch up! Andrew Rudder and Robert Lengyel will be there to assist us when needed, but this will be more about the group helping each other.
The first 2 weeks we covered pointers, structs, link lists, and practiced some logic problems with loops and functions.
This Google drive link has all of the documents and coding files we utilized during the sessions.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JWns0X22mWdXAyJdGHH_pc0kRNG0pM12
And here is a good video on structs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5pA7RvvQDg

Improving Communication Skills for Engineers
2018-11-19 18:15 - 20:30 | 350 Victoria St Toronto, Ontario Canada M5B 2K3, Room Number: LIB 072
Monday, November 19th, 2018, Hugo Sánchez-Reategui, Consultant of Alectra Utilities (formerly PowerStream Inc.), and Ted Lyberogiannis, Senior Manager at an electrical utility in Toronto, will be presenting “Improving Communication Skills for Engineers”.
Day & Time: Monday November 19th, 2018
6:15 p.m. ‐ 8:30 p.m.
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Young Professionals Affinity Group and Industry Relations Committee
Location: 350 Victoria St
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5B 2K3
Room Number: LIB 072
Contact: Miad Fard
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/178984
Abstract: We are excited to announce that IEEE Toronto Section’s Young Professionals Affinity Group and Industry Relations Committee will be hosting a seminar on Improving Communication Skills for Engineers with distinguished speakers who will share their experiences and speak about the opportunities, possibilities, and challenges in an engineering workplace and the required communication skills. You will hear first-hand tips on how to become an excellent communicator to advance your career.
The focus of this seminar is on communication skills one requires to be successful in an engineering profession. This seminar could be of special interest to engineering students, new graduates, young engineers, and young professionals in general.
Speakers:
Hugo Sánchez-Reategui
Hugo Sanchez-Reategui has been a consultant of Alectra Utilities (formerly PowerStream Inc.) for the past 8 years confirming capacity for Embedded Distributed Generators dealing with stakeholders, developers, utilities and government agencies.He is a current member of Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO), OSPE (Ontario Society of Professional Engineers) , past member of Toastmasters International (Public Speaking) for 7 years and VP of Public Relations of Toastmasters (elected twice). He earned a Bachelor of Engineering at National University of Callao, Peru and IEEQB Program Certificate at Ryerson University in 2010.
Hugo has been an active volunteer member of IEEE Toronto (largest IEEE section in Canada) since 2016, he has been supporting student branches, chapters and IEEE Canada conferences. During his past volunteering role of 2 years (2016 – 2018) with IEEE Toronto, he led the Industry Relations Committee, managing a selected group of volunteers to work on technology topics i.e. Cyber Security, Smart Grid, Smart Cities and other emerging technologies showing the awareness of these topics and promoting the IEEE brand as a technology leader in Canada and North America.
In addition, Hugo mentors undergrad, new grad students and participates as a speaker in IEEE events.
His technical interests include Smart Grid Technologies, Distribution Operations, Substation Communications and Protection of Distribution Systems.
Ted Lyberogiannis
Ted is a Professional Engineer with a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto and a Master’s degree in Electrical Power Systems from the University of Waterloo. He is also currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Energy and Infrastructure Law from Osgoode Hall Law school. He currently works as a senior manager at an electrical utility in Toronto.
Upon graduating from his Bachelor’s degree in 2004, he realized that his technical abilities would be of little use if he was unable to communicate effectively. Shortly after graduating, he began practicing his public speaking by joining a local Toastmasters club at his work. He is now an experienced Toastmaster who has won dozens of public speaking contests and has competed at the Semi-Finals of the World Championships of Public Speaking on two occasions. He is a firm believer in the power of communication and that anyone can become a good public speaker if they practice enough.

Energy-Efficient Edge Computing for AI-driven Applications
2018-11-22 16:00 - 17:00 | Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King’s College Rd, Toronto, ON M5S 3G4, Canada
Thursday, November 22nd 2018, Vivienne Sze, Associate Professor at MIT in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, is presenting “Energy-Efficient Edge Computing for AI-driven Applications”.
