Designing a Gamification Course for an Higher Education Audience
2017-05-26 13:30 - 15:30 (America/Toronto) | George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering, Room: ENG 288
Friday May 26, 2017 at 1:30 p.m. Dr. Sergio A. A. Freitas, Associate Professor in the Gama Engineering College (FGA) and Director of the Distance Education Center at the University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil, will be presenting “Designing a Gamification Course for an Higher Education Audience”.
Day & Time: Friday May 26, 2017
1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m
Speaker: Dr. Sergio A. A. Freitas
Associate Professor in the Gama Engineering College (FGA)
Director of the Distance Education Center
University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil
Location: Ryerson University
George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering
Room: ENG 288
245 Church Street
Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Organizers: IEEE Toronto (WIE, Measurement/Instrumentation-Robotics, Magnetics chapters), Computer Science Department of Ryerson University
Abstract: The gamification of activities in classrooms has become of great interest in higher education. Today’s students have a lot of experience in virtual environments and games, and researchers who have tested/used gamification in their classrooms have reported an increase in student engagement and retention.
This course presents a four step process to create a gamified course: Identifying the students’ profile (step 1) and the gamification object (step 2), creating the gamification project (step 3), and finally, implementing the gamification project (step 4).
At the end of the workshop it is expected that the participant will be able to design a basic gamified course.
Biography: Dr. Sergio A. A. Freitas is currently an Associate Professor in the Gama Engineering College (FGA) and Director of the Distance Education Center at the University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil. He is also the coordinator of research in the FGA Software Factory Laboratory. His current research projects focus on interdisciplinary studies and applications of learning methodologies on engineering undergraduate courses, and software engineering methodologies. Prof. Freitas areas of expertise include gamification, PBL, virtual learning environments in education and training, and software engineering methodologies. Dr. Freitas has coauthored journal publications, conference articles and book chapters in the aforementioned topics, and has coordinated and participated on many projects from various funding agencies CNPq, FAP-ES, FAP-DF, Cebraspe, and Brazilian Federal Ministries.

InAs Quantum Dot Micro-disk Lasers Grown on Exact (001) Si Emitting at Communication Wavelengths
2017-05-31 14:00 - 15:00 | Room BA 1220 40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Wednesday May 31, 2017 at 2:10 p.m. Kei May Lau, Fang Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology will be presenting “InAs Quantum Dot Micro-disk Lasers Grown on Exact (001) Si Emitting at Communication Wavelengths”.
Day & Time: Wednesday May 31, 2017
2:10 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Speaker: Kei May Lau
Fang Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor
Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Location: Room BA 1220
40 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Junho Jeong
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Photonics Society
Abstract: To support an energy-efficient optical interconnect technology enabled by silicon photonics, development of low-energy-consumption active devices and the corresponding integration technology is needed. Most communication wavelength lasers with excellent device performance have been grown on III-V substrates and bonded to silicon. For integration, there are considerable advantages in a technology that allow growth and fabrication of such lasers on III-V/ Si compliant substrates. Quantum dot (QD) active layers grown on lattice-matched substrates have already shown their capability for lasers with low-threshold densities and temperature-independent operation. In addition, the reduced sensitivity of QD to defects and their unique capability of filtering dislocations make them an ideal candidate as the gain medium of hetero-integrated III-V on Si optical sources. In this talk, I will discuss the growth of multi-stack QDs on compliant substrates by MOCVD. Fabrication and laser characteristics of whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) micro-disk lasers using the grown epitaxial structures will also be discussed. Initial demonstration was achieved using simple a colloidal lithography process in combination with dry and wet-etching. The micro-disk lasers were one to four microns in diameter, with single mode lasing at either 1.3 or 1.55 μm, depending on the barrier/cladding system. With smooth sidewalls and sufficient undercut by wet etching of the pedestal, the air-cladded MDs exhibit ultra-low thresholds of a few mW by optical pumping. Preliminary results of electrically-pumped micro-lasers will also be presented. These energy-efficient microlasers are excellent candidates for on-chip integration with silicon photonics.
Biography: Professor Kei May Lau is Fang Professor of Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, Houston, Texas. She was on the ECE faculty at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and initiated MOCVD, compound semiconductor materials and devices programs. Since the fall of 2000, she has been with the ECE Department at HKUST. She established the Photonics Technology Center for R&D effort in III-V materials, optoelectronic, high power, and high-speed devices. Professor Lau is a Fellow of the IEEE, and a recipient of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Awards for Women (FAW) Scientists and Engineers (1991) and Croucher Senior Research Fellowship (2008). She is an Editor of the IEEE EDL and Associate Editor of Applied Physics Letters.

Women in Robotics: Building Smart Robots with AI
2017-05-31 18:00 - 21:00 | To be Announced
Wednesday May 31, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. hear about the work of Dr. Sanja Fidler, Assistant Professor in Machine Learning and Computer Vision, University of Toronto and Dr. Inmar Givoni, Director of Machine Learning at Kindred Systems Inc., as part of “Women in Robotics: Building Smart Robots with AI”.
Day & Time: Wednesday May 31, 2017
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Speakers: Dr. Sanja Fidler, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Dr. Inmar Givoni, Director, Machine Learning, Kindred Systems Inc.
Location: To be Announced
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EBMS), IEEE Women in Engineering, Society of Women Engineers Toronto
RVSP: https://www.meetup.com/Get-Your-Bot-On-Robotics-Hackathon/events/240003715/
Agenda:
6:00 pm – Networking
6:30 pm – Welcome
6:40 pm – Speakers
7:30 pm – Panel Discussion – Women in Robotics
8:00 pm – Networking
9:00 pm – Close
Get Your Bot On!, its partners Society of Women Engineers Toronto, IEEE Toronto Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EBMS) and IEEE Women in Engineering are pleased to bring you the ‘Women in Robotics Speaker Series’. This series celebrates the work of women in the field of robotics and provides a forum for them to share their work and career with the community. We invite all community members to come and learn, participate in the discussion, and celebrate the contribution of women to this field.
Biography:
Dr. Sanja Fidler, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Dr. Sanja Fidler is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto. She is the recipient of the Amazon Academic Research Award (2017) and the NVIDIA Pioneer of AI Award (2016). Previously she was a Research Assistant Professor at TTI-Chicago a philanthropically endowed academic institute located in the campus of the University of Chicago. She completed her PhD in computer science at University of Ljubljana in 2010, and was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Toronto during 2011-2012.
In 2010 she visited UC Berkeley. She has served as a Program Chair of the 3DV conference, and as an Area Chair of CVPR, EMNLP, ICCV, ICLR, and NIPS. Together with Rich Zemel and Raquel Urtasun, she received the NVIDIA Pioneer of AI award.
Her main research interests are object detection, 3D scene understanding, and the intersection of language and vision.
You can find Dr. Fidler on the web at http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fidler/
Dr. Inmar Givoni, Director, Machine Learning, Kindred Systems Inc.
Dr. Inmar Givoni is the Director of Machine Learning at Kindred, where her team develops algorithms for machine intelligence, at the intersection of robotics and AI. Prior to that, she was the VP of Big Data at Kobo, where she led her team in applying machine learning and big data techniques to drive e-commerce, customer satisfaction, CRM, and personalization in the e-pubs and e-readers business. She first joined Kobo in 2013 as a senior research scientist working on content analysis, website optimization, and reading modelling among other things. Prior to that, Inmar was a member of technical staff at Altera (now Intel) where she worked on optimization algorithms for cutting-edge programmable logic devices.
Inmar received her PhD (Computer Science) in 2011 from the University of Toronto, specializing in machine learning, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge. During her graduate studies, she worked at Microsoft Research, applying machine learning approaches for e-commerce optimization for Bing, and for pose-estimation in the Kinect gaming system. She holds a BSc in computer science and computational biology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is an inventor of several patents and has authored numerous top-tier academic publications in the areas of machine learning, computer vision, and computational biology. She is a regular speaker at big data, analytics, and machine learning events, and is particularly interested in outreach activities for young women, encouraging them to choose technical career paths.
You can find Dr. Givoni on the web at http://www.inmarg.net/