Day & Time: Thursday November 22nd, 2018
4:10 p.m. ‐ 5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Vivienne Sze
Associate Professor, MIT in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Solid-State Circuits Society
Location: Sanford Fleming Building, Room 1105
10 King’s College Rd
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 3G4
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Abstract: Edge computing near the sensor is preferred over the cloud due to privacy and/or latency concerns for a wide range of applications including robotics/drones, self-driving cars, smart Internet of Things, and portable/wearable electronics. However, at the sensor there are often stringent constraints on energy consumption and cost in addition to throughput and accuracy requirements. In this talk, we will describe how joint algorithm and hardware design can be used to reduce energy consumption while delivering real-time and robust performance for applications including deep learning, computer vision, autonomous navigation and video/image processing. We will show how energy-efficient techniques that exploit correlation and sparsity to reduce compute, data movement and storage costs can be applied to various AI tasks including object detection, image classification, depth estimation, super-resolution, localization and mapping.
Biography: Vivienne Sze is an Associate Professor at MIT in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. Her research interests include energy-aware signal processing algorithms, and low-power circuit and system design for portable multimedia applications, including computer vision, deep learning, autonomous navigation, and video process/coding. Prior to joining MIT, she was a Member of Technical Staff in the R&D Center at TI, where she designed low-power algorithms and architectures for video coding. She also represented TI in the JCT-VC committee of ITU-T and ISO/IEC standards body during the development of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), which received a Primetime Emmy Engineering Award. She is a co-editor of the book entitled “High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC): Algorithms and Architectures” (Springer, 2014).
Prof. Sze received the B.A.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto in 2004, and the S.M. and Ph.D. degree from MIT in 2006 and 2010, respectively. In 2011, she received the Jin-Au Kong Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Prize in Electrical Engineering at MIT. She is a recipient of the 2018 Facebook Hardware & Software Systems Research Award, the 2017 Qualcomm Faculty Award, the 2016 Google Faculty Research Award, the 2016 AFOSR Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) Award, the 2016 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, the 2014 DARPA Young Faculty Award, the 2007 DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest Award, and a co-recipient of the 2017 CICC Outstanding Invited Paper Award, the 2016 IEEE Micro Top Picks Award and the 2008 A-SSCC Outstanding Design Award.
For more information about research in the Energy-Efficient Multimedia Systems Group at MIT visit: http://www.rle.mit.edu/eems/

Opportunities in Neural Engineering
2018-11-23 09:00 - 13:30 | Room ENG 460, Ryerson University, 245 Church Street, Toronto
Friday Nov 23, 2018 at 9:00 a.m. Signal Analysis Research (SAR) Group, Ryerson University and IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society will be hosting the “Opportunities in Neural Engineering” event.
Day & Time: Friday November 23rd, 2018
9:00 a.m. ‐ 1:30 p.m.
Organizers: Signal Analysis Research (SAR) Group
Ryerson University
IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Location: Room ENG 460, Ryerson University
245 Church Street, Toronto
Contact: Filip Boskovic
Agenda: Each talk will be for 20 minutes plus 5 minutes of discussions.
Session 1 – Neural Engineering framework
1) Overview of the event – Sri Krishnan, Associate Dean (Research), Ryerson University
2) Neural signal processing and machine learning – Sri Krishnan
3) Assistive Technologies – Teodiano Bastos, Federal Univ. Espirito Santo, Brazil
4) Parkinsons’ Disease Voice Analysis – Alice Rueda, Intel Student Ambassador and PhD student
Session 2 – Applications in Neural Engineering
5) Brain-computer Interfaces – Dharmendra Gurve, Ryerson University
6) Rehabilitation facilities and framework for collaborative work – Jeevan Pant, Ryerson University
7) Assistive Living – Robson Cruz and Yuri Silva, Federal Univ. Manuas, Brazil
8) Emerging opportunities – Sri Krishnan and Teodiano Bastos

IEEE Humber Programming Session #4 Fall 2018 Series
2018-11-23 17:00 - 20:00 | Humber College North Campus, Room F312
This is a series of programming sessions lead by instructor Andew Rudder designed to prepare our IEEE at Humber student branch for future coding challenges such as IEEE Xtreme. These sessions will be held at Humber College and will be interactive so please bring a laptop with you. Over the 6 weeks we will be practicing logic questions while learning new coding techniques from sorting to data structures. The sessions will also be open to questions and student ideas.