Robust Beamforming Design: A New Approach
2017-06-07 14:00 - 15:00 | Room BA 2145. 40 St. George Street. Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Wednesday June 7, 2017 at 2:00 p.m. Mostafa Medra, PhD. Candidate, will be presenting “Robust Beamforming Design: A New Approach”.
Day & Time: Wednesday June 7, 2017
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Speaker: Mostafa Medra, PhD. Candidate
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
McMaster University
Location: Room BA 2145
40 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Eman Hammad
Event Link: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/45778
Abstract: Due to the increasing demand for higher data rates, spatial multiplexing received a lot of attention. The ability of a base station to do beamforming so that it can serve multiple users at the same time slot and frequency can provide significantly higher rates. When the channel state information is assumed to be perfectly known at the transmitter, designs as the zeroforcing, regularized zero-forcing and maximum ratio transmission can be applied. Those conventional methods are typically of low complexity. In reality the channel state information is estimated and estimation errors are inevitable. Many beamforming designs tried to incorporate the channel uncertainty model into the design problem. While those robust designs normally work better than the conventional designs, their computational complexity is usually much higher. Today we will provide a new approach to dealing with robust beamforming design that is of low- complexity and performs significantly better than both conventional and current robust methods.
Biography: Mostafa Medra (S’06-M’16) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees, both in Electrical Engineering, from Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt in 2009 and 2013, respectively. Since the fall of 2013, he has been working towards his Ph.D. degree at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He held a research position with the Spirtonic research team in 2012-2013, working on digital signal processing for non-destructive testing using ultrasonic waves. His current research interests include MIMO communications, optimization, wireless communications and signal processing.

RF Integrated Harmonic Oscillators in Silicon Technologies
2017-06-09 14:00 - 15:30 | Bahen Center of Information Technology, Room Number: B024
Friday June 9, 2017 at 2:10 p.m. IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and Professor at Lund University Pietro Andreani will be presenting “RF Integrated Harmonic Oscillators in Silicon Technologies”.
Event Media:
Event Slides
Recording of the Event
Day & Time: Friday June 9, 2017
2:10 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Pietro Andreani
Professor, Lund University
IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and Professor
Location: University of Toronto
40 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario Canada, M5S 2E4
Bahen Center of Information Technology
Room Number: B024
Free for everyone. Complimentary refreshments will be provided.
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Organizers: Solid State Circuits Society
Abstract: As one of the truly fundamental analog functions in any wireless/wireline application, the voltage-controlled oscillator keeps attracting a great deal of well-deserved attention. In this presentation, we will investigate the mechanisms of phase noise generation in harmonic oscillators, including some recently published general results, after which we will analyze both classical and emergent oscillator architectures, describing pros and cons for each. Various techniques to achieve a very wide oscillator tuning range will be illustrated as well.
Biography: Pietro Adreani received the M.S.E.E. degree from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree from Lund University, Sweden, in 1999. Between 2001 and 2007 he was chair professor at the Center for Physical Electronics, Technical University of Denmark. From 2005 to 2014 he had a 20% position as analog/RF designer at Ericsson AB in Lund, Sweden. Since 2007, he has been associate professor at the department of Electrical and Information Technology (EIT), Lund University, working analog/mixed-mode/RF IC design. He is also the head of the VINNOVA Center for System Design on Silicon, hosted by EIT. He has been a TPC member of ISSCC (2007-2012), is a TPC member of ESSCIRC (chair of the Frequency Generation subcommittee since 2012, TPC chair in 2014) and RFIC, and Associate Editor of JSSC. He has been an IEEE SSCS Distinguished Lecturer since 2017. He has authored numerous papers on harmonic oscillators and phase noise.

IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecture: Topology Preserving Maps: A Localization-Free Approach for 2-D and 3-D IoT Subnets
2017-06-13 14:00 - 16:00 | Room BA 2135, 40 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Tuesday June 13, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. Prof. Anura Jayasumana, Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society, will be presenting a distinguished lecture “Topology Preserving Maps: A Localization-Free Approach for 2-D and 3-D IoT Subnets”. Note refreshments begin at 2:00 p.m.
Day & Time: Tuesday June 13, 2017
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Refreshments
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Lecture
Speaker: Prof. Anura Jayasumana
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO 80523 USA
Location: Room BA 2135
40 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Eman Hammad
Event Link: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/45777
Abstract: Driven by higher potency and lower cost/size of devices capable of sensing, actuating, processing and communicating, the Internet of Things and of Everything promises to dramatically increase our ability to embed intelligence in the surroundings. Subnets of simple devices such as RFIDs and tiny sensors/actuators deployed in massive numbers in 2D and complex 3D spaces will be a key aspect of this emerging infrastructure. Most techniques for self-organization, routing and tracking in such networks rely on distances and localization in the physical domain. While geographic coordinates fit well with our intuitions into physical spaces, their use is not feasible in complex environments. Protocols based on geographical coordinates do not scale well to 3D either. We present a novel localization-free coordinate system, the Topology Coordinates (TC). Interestingly, geographic features such as voids and shapes are preserved in the resulting Topology-Preserving Maps (TPMs) of 2-D and 3-D networks. Ability to specify virtual cardinal directions and angles in networks is a radical change from the traditional approaches. A novel self-learning algorithm is presented to provide network awareness to individual nodes, a step toward large-scale evolving sensor networks. Application of TCs to social networking will be illustrated.
Biography: Anura Jayasumana is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Colorado State University, where he also holds a joint appointment in Computer Science. He is the Associate Director of Information Sciences & Technology Center at Colorado State. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. His research interests span high-speed networking to wireless sensor networking, and anomaly detection to DDoS defense. He has served extensively as a consultant to industry ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies. He received the B.Sc. degree from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Michigan State University. Prof. Jayasumana has supervised 20+ Ph.D. and 50+ M.S. students, holds two patents, and is the co-author over 250 papers. He is the recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Mountain States Council of the American Electronics Association.

Large-Scale Analytics and Machine Learning for Biomedical Data Types
2017-06-28 17:00 - 18:00 | Room ENG288, 245 Church St, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Wednesday June 28, 2017 at 5:00 p.m. Dr. Shiva Amiri, CEO of BioSymetrics Inc, will be presenting “Large-Scale Analytics and Machine Learning for Biomedical Data Types”.
Day & Time: Wednesday June 28, 2017
5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Shiva Amiri
CEO of BioSymetrics Inc
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Location: Room ENG288
Department of Computer Science
Ryerson University
245 Church St, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Contact: Alireza Sadeghian, Alex Dela Cruz
Organizers: Signals & Computational Intelligence Chapter, WIE
Abstract: The scale of data being generated in medicine and research can easily overwhelm typical analytic capabilities. This is particularly true with MRI/fMRI scanning, genomics data, streaming/wearables data in addition to other clinical data types, especially if in combination.
Challenges include 1) large file sizes often in heterogeneous formats 2) currently no standard Protocol exists for extraction of standardized characteristics, and 3) traditional methods for group-wise comparison can often result in spurious findings.
The talk will address these challenges by discussing customized processing pipelines built for multiple data types in biomedicine, which enable effective machine learning and other types of analytics on these datasets. This approach leverages the rapid model building capabilities of our real-time machine learning software to iterate through normalization parameters for each data type and disease class. In addition, this platform allows easy integration between the various medical data types (genome sequence, phenotypic, and metabolic data) allowing generation of more comprehensive disease classification models.
The ability to standardize and pre-process multiple types of biomedical data for machine learning, no matter the source and type, and effectively combine it with other data types is a powerful capability and holds promise for the future of diagnostics and precision medicine.
Biography: Shiva Amiri is the CEO of BioSymetrics Inc. where they are developing a unique real-time machine learning technology for the analysis of massive data in biomedicine. BioSymetrics specializes in providing optimized pipelines for complex data types and effective methods in the analytics of integrated data. Prior to BioSymetrics she was the Chief Product Officer at Real Time Data Solutions Inc., she has led the Informatics and Analytics team at the Ontario Brain Institute, where they developed Brain-CODE, a large-scale neuroinformatics platform across the province of Ontario. She was previously the head of the British High Commission’s Science and Innovation team in Canada. Shiva completed her Ph.D. in Computational Biochemistry at the University of Oxford and her undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Human Biology at the University of Toronto. Shiva is involved with several organisations including Let’s Talk Science and Shabeh Jomeh International.