Day & Time: Friday November 23rd, 2018
5:00 p.m. ‐ 8:00 p.m.
Speaker: Andew Rudder
Secretary, IEEE at Humber Student Branch
Organizers: IEEE Toronto WIE, Humber Student Branch
Location: Humber College North Campus, Room F312
Contact: IEEE Humber
Abstract:
This Friday, November 23 at 5pm, we will be having our 4th programming session. The session will be held in F312, in one of the hive rooms. Please let us know if you can attend.
Due to the popularity and interest in these sessions, we will be extending these sessions to 3 hours from now on. Last week we practiced with Link Lists but asked everyone to try and finish a complete link list with these functions by this Friday:
createNode
addFront
printList
AddLast
deleteFront
deleteLast
I attached a sample of a link list with only the first three functions. At the beginning of the next session we will answer any lingering link lists questions, and Andrew Rudder will go over the advantages and disadvantages of using a link list. Also, Robert Lengyel will be talking about vectors and strings. With our remaining time we will be continuing to explore steganography.
This Google drive link has all of the documents and coding files we utilized during the first 2 sessions.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JWns0X22mWdXAyJdGHH_pc0kRNG0pM12

IEEE Humber Programming Session #5 Fall 2018 Series
2018-11-30 17:00 - 20:00 | Humber College North Campus, Room F312
This is a series of programming sessions lead by instructor Andew Rudder designed to prepare our IEEE at Humber student branch for future coding challenges such as IEEE Xtreme. These sessions will be held at Humber College and will be interactive so please bring a laptop with you. Over the 6 weeks we will be practicing logic questions while learning new coding techniques from sorting to data structures. The sessions will also be open to questions and student ideas.
Day & Time: Friday November 30th, 2018
5:00 p.m. ‐ 8:00 p.m.
Speaker: Andew Rudder
Secretary, IEEE at Humber Student Branch
Organizers: IEEE Toronto WIE, Humber Student Branch
Location: Humber College North Campus, Room F312
Contact: IEEE Humber
Abstract:
Our next programming session is Friday November 30th, from 5pm – 8pm in room F312. Snacks will be served!
Last week we reviewed Link lists and the key differences & uses between Link-Lists and Arrays. We then covered vectors in depth. And then, we went further with stenography with a demonstration of an LSB bitmap encoder. Sample code for this encoder is located in week 4 of this google drive:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JWns0X22mWdXAyJdGHH_pc0kRNG0pM12
This week we will continue exploring stenography, practice with vectors, and take a deeper look into strings.

Connecting your IoT Device with LoRaWAN to The Things Network (TTN)
2018-12-01 10:00 - 14:00 | Room ENG101, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street, Toronto, Ontario Canada M5B 1Z4
Saturday, December 1st 2018, Dennis Cecic, P. Eng., SMIEEE., Senior Technical Training Engineer with Microchip Technology Canada Inc., will be presenting “Connecting your IoT Device with LoRaWAN to The Things Network (TTN)”.
Day & Time: Saturday December 1st, 2018
10:00 a.m. ‐ 2:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dennis Cecic, P. Eng., SMIEEE.
Senior Technical Training Engineer with Microchip Technology Canada Inc.
Chair of the IEEE Toronto Computer Society
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Computer Society
Location: Room ENG101, Ryerson University (George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre)
245 Church Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5B 1Z4
Contact: Dennis Cecic, P. Eng., SMIEEE.
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/179788
Abstract: The long range and low-power capability of LoRaWANTM combined with the flexibility and ease of use of The Thing Network’s open source data network makes this one of the easiest ways for an embedded engineer to create an end-to-end IoT solution.
In this hands-on workshop, attendees will learn how to send sensor data from a low cost, low-power sensor all the way to a user application. The class will walk through connecting a LoRaWAN-enabled endpoint through a LoRaWAN gateway to The Things Network’s servers and finally to an end user application.