Factory Tour of Northern Transformer In Vaughan
2017-06-30 14:00 - 16:00 | Northern Transformer Corporation, 245 McNaughton Rd E, Maple, ON L6A 4P5, Canada
Friday June 30, 2017 at 2:00 p.m. IEEE Toronto is proud to present a facility tour of Northern Transformer in Vaughan.
The IEEE Toronto Industry Relations Committee and Power & Energy Chapter would like to thank Northern Transformer for hosting this very successful tour and their amazing hospitality.
Day & Time: Friday June 30, 2017
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Northern Transformer
245 McNaughton Rd. E.
Maple, Ontario
Canada L6A 4P5
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/45343
Contact: Hugo Sanchez
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Industry Relations Committee, Power & Energy Chapter
Co-sponsored by Hugo Sanchez
Abstract: Northern Transformer, founded in Concord, Ontario in 1981, is a North American manufacturer of liquid filled transformers of the highest quality and reliability serving the North American market. Northern Transformer’s primary focus is the design and manufacture of liquid filled Power Transformers, Grounding Transformers and Specialty Transformers ranging from 500kVA to 115MVA with a maximum primary voltage of 160kV (650 BIL).
Attendees are encouraged to bring their own safety shoes and glasses to provide themselves with an additional layer of safety. However, the safety shoes and glasses are not mandatory to attend this tour.
Pictures from Event:

A framework for general purpose digital pathology image analysis, using machine learning methods to identify cancer subsets and immunotherapy biomarkers
2017-07-17 16:00 - 17:00 | Room ENG101, 245 Church St, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Monday July 17, 2017 at 4:00 p.m. Dr. Trevor McKee, STTARR Innovation Research Centre for Cancer Research, will be presenting “A framework for general purpose digital pathology image analysis, using machine learning methods to identify cancer subsets and immunotherapy biomarkers”.
Day & Time: Monday July 17, 2017
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Trevor McKee
STTARR – Innovation Research Centre for Cancer Research
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Location: Room ENG101
George Vari Engineering Building (intersection of Church & Gould)
Ryerson University
245 Church St, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Contact: Alireza Sadeghian, Alex Dela Cruz
Organizers: Signals & Computational Intelligence Chapter
Abstract: Histological staining, interpreted by a pathologist, has remained the gold standard for cancer diagnosis and staging for over 100 years. There is a growing need for better – and more personalized – cancer treatments, to provide oncologists with the tools they need to best treat their patients. The advent of “molecular medicine”, or targeted therapeutic strategies that rely on knowledge of particular mutations in a cancer in order to tailor treatment, has improved cancer therapy for many patients. This has led to the use of companion diagnostics, in which tumor biopsies are stained for a specific marker or set of markers, using immunohistochemical approaches. The information obtained from the degree of staining or spatial arrangement of stained cells within the tumor helps to identify tumor molecular subclasses that may benefit from such tailored therapeutic approaches.
The increase in the number of slides being stained for specific markers and used in diagnosis, along with the increased need for quantitative assessment of the degree of staining, number of cells, or spatial arrangement of cells within the tumor, has increased the volume and type of work that pathologists encounter in their diagnostic workflow. Our team works on the development of tools for quantitative digital pathology analysis that can benefit pathologists, by building and validating semi-automated algorithms for cellular quantification and intensity scoring of stained slides. We use machine learning methods to learn features that distinguish different morphological regions from pathologist annotations. These are then fed into a tissue segmentation and classification framework to break the tissue down into its components, either on the individual cell level, or the glandular level. Staining intensity is quantified following colour deconvolution of the individual stain components, and reporting metrics are designed, in close collaboration with pathologists and biological scientists, to identify the appropriate outputs for comparing between treatment groups or different cancer types.
The use of multiplexed digital pathology stains allows us to build a generalized analytical framework to perform “tissue cytometry”. This new technology can extract quantitative image-derived features in a reproducible and robust fashion, providing clinicians and biological scientists with tools to measure previously inaccessible phenomena, like measuring the hypoxic gradient directly within tumor sections, or comparing glucose uptake to lactic acid production in the same tumor sample. This approach establish the foundation for a bridge between traditional morphometric assessment of tumor biopsies, and the detailed spatially resolved chemical and molecular content maps of each tumor, providing an invaluable toolkit for the discovery of cancer molecular subtypes, and development of therapeutic interventions.
Biography: Dr. Trevor McKee received his Ph.D. in Biological Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, in the laboratory of Dr. Rakesh Jain of Harvard Medical School. During his graduate work, he pioneered the application of new imaging and analysis technologies to studying drug transport within tumors, and on developing methods to improve drug delivery. He also holds a Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering with a Biotechnology minor from the University at Buffalo. He moved to Toronto to continue postdoctoral work at the Ontario Cancer Institute, applying multi-modality imaging and quantitative image analysis methods to study preclinical cancer models. He has a successful track record of high-impact publications with a number of clinical and basic science collaborators, and has also collaborated with pharmaceutical companies on imaging-based preclinical testing of new compounds. He is currently Image Analysis Core Manager of the STTARR Innovation Centre, and manages a team of analysts to develop new algorithms for machine-learning powered image segmentation and quantification across a number of disease sites. His research interests lie in studying the tumor microenvironment, drug and oxygen delivery, and the development of tools for “tissue cytometry” – deriving complex biological and spatial relationships from tissue sections via computational image analysis methods.

Design Considerations for Power Efficient Continuous-Time Delta Sigma ADCs
2017-08-08 16:00 - 17:00 | Bahen Centre, room BA1230
Tuesday August 8, 2017 at 4:10 p.m. Dr. Shanthi Pavan, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, will be presenting “Design Considerations for Power Efficient Continuous-Time Delta Sigma ADCs”.
Recording of the Event: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wB8uI08dYvbmtnQjJoclF0VW8/view?usp=sharing
Day & Time: Tuesday August 8, 2017
4:10 p.m. – 5:10 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Shanthi Pavan
Professor of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Location: Bahen Centre, room BA1230
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Dustin Dunwell
Organizers: Solid-State Circuits Society
Abstract: Continuous-time Delta-Sigma Modulators (CTDSMs) are a compelling choice for the design of high resolution analog-to-digital converters. Many delta-sigma architectures have been published (and continue to be invented). This leaves the designer with a bewildering array of choices, many of which seem to pull in opposite directions. Further, it is often difficult to make a clear comparison of various architectures, as they have been designed for dissimilar specifications, by different design groups, and in different technology nodes. This talk examines various design alternatives for the design of power efficient single-loop continuous-time delta sigma converters.
Biography: Shanthi Pavan obtained the B.Tech degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 1995 and the Masters and Doctoral degrees from Columbia University, New York in 1997 and 1999 respectively. He is now with the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, where he is a Professor of Electrical Engineering. His research interests are in the areas of high-speed analog circuit design and signal processing. Dr.Pavan is the recipient of many awards for teaching and research, including the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Darlington Best Paper Award and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (from the Government of India). He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems: Part I – Regular Papers. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Recent Advances In Direct Torque and Flux Control of IPMSM Drives
2017-08-11 10:00 - 11:30 | Conference Room, 147 Dalhousie St, Toronto, M5B 2R2
Friday August 11, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. IEEE Toronto’s Power & Energy Chapter is honoured to invite you to a seminar by professor M. Nasir Uddin, Senior IEEE member and Professor at Lakehead University, “Recent Advances In Direct Torque and Flux Control of IPMSM Drives”.
Day & Time: Friday August 11, 2017
10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Speaker: M. Nasir Uddin
Senior IEEE member
Professor at Lakehead University
Location: Conference Room
147 Dalhousie St, Toronto, M5B 2R2
Contact: Omid Alizadeh
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Power & Energy Chapter
Abstract: With the advancements in magnetic materials and semiconductor technology, interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) is becoming more and more popular in industrial applications due to its high energy density, high power factor, low noise and high efficiency as compared to conventional AC motors. Conventional field oriented vector control (VC) techniques have been widely used for high performance motor drives for many years. As an alternative to VC scheme recently direct torque and flux control (DTFC) technique is developed which is faster and simpler than that of the VC scheme as DTFC doesn’t need any coordinate transformation, pulse width modulation and current regulators. The DTFC scheme utilizes hysteresis band comparators for both torque and flux controls. Both torque and flux are controlled simultaneously by the selection of appropriate voltage vectors from the inverter. However, conventional six-sector based DTFC suffers from high torque ripples due to discrete nature of control system and limited voltage vector selection from the inverter. Control techniques have been developed for hysteresis controllers to minimize the torque ripples but the six sectors still limits that improvement. Furthermore, in a conventional DTFC the reference air-gap flux is assumed constant at the rated value to make the control task easier. This produces erroneous results for high performance drives as the air-gap flux changes with the operating conditions and system disturbances. Moreover, if the reference air-gap flux is maintained constant, it is not possible to optimize the efficiency of the drive.
Therefore, this talk presents a novel eighteen-sector based DTFC scheme to achieve high dynamic performance with reduced torque ripples as compared to the conventional 6-sector based DTFC. In addition, a model based loss minimization algorithm is integrated with the proposed DTFC scheme in order to optimize the efficiency along with high dynamic performance. Eighteen sectors are developed to overcome the unbalanced voltage vector selection of conventional six-sector based system that minimizes the torque ripples. Further, a nonlinear controller with virtual torque and flux controls is also developed for IPMSM drive to minimize the drive torque ripples. The complete IPMSM drives incorporating the developed control techniques are successfully implemented in real-time using digital signal processor (DSP) board-DS1104 for laboratory 5-hp motor. The effectiveness of the proposed control techniques are verified in both simulation and experiment at different operating conditions. It is found that the nonlinear controller based IPMSM drive provides the best performance in terms of torque ripples among all the DTFC schemes. The results show that the proposed nonlinear/18-sector based DTFC scheme would have the potentiality to apply for real-time industrial drives.
Biography: M. Nasir Uddin received the B.Sc. and M. Sc. degrees both in electrical & electronic engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), Canada in 1993, 1996, and 2000, respectively.
He has been serving as a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Lakehead University (LU), Thunder Bay, ON, Canada since August 2001. He also served as a visiting Prof. at Univ. of Malaya (2013, 2012, 2011), Tokyo University of Science (2010), Japan and North South University (2006), Dhaka, Bangladesh. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of South Alabama, USA from January 2001 to May 2001, an Assistant Professor from 1996 to 1997 and a lecturer from 1994 to 1996 at BUET. He possesses more than 21 years of teaching experience and has authored/coauthored over 200 papers in international journals (39 in IEEE Transactions) and conferences.
Prof. Uddin is a registered professional engineer in the province of Ontario, Canada. Currently, he is serving as an Executive Board Member of IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS) and Chair of IEEE-IAS-Manufacturing Systems Development and Applications Department. He also served as one of the Technical Program Committee Chairs for IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Expo (ECCE) 2015 at Montreal, Canada. He was the Technical Committee Chair for the IEEE-IAS [Industrial Automation and Control Committee (IACC)] Annual Meetings in 2011 (Orlando) and 2012 (Las Vegas). He served as Papers Review Chair (2009–2010 and 2013–2014) of the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications (IACC). Earlier he served IEEE IAS IACC for 9 years in different capacities. Due to his outstanding contributions IEEE IAS IACC recognized him with IEEE IAS Service Award 2015. He also received LU Distinguished Researcher Award 2010. He was the recipient of several Prize Paper Awards from IEEE IAS IACC and both 2004 Contributions to Research and Contributions to Teaching Awards from LU. His research interests include power electronics, renewable energy, motor drives, and intelligent controller applications.

Response of voltage source HVDC systems to DC-side faults, HVDC fault characterisation and DC protection options
2017-08-25 14:00 - 15:00 | Bahen Centre, Room BA 7180, 40 St George St, Toronto, M5S 2E4
Friday August 25, 2017 at 2:00 p.m. Prof. Stephen Finney of University of Edinburgh School of Engineering, will be presenting “Response of voltage source HVDC systems to DC-side faults, HVDC fault characterisation and DC protection options”.
Day & Time: Friday August 25, 2017
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Speaker: Prof. Stephen Finney
University of Edinburgh School of Engineering
Location: Bahen Centre, Room BA 7180
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Sanaz Kanani
Organizers: IAS & PELS Joint Chapter
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/meeting_registration/register/45918
Agenda: 2:00 pm: Light Refreshment
2:10-2:50 pm: Presentation (40min)
2:50 pm – Q&A (20min)
Abstract: The emergence of high performance, high voltage, voltage source converters (VSC) such as the modular multi-level converter (MMC ) has resulted in increased deployment of voltage source HVDC transmission both for interconnection of AC networks and integration of remote and offshore renewable energy resources. The improved functionality and suitability for networked operation make VSC-HVDC attractive for future power networks. However, the low impedance of voltage source HVDC makes is highly susceptible dc faults, resulting in rapid collapse of system voltage and extreme over currents. For the majority of converter topologies, fault current cannot be controlled by the converter switching with the potential for high current flows in the anti-parallel diodes. Protection devices are, therefore, required to operate with sufficient speed to avoid device failure. In current point-point connections this may be achieved through shunt protection of converter diodes coupled with AC side fault clearance which must be activated at all VSC terminals.
There is growing interest in the exploitation of VSC-HVDC in multi-terminal configurations, with a number of large scale pilot projects. (For example the Zhoushan 5 terminal scheme).
Conductor faults in such VSC-HVDC networks will result in rapid network-wide voltage collapse and over currents. In these cases the application of proven point-point protection with AC fault clearance, whilst effective, will result in the loss of power flows at all converter stations. This may be avoided by the use of DC circuit breakers (DCCB), however implementation of such circuit breakers presents challenging compromises in speed, complexity and losses.
Biography: Prof. Stephen Jon Finney graduated with a Master’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Loughborough University in 1988. He worked for the (U.K) Electricity Council research Centre Laboratories before joining the Power Electronics research team at Heriot-Watt University in 1990, obtaining his PhD in 1994. In 2005 he transferred to the University of Strathclyde where he contributed to the formation of the power electronics, drives and energy conversion group. This research group now includes 4 academic staff, five postdoctoral research fellows and 14 postgraduate researchers. The group’s research spans power semiconductor devices, circuits and system level applications. His work in the area of power electronics has resulted in the supervision 15 PhD completions and publication of over 150 research papers with over 30 in IEEE Transactions.
During his time at Strathclyde Professor Finney has been responsible for developing research into the application of power electronic systems energy systems. Work in this field includes HVDC transmission, Multi-terminal HVDC, Renewable generator interface and Energy collection architectures. The group recently completed work on the European Union funded ‘Twenties’ program, a multi-partner project which investigated the use of HVDC for the integration of large scale wind generation. This work will be extended through a number of successor projects focusing on overcoming technical barriers to HVDC networks offshore wind integration.
Besides HVDC Professor Finney’s team is involved in a broad range of Power Electronics research which include work on High Voltage IGBT Modules and advanced gate drives and U.K China Collaboration on Power Electronic Devices for the Network Integration of Electric Vehicles.

On System-Level Analysis & Design of Cellular Networks: The Magic of Stochastic Geometry
2017-09-08 10:00 - 11:00 | Room ENG288, George Vari Engineering Building, 245 Church St, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Friday September 8, 2017 at 10:00 a.m. Professor Marco Di Renzo from Paris-Saclay University/CNRS, will be presenting “On System-Level Analysis & Design of Cellular Networks: The Magic of Stochastic Geometry”.
Day & Time: Friday September 8, 2017
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Speaker: Professor Marco Di Renzo
Paris-Saclay University/CNRS, France
Location: Room ENG288
George Vari Engineering Building (Intersection of Church & Gould)
Ryerson University
245 Church St, Toronto, M5B 1Z4
Contact: Alireza Sadeghian, Alex Dela Cruz
Organizers: Signals & Computational Intelligence Chapter
Abstract: This talk is aimed to provide a comprehensive crash course on the critical and essential importance of spatial models for an accurate system-level analysis and optimization of emerging 5G ultra-dense and heterogeneous cellular networks. Due to the increased heterogeneity and deployment density, new flexible and scalable approaches for modeling, simulating, analyzing and optimizing cellular networks are needed. Recently, a new approach has been proposed: it is based on the theory of point processes and it leverages tools from stochastic geometry for tractable system-level modeling, performance evaluation and optimization. The potential of stochastic geometry for modeling and analyzing cellular networks will be investigated for application to several emerging case studies, including massive MIMO, mmWave communication, and wireless power transfer. In addition, the accuracy of this emerging abstraction for modeling cellular networks will be experimentally validated by using base station locations and building footprints from two publicly available databases in the United Kingdom (OFCOM and Ordnance Survey). This topic is highly relevant to graduate students and researchers from academia and industry, who are highly interested in understanding the potential of a variety of candidate communication technologies for 5G networks.
Biography: Marco Di Renzo received the “Laurea” and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of L’Aquila, Italy, in 2003 and 2007, respectively. In October 2013, he received the Doctor of Science degree from the University Paris-Sud, France. Since 2010, he has been a “Chargé de Recherche Titulaire” CNRS (CNRS Associate Professor) in the Laboratory of Signals and Systems of Paris-Saclay University – CNRS, CentraleSupélec, Univ Paris Sud, France. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, a Visiting Professor at the University of L’Aquila, Italy, and a co-founder of the university spin-off company WEST Aquila s.r.l., Italy. He serves as the Associate Editor-in-Chief of IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, and as an Editor of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS and IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and IEEE Communications Society. He is a recipient of several awards, and a frequent tutorial and invited speaker at IEEE conferences.