Upon completion, attendees will be equipped to deploy each piece of this IoT solution.
Notes:
RSVP is required for this event. Please visit https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/179788 for more details and to register.
FEES: All $29.95 + 13% HST
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Attendees will be provided with a sensor board for use during the workshop. Attendees may purchase the sensor board separately: https://www.microchipdirect.com/product/search/all/THW1021
Attendees are expected to download courseware and install software onto their laptop computers before attending the event per instructions here (see README.txt): https://microchip.box.com/s/qiiqa285z8c9ee798xyzb8d2iqw15cwi
Biography: Dennis is a Senior Technical Training Engineer with Microchip Technology Canada Inc., specializing in microcontrollers, embedded software and the internet of things (IoT). His industrial embedded design experience includes development of microwave, infrared and acoustic motion sensors for the commercial security system market, as well as specialty devices for assisted living. He has also developed and taught courses in 32-bit microcontrollers and DSP in the school of electronics at Seneca College. He holds a B. Eng. Degree in Electrical Engineering from Ryerson University. Dennis is also the current Chair of the IEEE Computer Society – Toronto Chapter.

IEEE Toronto Centennial Workshop: Distributed Machine Learning, The Future of Programming in The Present
2018-12-01 17:30 - 18:30 | Room A3-17, Centennial College, Progress Campus 941 Progress Ave., Toronto, Ontario, M1G 3T8
Saturday Dec 1, 2018 at 5:30 p.m. Reza Dibaj, Chair of Magnetics Chapter, IEEE Toronto Section, will be presenting an IEEE Toronto Centennial Workshop: “Distributed Machine Learning, The Future of Programming in The Present”.
Day & Time: Saturday December 1st, 2018
5:30 p.m. ‐ 6:30 p.m.
Speaker: Reza Dibaj
Chair of Magnetics Chapter, IEEE Toronto Section
Organizers: Magnetics Chapter, IEEE Toronto Centennial College Chapter, WIE IEEE Toronto
Location: Room A3-17
Centennial College, Progress Campus
941 Progress Ave., Toronto, Ontario, M1G 3T8
Contact: Reza Dibaj
Abstract: Machine Learning (ML) and statistical techniques have provided a new era that enables us to convert the data to information and transform the information into actionable knowledge. Moreover, distributed computing ecosystems provide the ability to break down the computation burdens among commodity hardware, thanks to cloud environments. Among all the attempts in this road, SciKit and TensorFlow are two states of the art libraries that can be used in Python and this seminar will open the gate to know their bases.

Power System Engineering, Operation and Management
2018-12-03 18:00 - 2018-12-07 18:00 | Humber College of Applied Arts and Technology, 205 Humber College Blvd, Etobicoke, ON M9W 5L7, Canada
A short course in “Power System Engineering, Operation and Management” is offered in January 2019 to enhance knowledge and understanding of the practical applications of power system engineering and modern technologies in the energy sector.
Course Timetable:
• Monday, January 14th, 2019 to Friday, January 18th 2019: 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. (with a brief coffee break; Coffee and snacks will be provided)
• Thursday, January 17th, 2019: Site Visit to the Operation & Control Centre: 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. (Transportation and snacks will be provided)
Speakers:
• Doug Houseman, IEEE Power and Energy Society’s Intelligent Grid Coordinating Committee
• Prof. Javeed Ahmed Khan, Senior member of IEEE
• Satish Saini, Chair Education Committee IEEE Toronto section
Location: Humber College of Applied Arts and Technology 205 Humber College Blvd, Etobicoke, ON M9W 5L7 (access to Hwy 427, 407 & 409)
Organizer: Education Committee, IEEE Toronto Section
Contact: Satish Saini
RVSP: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/177273
Registration Fee: $500 + GST/HST. (10% Discount to IEEE members)
Course Outline:
See the full call for registration document for more information.
Day 1: Fundamentals of power system, electrical circuits & power flow, protection & control
Day 2: Power System Components and Operation- generation, transmission & distribution
Day 3: Latest technologies and trends in power generation including renewable sources
Day 4: SCADA, EMS and DMS applications in transmission & distribution of power
Day 5: Site Visit to the power operation Centre; Operation of Ontario’s electricity market. Project Management and other soft skills for power system engineers. Course Test/Exam
Who should attend:
• Electrical, IT and others engineers with interest in energy & power system.
• Technocrats, technologists and other professionals in the field of power generation, transmission & distribution.
• Foreign-trained professionals.
• Graduate/ undergraduate students in (colleges and universities).
What will you receive after completion:
• Course Certificate of Completion along with CEUs and PDH (After completing an in-class short exam and evaluation which all attendees must pass).
• Course Materials in Paper Format.
• Continuous support on career advice, resume building and skills development.
Biography:
Doug Houseman – Doug is a well known leader in grid modernisation with 40 + years of experience in the energy and utility industry and involvement in projects in more than 70 countries. He has been involved in IEEE’s GridVision 2050, US Department of Energy’s QER and to revise CEATI’s Distribution Utility Technology Roadmap. Doug is a NIST fellow and member of the GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC) where he had a hand in both the Smart Grid Interoperability Maturity Model and Transactive Energy. He has led the IEEE Power and Energy Society’s Intelligent Grid Coordinating Committee and Emerging Technology Committee for the last five years. He has developed more than 20 tutorials for grid modernization for IEEE and others in addition to hundreds of other publications, presentations, workshops, papers and articles on grid modernization, power SCADA, Microgrids, AMR and many more.
Prof. Javeed Ahmed Khan – Prof Javeed has a PhD degree in electrical engineering in electrical energy systems and Bachelor’s in instrumentation and electronics engineering. His 15 years of experience is spread across the globe in academia, consultancy and power industry. He has taught around 25 courses in electrical, electronics, control and computer engineering in different Universities and Colleges around the world. His major achievements are setting up of functional electrical and electronics engineering department and a lab at an engineering institute and many projects on solar powered electric car, vertical-axis wind turbine, Intelligent Electric Vehicle Charging System and many more. Javeed is a senior member of IEEE, and a Professional Engineer registered with PEO, Ontario and APEGA, Alberta.
Satish Saini – With Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and numerous advanced courses in power, energy and management, Satish is a Licensed Professional Engineer registered with PEO, Canada. He has an extensive 33 years of accomplished management experience in various fields of energy and power at global level. Majority of his experience is in electrical utility operations and management at senior level, business development and project management related to renewable energy, smart metering / AMI, Advanced Distribution System (ADS) / Smart Grid, DSM and DMS. He has been involved in hiring, training and mentoring a diverse work force from various backgrounds. He is an active member of IEEE in various committees, Task Forces and Working Groups related to Smart Distribution, Smart Grid, MicroGrids and Smart Cities. He has a strong vision of developing the aging DS Grid with latest innovative technologies and solutions along with transforming utilities through smart grid programs. Mentoring and training young and foreign-trained professionals is one of his strongest passion.

Integrated Terrestrial/Aerial 6G Networks for Ubiquitous 3D Super-Connectivity in 2030s
2018-12-06 14:00 - 15:30 | Bahen Centre, Room BA1230, 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Thursday December 6th, 2018 at 2:00 p.m. Prof. Halim Yanikomeroglu, Carleton University, will be presenting a ComSoc distinguished lecture: “Integrated Terrestrial/Aerial 6G Networks for Ubiquitous 3D Super-Connectivity in 2030s”.
Day & Time: Thursday December 6th, 2018
2:00 p.m. ‐ 3:30 p.m.
Speaker: Prof. Halim Yanikomeroglu
Carleton University
Organizers: ComSoc IEEE Toronto
Location: Bahen Centre, Room BA1230
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: ComSoc IEEE Toronto
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/183175
Abstract: As the 5G standards are currently being developed with a scheduled completion date of late-2019, it is time to reinitiate a brainstorming endeavour followed by the technical groundwork towards the subsequent generation (6G) wireless networks of 2030s.