Engineering Employment Events
2017-09-14 11:00 - 2017-09-30 17:00
OSPE will be running Engineering Employment Events on September 14, 2017 and September 30, 2017. The September 14th E3 is in partnership with OACETT and will focus on recent grads, associates and individuals with EIT, P.Eng., C.E.T. and C.Tech. designations. The September 30th E3 is in partnership with Transport Canada and will focus on recent grads, associates and individuals with EIT and P.Eng. designations.
Thursday September 14, 2017 Session
Registration Link: https://www.ospe.on.ca/events#521/E3-EMP-0917
Time: 11:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.
Location: Parkview Manor, 55 Barber Greene Rd, Toronto.
Saturday September 30, 2017 Session
Registration Link: https://www.ospe.on.ca/events#911/TCE3-JSK-0930
Time: 9:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.
Location: Corporate Event Centre at CHSI – 5110 Creekbank Road, Mississauga, Ontario

Canadian Manufacturing Technology Show 2017
2017-09-25 - 2017-09-28 | The International Centre, Mississauga (Toronto), ON, Canada
September 25-28, 2017, the national Canadian Manufacturing Technology Show 2017 offers a diverse mix of live technology on display, with unrivaled keynotes, panel discussions and technical sessions. CMTS includes several signature networking events where the industry comes together to connect, share and celebrate manufacturing.
Day & Time: September 25-28, 2017
September 25: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
September 26: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
September 27: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
September 28: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Location: The International Centre
Mississauga (Toronto), ON, Canada
Register to Attend: http://cmts.ca/

Molecular Communication in Mobile Systems
2017-09-26 15:00 - 16:00 | Room BA 2165, 40 St George St, Toronto, M5S 2E4
Tuesday September 26, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. Professor Robert Schober, Institute for Digital Communications, will be presenting “Molecular Communication in Mobile Systems”.
Day & Time: Tuesday September 26, 2017
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Speaker: Professor Robert Schober
Institute for Digital Communications
Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Location: Room BA 2165
Bahen Centre for Information Technology
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Arin Minasian
Organizers: IEEE Communications Society
Event Link: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/47028
Abstract: Molecular communication (MC) is an emerging research area offering many interesting and challenging new research problems for communication engineers, biologists, chemists, and physicists. MC is widely considered to be an attractive option for communication between nanodevices such as (possibly artificial) cells and nanosensors. Possible applications of the resulting nanonetworks include targeted drug delivery, health monitoring, environmental monitoring, and “bottom-up” manufacturing.
In this talk, we give first a brief introduction to MC and nanonetworking. The main focus of the talk is on stochastic channel modelling for mobile MC systems where the transmitter and/or receiver are not fixed but move subject to diffusion and flow. Metrics such as the mean, autocorrelation function, and probability density function of the channel impulse response will be investigated and the notion of coherence time in MC is introduced. Subsequently, the implications of time-variant channels for MC system design are studied, and corresponding channel estimation and non-coherent detection schemes are developed. The talk concludes with a summary of potential topics for future work.
Biography: Robert Schober (S’98, M’01, SM’08, F’10) was born in Neuendettelsau, Germany, in 1971. He received the Diplom (Univ.) and the Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Friedrich-AlexanderUniversity of Erlangen-Nurnberg (FAU), Germany, in 1997 and 2000, respectively. From May 2001 to April 2002 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, Canada, sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). From 2002-2011, he was a Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada. Since January 2012 he is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor and the Chair for Digital Communication at FAU. His research interests fall into the broad areas of Communication Theory, Wireless Communications, and Statistical Signal Processing.
Dr. Schober received several awards for his work including the 2002 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Award of the German Science Foundation (DFG), the 2004 Innovations Award of the Vodafone Foundation for Research in Mobile Communications, the 2006 UBC Killam Research Prize, the 2007 Wilhelm Friedrich Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the 2008 Charles McDowell Award for Excellence in Research from UBC, a 2011 Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, and a 2012 NSERC E.W.R. Stacie Fellowship. In addition, he received several best paper awards. Dr. Schober is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada. From 2012-2015 he served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Communications. He is currently the Chair of the Steering Committee of the new Communication Society (ComSoc) journal IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multiscale Communication and serves on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the IEEE. Furthermore, he is a Member-at-Large of the Board of Governors and a Distinguished Lecturer of ComSoc.

Molecular Bringing Precision to Measurements for Millimeter-wave 5G Wireless: Conducted and free-field modulated-signal measurements
2017-09-27 12:00 - 13:00 | Room BA 4287, 40 St George St, Toronto M5S 2E4
Wednesday September 27, 2017 at 12:00 p.m. Dr. Kate A. Remley from Wireless Systems Group, NIST, will be presenting “Molecular Bringing Precision to Measurements for Millimeter-wave 5G Wireless: Conducted and free-field modulated-signal measurements”.
Day & Time: Wednesday September 27, 2017
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. (Light lunch will be served)
Speaker: Dr. Kate A. Remley
Wireless Systems Group, NIST
Location: Room BA 4287
Bahen Centre for Information Technology
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Contact: Arin Minasian
Organizers: IEEE Communications Society
Event Link: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/47045
Abstract: At millimeter-wave frequencies and for wide modulation bandwidths, the hardware performance of both modulated-signal sources and vector receivers becomes increasingly nonideal. These nonidealities make test and validation of devices, circuits and systems not only more important, but also more difficult. This is especially true because future systems will likely push the limits of modulation complexity and bandwidth to increase data throughput. We will discuss calibration and measurement techniques to correct millimeter-wave modulated-signal measurements illustrating that traditional assumptions at microwave frequencies may not be adequate at millimeter-wave frequencies.
Biography: Kate A. Remley (S’92-M’99-SM’06-F’13) was born in Ann Arbor, MI. She received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oregon State University, Corvallis, in 1999. From 1983 to 1992, she was a Broadcast Engineer in Eugene, OR, serving as Chief Engineer of an AM/FM broadcast station from 1989-1991. In 1999, she joined the RF Technology Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO, as an Electronics Engineer. She is currently the leader of the Metrology for Wireless Systems Group at NIST, where her research activities include development of calibrated measurements for microwave and millimeter-wave wireless systems, characterizing the link between nonlinear circuits and system performance, and developing standardized test methods for RF equipment used by the public-safety community.
Dr. Remley was the recipient of the Department of Commerce Bronze and Silver Medals, an ARFTG Best Paper Award, and is a member of the Oregon State University Academy of Distinguished Engineers. She was the Chair of the MTT-11 Technical Committee on Microwave Measurements from 2008 – 2010 and the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Microwave Magazine from 2009 – 2011, and is the Chair of the MTT Fellow Nominating Committee.

An Introduction to Free-Field Measurements of Wireless Devices in Reverberation Chambers
2017-09-27 16:00 - 17:00 | University College, 15 King’s College Circle, Toronto, Ontario. Room: 179
Wednesday September 27, 2017 at 4:00 p.m. Dr. Kate A. Remley, leader of the Metrology for Wireless Systems Group at NIST, will be presenting “An Introduction to Free-Field Measurements of Wireless Devices in Reverberation Chambers”.
Day & Time: Wednesday September 27, 2017
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Kate A. Remley
Metrology for Wireless Systems Group at NIST
Location: University College
15 King’s College Circle
Toronto, Ontario
Room: 179
Contact: George V. Eleftheriades
Organizers: EM & Radiation Chapter, IEEE Toronto
Abstract: When the antenna is integrated into the body of a wireless device, as it is for cell phones and many other portable devices, performance testing is typically done under free-field conditions. In this overview presentation, we will discuss free-field characterization of some key wireless-device parameters by use of reverberation chambers. We will discuss recent research and some of the issues related to the use of these chambers for testing devices that transmit modulated signals.
Biography: Kate A. Remley (S’92-M’99-SM’06-F’13) was born in Ann Arbor, MI. She received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oregon State University, Corvallis, in 1999. From 1983 to 1992, she was a Broadcast Engineer in Eugene, OR, serving as Chief Engineer of an AM/FM broadcast station from 1989-1991. In 1999, she joined the RF Technology Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Boulder, CO, as an Electronics Engineer. She is currently the leader of the Metrology for Wireless Systems Group at NIST, where her research activities include development of calibrated measurements for microwave and millimeter-wave wireless systems, characterizing the link between nonlinear circuits and system performance, and developing standardized test methods for RF equipment used by the public-safety community.
Dr. Remley was the recipient of the Department of Commerce Bronze and Silver Medals, an ARFTG Best Paper Award, and is a member of the Oregon State University Academy of Distinguished Engineers. She was the Chair of the MTT-11 Technical Committee on Microwave Measurements from 2008 – 2010 and the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Microwave Magazine from 2009 – 2011, and is the Chair of the MTT Fellow Nominating Committee.