One reasonable starting point in this new 6G discussion is to reflect on the possible shortcomings of the 5G networks to-be-deployed. 5G promises to provide connectivity for a broad range of use-cases in a variety of vertical industries; after all, this rich set of scenarios is indeed what distinguishes 5G from the previous four generations. Many of the envisioned 5G use-cases require challenging target values for one or more of the key QoS elements, such as high rate, high reliability, low latency, and high energy efficiency; we refer to the presence of such demanding links as the super-connectivity.
However, the very fundamental principles of digital and wireless communications reveal that the provision of ubiquitous super-connectivity in the global scale – i.e., beyond indoors, dense downtown or campus-type areas – is infeasible with the legacy terrestrial network architecture as this would require prohibitively expensive gross over-provisioning. The problem will only exacerbate with even more demanding 6G use-cases such as UAVs requiring connectivity (ex: delivery drones), thus the need for 3D super-connectivity.
In this talk, we will present a 5-layer vertical architecture composed of fully integrated terrestrial and aerial layers for 6G networks of 2030s:
– Terrestrial HetNets with macro-, micro-, and pico-BSs
– Flying-BSs (aerial-/UAV-/drone-BSs); altitude: up to several 100 m
– High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) (floating-BSs); altitude: ~20 km
– Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) satellites; altitude: 200-1,000 km
– Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellites; altitude: 35,786 km
In the absence of a clear technology roadmap for the 2030s, the talk has, to a certain extent, an exploratory view point to stimulate further thinking and creativity. We are certainly at the dawn of a new era in wireless research and innovation; the next twenty years will be very interesting.
Biography: Halim Yanikomeroglu is a Professor at Carleton University. His research covers many aspects of communications technologies with emphasis on wireless networks. He supervised 20 PhD students (all completed with theses). He coauthored 360+ peer-reviewed research papers including 120+ in the IEEE journals; these publications have received 11,000+ citations. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Communications Society, and a Distinguished Speaker for the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He has been one of the most frequent tutorial presenters in the leading international IEEE conferences (29 times). He has had extensive collaboration with industry which resulted in 25 granted patents (plus more than a dozen applied). During 2012-2016, he led one of the largest academic-industrial collaborative research projects on pre-standards 5G wireless, sponsored by the Ontario Government and the industry. He served as the General Chair and Technical Program Chair of several major international IEEE conferences.

Smart Connected Buildings Form the Foundation of Smart City: Today’s Possibility, Tomorrow’s Necessity
2018-12-10 13:00 - 14:00 | Room 288, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street, Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3
Monday December 10th, 2018 at 1:00 p.m. Amir Shabani, Ph.D., P.Eng., Canada Industrial Research Chair (IRCC) in Smart Connected Buildings, will be presenting “Smart Connected Buildings Form the Foundation of Smart City: Today’s Possibility, Tomorrow’s Necessity”.
Day & Time: Monday December 10th, 2018
1:00 p.m. ‐ 2:00 p.m.
Speaker: Amir Shabani, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Canada Industrial Research Chair (IRCC) in Smart Connected Buildings
Organizers: Magnetics Chapter, WIE IEEE Toronto
Location: Ryerson University, Department of Computer Science, Room 288
George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
245 Church Street Toronto, ON M5B 2K3
Contact: Reza Dibaj
Abstract: Have you ever been or worked in a space/classroom that the air was not fresh enough, too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer? Have you ever wondered why even a brand new LEED-certified building is not smart enough and does not let the occupants control their environment, in terms of temperature, lighting et cetera.
This presentation aims to provide some insights on the challenges the current industry of building automation is facing and the opportunities that the new advancement such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Adaptive Machine Learning (AML) could bring to this industry to make buildings smarter and sociable. In the context of smart city, rather than buildings being primarily treated as loads, intelligent buildings play a significant role in saving energy and improving the comfort and productivity of the occupants; emphasizing the needs for buildings to be social: interact with occupants, share data with each other, learn from each other, and help each other.
Biography: Dr. Amir Shabani is the NSERC Industrial Research Chair (IRCC) in Smart Connected Buildings. He is the director of Intelligent Building Automation Systems (IBAS) lab at George Brown College, Toronto, where his research team is closely collaborating with industry leaders on deployment, assessment, and development of new technologies that make homes and buildings smarter and social.

Rethink Cities – A FIDIC/EFCA White Paper on Sustainable Urban Development
2018-12-14 13:00 - 14:00 | Ryerson University, Victoria Building (VIC) 285 Victoria St., 7th Floor, Room 736 (conference room) Toronto, Ontario M5B 1W1
Friday December 14th, 2018 at 1:00 p.m. Laleh Farhadi, MSc Urban and Regional Planning, will be presenting “Rethink Cities – A FIDIC/EFCA White Paper on Sustainable Urban Development”.
Day & Time: Friday December 14th, 2018
1:00 p.m. ‐ 2:00 p.m.
Speaker: Laleh Farhadi, MSc Urban and Regional Planning
Organizers: Magnetics Chapter, WIE IEEE Toronto
Location: Ryerson University, Victoria Building (VIC)
285 Victoria St., 7th Floor, Room 736 (conference room)
Toronto, Ontario M5B 1W1
Contact: Reza Dibaj
Abstract: Today, over half of the world’s population lives in cities covering 2- 3 % of the Earth’s land area, using 75 % of all energy and emitting 80% of all carbon dioxide. Infrastructure investments in many countries and cities are not at a desirable level or they are steered in the wrong direction while many cities are growing faster geographically than population-wise. Society has to rethink cities.
The FIDIC White Paper addresses the need of evolving resource efficiency in cities with increased focus on planning and making socially and economically attractive areas, well-functioning spatial structures and energy efficient systems.
To meet the increasingly complex challenges of cities, holistic and integrated approach is needed and rightly applied regarding emissions, climate, resilience, climate risks, flooding, biodiversity, energy and material use, improved quality of life and social responsibility.
Biography: Laleh Farhadi is an Urban Planner, internationally experienced in both private and public sectors on different types of plans and projects related to the city and its ongoing challenges.
During a project in Consulting Engineering Firm, while reviewing and providing feedback for a FIDIC White Paper called “Rethink Cities”, she faced the fact that the total built environment (not just the individual buildings) requires sustainable overall solutions that form synergies in solutions for society, buildings, infrastructure, and technical systems.
This presentation based on FIDIC/ EFCA White Paper is a step forward to this knowledge and responsibility sharing with the hope of professional cooperation among various effecting fields in the city.

The Qubit is the Transistor: Si-based Transistor and Analog-Mixed-Signal Circuit Scaling and the Natural Progression of Moore’s Law to Silicon Quantum Computing at the Atomic Scale
2018-12-16 13:10 - 14:30 | Bahen Centre, Room BA1230, 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Monday December 17th, 2018 at 1:10 p.m. Dr. Sorin Voinigescu, Professor at the University of Toronto, will be presenting a SSCS distinguished lecture: “The Qubit is the Transistor: Si-based Transistor and Analog-Mixed-Signal Circuit Scaling and the Natural Progression of Moore’s Law to Silicon Quantum Computing at the Atomic Scale”.
Day & Time: Monday December 17th, 2018
1:10 p.m. ‐ 2:30 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Sorin Voinigescu
Professor, University of Toronto
Organizers: SSCS IEEE Toronto
Location: Bahen Centre, Room BA1230
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Abstract: Quantum computing is a hot topic at very cool temperatures. Cool as in 10-100 mK.
Recently, a cold-atom physicist nonchalantly asked me the question: Why are you interested in high temperature quantum computers? High as in 4 -12 K. He was serious! Need I talk about Global Warming in such cool environments? Pluto is another option. Today, quantum computers consist of racks of microwave and analog-mixed-signal test equipment, FPGAs and feedback loops for error correction, long 50-Ohm coaxial cables, and a few qubits formed with non-linear Josephson-junction resonators, entangled through niobium superconducting λ/4 resonators at 8-20 GHz, biased by a DC magnetic field of up to 1 Tesla, and whose spin is controlled by an AC magnetic field rotating in the “lab frame”. Are you still spinning?