Thales Project Arduino Competition
2017-10-10 12:00 - 17:00 | Ryerson University, Toronto, ON
You probably know all about the Arduino open-source electronics prototyping platform already. Maybe you’ve used one before or perhaps you’re just interested in getting your hands on one to see just how innovative you can be. Now’s your chance!
Register for the Arduino Workshop and you could soon be exploring the powerful capabilities of Arduino, with a Thales expert on hand to show you the ropes, and the chance to win some great prizes including a fitbit altaHR and the opportunity to visit a Thales Research Centre in one of the participating regions.
Day & Time: Tuesday October 10, 2017
12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Location: Ryerson University
Toronto, ON
Contact: Maryam Davoudpour
Organizers: IEEE Toronto WIE & Instrumentation/Measurement Chapter, Girls on the Move
Register: https://www.thalesarduino.com/arduino

Industrial Relations and Toronto ComSoc Chapter: Site Visit G&W/Survalent
2017-10-12 09:30 - 11:30 | 7965 Heritage Rd, Brampton, ON L6Y 0B3
Note: This event has been rescheduled from the original date. The new day and time is Thursday, October 12, 2017.
IEEE Toronto is thrilled to present a tour of the Manufacturing Facility of G&W Canada and Survalent in Brampton. This event is a joint event between IEEE Toronto Industrial Relations and Toronto ComSoc Chapter.
Day & Time: Thursday, October 12, 2017
9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Location: 7965 Heritage Rd, Brampton, ON L6Y 0B3
Contact: Maryam Alsomahi
Organizers: Industrial Relations, Communication Society Chapter
RVSP: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/47131
Abstract: G&W Electric has been a global supplier of electric power equipment since 1905. Our product offerings include overhead and underground distribution switches, Lazer® Automation solutions, reclosers, distribution and transmission cable accessories, and current limiting system protection devices. Combining cutting-edge design and manufacturing technology with world-class ISO certified quality systems; G&W specializes in custom solutions to meet specific customer requirements.
So whether you are searching for cable terminations and joints, simple manual switching, automation for smart grid applications, or the latest in renewable energy solutions, join G&W for a tour of their SF6 and Solid Dielectric manufacturing process.
Fees & Notes:
$10 for non-IEEE members and free for IEEE members.
1. Attendees are required to bring their own safety shoes and glasses. However, G&W can loan glasses and toe caps for those who don’t have them. For safety purposes, attendees are not allowed to wear shorts or open shoes.
2. Please add a note if you are able to drive/carpool or if you need a ride.

Cyber Security of the Digital Substation: Hands-on Training
2017-10-21 10:00 - 2017-10-22 16:00 | Room BA 7180, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St George St
IEEE Toronto Industrial Relationships, Communication Society chapter and University of Toronto Electrical Engineering Department are excited to invite all interested to a two-days hands-on workshop on:
Cyber Security of the Digital Substation: Hands-on Training
Facilitated by Steel McCreery, Integration Application Specialist II Communications, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
Day & Time: Saturday & Sunday, October 21-22, 2017
4-hour workshop (10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.) on Saturday
6-hour workshop (9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.) on Sunday
Location: Room BA 7180
Bahen Centre for Information Technology
40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4
Cost: $10.00 + Tax (event is of limited capacity to 24 seats because of equipment limitations).
Register at https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/47504.
Requirements: Participants should bring their own laptop that has a 10/100 Base T Ethernet port and have administrator rights for their computer to configure the Ethernet port IP address.
Workshop Agenda: Saturday Oct. 21 (10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.) – Ethernet Fundamentals
This four hour session will focus on the practical aspects of implementing Ethernet-based LANs within the substation.
Topics include:
– OSI model
– Ethernet media and topologies commonly used within substations
– Ethernet hub operation and CSMA/CD
– Switch learning and operation
– SEL-2730M Managed 24-Port Ethernet Switch hardware overview and ordering options
– Hands-on lab exercises using the SEL-2730M Switches include:
– Login and account management
– Configuration of QoS (VLANs and priority)
– Configuration and testing of Rapid Spanning Tree protocol (RSTP)
– Time permitting the class will have a brief overview of the routing process: ( IPv4 addressing , DHCP , DNS, ARP, routing process)
Sunday Oct. 22 (9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.) – Cyber security
In this session, participants will:
– Discover that sensible cybersecurity is not difficult.
– Learn how to set up a virtual private network (VPN) to provide confidential communications and maintain data integrity.
– Understand the importance of authentication.
– Configure firewall rules to prevent malicious traffic from entering or exiting private networks to protect cyber assets.
– Understand the role of syslog to report and collect device events.
– Learn the methods to secure both Ethernet and wireless communications.
Trainer Biography: Steel McCreery
Integration Application Specialist II Communications with Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories since May 2012. McCreery provides communications and automation applications engineering support to sales, consultants, utility and industrial customers in addition to SEL’s internal Engineering Services team.
Professional Experience Summary:
– Professional with thirty three years of applications experience in the areas of data communication, automation and training.
– Developed national and international training centres for GE Multilin, Siemens and Omron.
– The Sales Applications Engineer for Data Communications, Automation and Networking products.
– Extensive experience in the design and commissioning of control systems and communication networks for industrial and electrical power utility applications.

IEEE Toronto Section Annual General Meeting 2017
2017-10-21 18:30 - 22:00 | 21 Old Mill Rd, Toronto, ON, Canada
All members, along with their guest, are invited to attend the IEEE Toronto Section Annual General Meeting (AGM). The AGM is an occasion to celebrate the achievements of the Toronto Section, made possible by its dedicated volunteers and members.
This year, the AGM will also include elections for a new set of Section Officers, to serve in 2018 – 2019.
Date: Saturday, October 21, 2017
Time: 6:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
RVSP: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/47392
Cost: Life members (inc. one guest): $50.00 CAD. Other members (inc. one guest): $70.00 CAD.
Contact our section secretary, Ali Nabavi for details.
Location: 21 Old Mill Rd, Toronto, ON, Canada
Building: Brûlé C
Please notice the following:
• Dress code is Elegant Casual.
• Seats are limited; RSVP is mandatory.
We look forward to seeing you all on October 21, 2017!

History of Technological Innovation: The First Revolution in Information Technology
2017-10-26 17:30 - 19:30 | Sidney Smith Hall, Room 1074, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S 3G3
Thursday October 26, 2017 at 5:30 p.m. Ken Bousfield, Partner at Bereskin & Parr LLP, will be presenting “History of Technological Innovation: The First Revolution in Information Technology”.
Day & Time: Thursday October 26, 2017
5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Speaker: Ken Bousfield, B.A.Sc., LL.B
Partner at Bereskin & Parr LLP
Location: Sidney Smith Hall, Room 1074
University of Toronto
100 St. George Street, Toronto, M5S 3G3
Contact: Emanuel Istrate
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Engineering and Human Environment Chapter in collaboration with the Impact Centre at the University of Toronto
Abstract: Using the invention of the printing press as a starting point, this fast-paced presentation traces technological developments in the spread of information, and the larger economic consequences flowing from that development.
More than five hundred years ago, an inventor in the information technology sector saw a business opportunity in an unmet economic need. The IT start-up he founded became an agent of profound change. The obstacles encountered by the inventor continue to face IT start-up ventures today.
The rapid spread of printing transformed the process of accumulation, organisation, preservation and dissemination of knowledge. It had, and still has, effects on every field of human endeavour, whether in commerce, education, science and engineering, or arts and literature. This presentation discusses the pre-existing technology, the change in technology, the further changes driven by the original innovation, and the effects of that technological change.
Join us for an entertaining, thought-provoking presentation that identifies important lessons for innovation in a knowledge-based society.
Biography: Ken Bousfield, P.Eng., LL.B (Toronto); B.A. Sc. (Mech. Eng., Waterloo) is a partner at Bereskin & Parr, a firm specializing in Intellectual Property Law. He has been a patent lawyer for 23 years. He has had a life-long interest in the history of technological innovation.

Manufacturing Facility Tour of SIEMENS RuggedCom in Vaughan
2017-11-02 09:30 - 11:30 | 300 Applewood Crescent, Vaughan, ON L4K, Canada
IEEE Toronto and SIEMENS Canada are proud to present a manufacturing facility tour of SIEMENS RuggedCom in Vaughan.
Day & Time: Thursday, November 2, 2017
9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Location: 300 Applewood Crescent, Vaughan
ON L4K 4E5, Canada
Contact: Omid Alizadeh
Organizers: IEEE Toronto’s Siemens and Industry Relations Committees and Power & Energy Chapter.
RVSP: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/47702
* Please register to reserve your spot and ensure to include your affiliation in the ‘Special Request’ box.
Cost: No charge!
Abstract: RuggedCom designs and manufactures rugged communications networks for mission critical applications in harsh environments. RuggedCom is a “Center of Excellence” for Industrial Switches and Routers for harsh environments and critical infrastructure (based on IEC61850). Our products perform reliably in virtually all types of mission-critical networks – in substation automation, self-healing power grids and “smart grid” systems, in intelligent transportation systems for traffic management and railway control systems, as well as in process control and manufacturing automation systems used across multiple industrial sectors.
IEEE Toronto’s Industry Relations Committee and Power & Energy Chapter would like to thank Siemens RuggedCom for hosting this very successful tour and their amazing hospitality.

Energy Poverty and Sustainable Solar
2017-11-06 18:00 - 21:00 | Room 202, Galbraith Building, 35 St George St, Toronto.
Monday November 6, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. Lisa Oelke and Tanya Deer from Solar Majengo will be presenting “Energy Poverty and Sustainable Solar”.
Day & Time: Monday November 6, 2017
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Speaker: Lisa Oelke
Solar Majengo in Lights & Electricity Program Manager
Former Manager Marketing and Business Development hb Solar Canada
Currently Regional Sales Manager for Almita Piling
Tanya Deer
President of Relsol Inc.
Technical Project Manager for Solar Majengo in Lights & Electricity
Location: Room 202, Galbraith Building
35 St George St, Toronto
Contact: Vasily Grigorovsky
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Young Professionals
Register: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/47693
Abstract: This talk illustrates a model for creating sustainable energy projects in developing countries, utilizing the presenter’s recent experience with an off-grid solar installation in Africa.
Majengo Children’s Home, Tanzania, East Africa is the site of a 6.25 kilowatt off-grid rooftop solar system.
The presenters will draw on their experience of designing a solar system for sub-Saharan Africa to supply the electrical load requirements for 85 orphaned children and 20 staff. They will touch on the 2.5-year process of raising the funds, sourcing a partner in Tanzania to supply the components, and maximizing local involvement.
The financing model used for this project will be explored in addition to the methods currently being used in other projects to enhance sustainable solar projects in communities at risk in both the developing world and within our own Indigenous communities.
Biography: Ms. Oelke brings international experience in her present role as Manager Marketing and Business Development for hb solar Canada having lived in Canada, France and Jamaica and travelled extensively throughout her career. Her work with at risk teens in Jamaica W.I. in 2004 and volunteering with the Majengo Children’s Home, Tanzania in 2013, were the inspiration for the Solar Majengo project. Ms. Oelke is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario. This is her eighth year in the solar industry. In August she will travel to Iqaluit to do research in identifying a future not for profit solar project in Nunavut.
Having established the first photovoltaic certification lab in Canada, Ms. Deer is a veteran of the solar industry, with experience spanning from testing products to qualifying solar systems of various sizes. Ms. Deer was responsible for the technical aspects of the Majengo Children’s Home Off-grid PV System, including interacting with suppliers and on-site personnel for the design, component sourcing, and installation of the off-grid system. She is heavily involved with standards development to increase the reliability of PV systems, including those for off-grid and rural applications.

Women in Robotics: Roboticist Dr. AJung Moon, Open Roboethics Institute
2017-11-07 18:30 - 21:00 | Normative (2nd Floor), 91 Oxford Street, Toronto, ON
Join us on November 7 to hear about the work of Dr. AJung Moon, founder and CEO of Generation R, and founder and Director of the Open Roboethics Institute (ORI). Dr. Moon has been speaking and advising internationally on roboethics issues since 2012. Her company, Generation R is the first consulting firm in the world to deliver ethics assessments of predictive algorithms for today’s businesses.
Come and hear about her experiences working with the private sector, helping them assess their ethical risk as they implement these advanced technologies.
Day & Time: Tuesday, November 7th, 2017
6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. AJung Moon
Founder and CEO of Generation R
Founder and Director of the Open Roboethics Institute (ORI)
Location: Normative (2nd Floor)
91 Oxford Street, Toronto, ON
RVSP: https://www.meetup.com/Get-Your-Bot-On-Robotics-Hackathon/events/244379955/?_cookie-check=httj7lc1eoP6sV0S
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Organizer: IEEE Women in Engineering, Instrumentation/Robotics, Get Your Bot On! and more.
Abstract: Ethics is increasingly becoming a buzz word in AI and robotics. Machine learning algorithms and robotics systems have been developed and used for years, but never before has the discussion about ethics of the technologies been getting so much attention. What is all this AI ethics and roboethics discussion all about? What ethical risks do you and your organization end up (often unknowingly) taking on as you increasingly implement machine autonomy into your organization? Most importantly, what can you do about them? Small and large companies today are struggling to innovate their operations with data-driven, predictive algorithms without the full understanding of what undesirable effects these algorithms can have on their organization and our society. As applications of robotics extend to areas outside of industrial environments, roboticists are increasingly noticing the importance for designers and policy makers to address the question of “What should a robot do?” It turns out that discussions about ethics becomes quite sexy when mixed with autonomous, intelligent technologies.
Dr. Moon will share relevant studies and examples (from right here in Canada!) to paint a broad landscape of the fascinating world of AI ethics and roboethics.
Note: Dr. Moon will also give an academic talk at the University of Toronto Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics on Nov 7 at 5pm where she will present technical and non-technical approaches to integrating ethics in the design of technological systems.
Agenda:
6:30 pm – Networking
7:00 pm – Speaker and Q & A
8:00 pm – Networking
9:00 pm – Close
Biography: Dr. AJung Moon is a roboticist on a mission to make ethics a core part of AI and robotics technologies. She is a founder and CEO of Generation R, the first consulting firm in the world to deliver ethics assessment of predictive algorithms for today’s businesses. She is also a founder and Director of the Open Roboethics Institute (ORI), an international think tank that has been spearheading open discussions on roboethics topics since 2012. She holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (Vanier Scholar) from the University of British Columbia with a specialization in the design of human-inspired interactive robot behaviours and roboethics.
She advises numerous national and international organizations on ethical and societal implications of AI and robotics, including the OECD, ICRC, and the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons. She serves on the Executive Committee of The IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in AI and Autonomous Systems and served as a founder and co-chair of the IEEE Global Initiative’s committee on embedding values into autonomous intelligent systems. She is a co-chair of the Canadian Robotics Strategy, and a panelist of the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons (IPRAW). Now she is excited to be on the program committee of the new, AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society.