There’s talk of electrons as “microwave photons”, Larmor and Rabi frequencies, photon-to-spin entanglement, RAP (as in rapid adiabatic passage), Bloch sphere, tensors in n-dimensional Hilbert spaces, but also of OFDM, phase noise, I-Q up- and down- conversion, Gaussian pulse modulation, coherent π/2, π/4 spin phase rotations in azimuth and elevation. Qubits are logic gates and memory cells at the same time. Logic gate operations consist of synchronized microwave pulses applied sequentially to the same qubits. The only probabilistic part (need I mention Schrodinger’s cats Flip and Flop?) is readout, when the spin state is projected on the Z (DC magnetic field) axis!
In other words, quantum computing is about everything you learned and thought you’d never use again, should have learned, or you were never taught in undergrad and grad school in math, quantum and atomic physics, electronics, electromagnetics, and computer science…
This talk will first attempt to demystify and translate the physics of quantum computing to an electronics engineer jargon. Next, I will discuss the feasibility of high-temperature (2-4 K) Si and SiGe electron/hole-spin qubits and qubit integrated circuits (ICs) in commercial 22nm FDSOI CMOS technology, and explore their scalability through simulation to 2nm dimensions, when the coupling energy, ΔE, becomes comparable to thermal noise at 77-300 K.
Silicon electron-spin and hole-spin coupled quantum-dot (QD) qubits have attracted a lot of interest recently due to their potential for integration in commercial CMOS technology. However, like their more established superconducting cousins, to date, because of the low confinement and coupling energies (e.g. ΔE, in the tens of μeV range, comparable to the thermal noise level, kBT, at 100 mK) their operation has been restricted to temperatures below 100 mK. Moreover, since cryogenic systems cannot remove more than a few μW of thermal power at 100 mK, and the experimental laboratory (think TNC at U of T versus TSMC 7nm fab) technologies in which these qubits have been realized do not allow for fabrication of spin manipulation and readout circuitry, the latter reside on a separate chip, at 4 K or higher temperature. The lack of monolithic integration further degrades readout fidelity and computing speed because the atto-Farad capacitance, high-impedance qubit needs to drive 50Ω and 100x larger capacitance interconnect off- chip. A qubit with higher confinement and coupling energies, with spin resonance in the upper mm-wave region, will allow for higher temperature operation, alleviating these problems and enabling large-scale monolithic quantum computing processors. For example, a qubit operating at 4 K would require mode splitting energies of 0.25 meV which corresponds to a spin resonance frequency of 60 GHz and require a DC magnetic field of 2.5 T. Simplifying a bit, 240GHz spin-resonance frequencies and 9T magnetic fields should be adequate for 12K operation and 1.4 THz with an humongous magnetic field are needed for 77 K. You get the drift…
Finally, I will briefly review hot-off-the-press results obtained here at U of T. For the first time we report (i) integration of qubits and electronics on the same die, (ii) strained SiGe hole-spin and strained Si electron-spin FDSOI qubits on the same die, and (iii) propose a monolithic processor architecture which allows for short, 10-20ps spin control pulses and high Rabi frequencies, fRabi, to compensate for short spin phase coherence lifetime. We also demonstrate that, at 2 K, MOSFETs and cascodes can be operated as QDs in the subthreshold region while behaving as classical MOSFETs and cascodes in the saturation region, suitable for qubits and mm-wave mixed-signal processing circuits, respectively.
If we still have holiday time left, I will go through a tutorial example of how we can derive the specification for the mm-wave spin manipulation and readout circuits starting from the Hamiltonian and the measured I-V characteristics of our SiGe hole-spin qubits. I may touch on the impact of minimum-size (18nmx6nmx80nm) MOSFET ofset voltage and process variation on qubit characteristics, on spin manipulation and readout architectural options (low phase-noise radar, OFDM radio, low-noise, broadband, ultra-high-gain TIAs), mm-wave switch impact and OFDM sub-carrier spacing on qubit crosstalk and isolation…Or maybe we should leave that for New Years’.