Fingerprints of Black-Box Optimization in Science and Engineering
2017-11-13 15:00 - 17:00 | Room ENG 210, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3
Monday November 13, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan will be presenting “Fingerprints of Black-Box Optimization in Science and Engineering”.
Day & Time: Monday November 13, 2017
3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan
Location: Room ENG 210
George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre
245 Church Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1Z4
Contact: Mehrdad Tirandazian
Organizers: IEEE Toronto Systems Chapter
Abstract: In this research seminar, the speaker will discuss his recent optimization research works and accomplishments, categorized in the following two main groups of contributions: theoretical/developmental and practical. The first group will cover his contributions in large-scale optimization, opposition-based computation, many-objective optimization, image-based large-scale visualization and interaction, incremental cooperative coevolution, micro-differential evolution, 3D visualization of many-objective Pareto-front, innovation, preserving constraint handling, decision making in high-dimensional objective space, and multi-modal optimization. In the practical category, the speaker will explain several real-world applications to demonstrate contributions of optimization in medical image processing, renewable energy systems, forensic science, vibration, scheduling, and wireless sensors network. In this talk, the essential role of complex black-box optimization in since and engineering will be highlighted. This seminar would be beneficial for faculty members and students who conduct “research in optimization” or “optimization in research”.
Biography: Dr. Shahryar Rahnamayan received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees both with honors in software engineering. In 2007, he received his Ph.D. degree in the field of evolutionary computation from the University of Waterloo (UW), Canada. Since 2008, he is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering, University of Ontario Institute of Technology. He is a faculty member of the BEACON Center (an NSF center for study of evolution in action) since 2014; and also adjunct professor at the Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, since 2009. Dr. Rahnamayan was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Engineering, Simon Fraser University, in 2008. His research is mainly focused on evolutionary computation and its real-world applications. Dr. Rahnamayan has 139 peer-reviewed publications mostly in evolutionary optimization areas, which received 3700 citations (h-index: 24); one of his high-impact journal papers in optimization ranked 23rd out of 194,000 in term of number of citations, 2008-2017. Dr. Rahnamayan co-founded Segasist Technologies Inc., which develops segmentation solutions for medical image analysis and radiation planning; the company raised over $2M and secured the FDA approval. Dr. Rahnamayan has been awarded several prestigious research grants, including, NSERC Discovery Grant and Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative Fund. He recently conducted research as a visiting associate professor at Michigan State University (MI, USA) for two years (2014-2016). Dr. Rahnamayan is an active reviewer for more than thirty international conference and journal papers. He has been awarded the UOIT Research Excellence Award in 2017.

Overview of Blockchain Technology
2017-11-13 16:00 - 17:00 | Room: ENG 288, George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering
Omid Sadeghi, serial entrepreneur and technology advisor, will be presenting “Overview of Blockchain Technology”.
Day & Time: Monday November 13th, 2017
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Omid Sadeghi
Director of BlockchainHub at York University
Location: Room: ENG 288, George Vari Centre for Computing and Engineering
245 Church Street
Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3
Contact: Dr. Maryam Davoudpour
Organizer: WIE IEEE Toronto, Instrumentation-Measurement/Robotics-Automation, Magnetics, and Computer Science Department of Ryerson University.
Abstract: Blockchain protocol and technology are said by many to be among the greatest accomplishments of human intellect since the Internet. Blockchain is the software technology underlying what is commonly known as Bitcoin, however, the technology is not exclusive to Bitcoin. Swarms of innovators are working feverishly to design and deploy new business platforms that incorporate blockchain technology.
In this session, we learn about the concepts of cryptocurrency and blockchain, what are the potential for this technology and when a blockchain solution would be applicable to an enterprise.
Biography: Omid Sadeghi is a serial entrepreneur and technology advisor with domain expertise in commercialization and developing customer-centric products. Omid holds an undergraduate degree in Design Engineering and an MBA degree from Schulich School of business (Winner of more than $40,000 student awards).
He is the director of BlockchainHub at York University to connect Research, education, and commercialization in Blockchain space. BlockchainHub currently run numerous educational programs and run various projects including setting up a state of the art Blockchain-based certification system for York University.
Omid is active in building and supporting technology and engineering communities, especially in Toronto. He is on the advisory board of different blockchain initiatives and a board member of Professional Engineers of Ontario-ETC.

Global, Regional and Local Impacts of Climate Change – A European Union Perspective
2017-11-15 12:00 - 13:00 | Conference Room, Centre for Urban Energy, 147 Dalhousie St, Toronto, ON M5B 2R2
Dr. Tsanis, Full Professor in the School of Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Crete, will be presenting “Global, Regional and Local Impacts of Climate Change – A European Union Perspective”.
Day & Time: Wednesday November 15th, 2017
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Speaker: Dr. Tsanis
Full Professor, School of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete (TUC), Greece
Director, Water Resources Management and Coastal Engineering Laboratory, TUC
Associate Member, Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil Engineering, McMaster University
Location: Conference Room at the Centre for Urban Energy
147 Dalhousie St
Toronto, ON M5B 2R2
Contact: Omid Alizadeh
Organizer: Power & Energy Chapter
Abstract: Following an introduction on European Union (EU) climate change projects and possibilities of international research collaboration, this presentation will focus on climate change impact assessment applications at global, regional (EU) and local scale (island of Crete). Climate change impacts on water resources (supply-demand), hydrometeorological extremes (floods and droughts) and on various sectors such as tourism, cities and energy (PV) will be presented. Climate change impact assessment models can ensure that a wide range of important factors are taken into consideration in improving the engineering practices and plannings, also from an energy perspective.
Biography: Dr. Tsanis is a Full Professor in the School of Environmental Engineering at the Technical University of Crete (TUC), Greece, a Director of the Water Resources Management and Coastal Engineering Laboratory at TUC, an Associate Member of Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Civil Engineering at McMaster University.
Dr. Tsanis is a graduate of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (Dipl. Civ. Eng.) and University of Toronto (M.A.Sc. and Ph.D., Civil Engineering). After receiving his Ph.D. he worked as a NSERC Visiting Fellow in the National Water Research Institute (NWRI) in Burlington and as a University Research Fellow and Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at McMaster University.
Dr. Tsanis is currently participating in several international research projects (NSERC, FP7 & H2020, ESA, EEA) studying the impact of climate change on extreme events (droughts and floods), ecosystem tipping points, agriculture, cities, tourism, energy and climate change adaptation and governance in water management and forecasting of hydrometeorological extremes that produce floods with radar and satellite remote sensing and lightning activity.

ComSoc Technical Seminar: Through-the-Earth Mine Communications Theory & Practice
2017-11-16 16:00 - 17:00 | Room ENG 460, Ryerson University, 245 Church St, Toronto, ON M5B 1Z4
Thursday, November 16th at 4:00 p.m. Ekaterina Korolkova, senior teacher in the Siberian Federal University in the Department of Radio Electronics, will be presenting “ComSoc Technical Seminar: Through-the-Earth Mine Communications Theory & Practice”.
Day & Time: Thursday, November 16th, 2017
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Speaker: Ekaterina Korolkova
Senior Teacher, Department of Radio Electronics, Siberian Federal University
Lead Engineer in Research and Manufacturing Company “Iridium” (Russian Federation)
Location: Room ENG 460, Ryerson University
245 Church St, Toronto, ON M5B 1Z4
Contact: Eman Hammad
Organizer: IEEE Toronto Communication Society
Abstract: Safety is an important factor in the mining industry. Through-The-Earth technology can provide communication both in everyday usage and in a case of emergency. Developing the TTE communication systems raises a lot of questions about main system specifications such as a transmitting frequency, current and antenna geometry. This talk is about TTE system experiment in the Republic of Kazakhstan (“Irtishskaya mine”), researches in finding appropriate system specifications and antenna geometry, and finally the implementation of designed system in October 2017. Also we will speak about some propagation difficulties in the real mine and some engineering difficulties connected with mine electromagnetic environment.
In this talk we will represent experimental and numerical modeling results. We compare widely used loop antenna and grounded dipole antenna. One of the most interesting novel results is the influence of the antenna grounding depth to the signal level in the mine.
Biography: Ekaterina Korolkova is a senior teacher in the Siberian Federal University in the Department of Radio electronics teaching “Power supply of electrical systems”, “Networks and radio systems and information protection” and “Computer networks and Internet technologies”. Also she is a lead engineer in Research and Manufacturing Company “Iridium” which is designing radio electronics and doing research works in the field of seismic prospecting and seismic communications. She graduated from Irkutsk state university of railways in 2011 and for 5 years has been working in JSC “Russian Railways” projecting different telecommunication systems for the railways. In 2011-2015 completed Postgraduate studies in the field of system analysis, management and information processing. In 2013 had a title of “Engineer of a year 2013” nomination in “Youth engineering”. Now she is working on the designing the TTE mine communication system which in October 2017 was successfully implemented in the Republic of Kazakhstan in the mine “Irtishskiy”. Ekaterina’s research interests are in areas of mine and cell communication systems, radio electronics, signal propagation and through-the-earth communication systems.
