ExCom Minutes

Agenda:
- Agenda approval
- Approval of last month's meeting minutes
- Summer Social ideas discussion
- Officer and Chapter Reports
- Student Branch Report

Highlights:
PSU branch to hold a three day hands on gadget fest for high school students and requested $500 and a motion to support was proposed and approved. Solid state circuits society requested $500 for a social event to be held 18 June and a motion to support was proposed and approved. Finances are in good shape for the Section.

Action Items Captured:
- ExCom will decide on Fall meeting in person at PSU

Minutes:
6:30pm Dinner and socializing
7:00pm meeting called to order

Agenda approved, previous minutes approved

New Business:
- There are a lot of IEEE training that is being offered. Collabratec or a Google drive to share Section information. PSU has something similar for the chapter memory. Sohrab: Can chapters make workspaces? Sure. Who is the admin? 
- IEEE Step program - YP chapter should use these resources. 
- IEEE alias for chapters. 
- Host for fall meeting at PSU? Maybe have a more accessible room?
- When is IEEE day? 147 days from now. Although we may not be ready for it. Maybe we shouldn’t look for non IEEE folks, and instead try to get the existing members to be more active. Many do not pay for their membership so they see it as a freebie but that does not translate into being active unless it is relevant to their own interests. 

Summer Social:
- Next Level games which is a Pinball and video game museum in Hillsboro. Tentatively scheduled for 9 August.
- Could do another idea such as tour of Bonneville dam, baseball game or river cruise. 

Officer and Chapter Reports
Officer Reports
Vice Chair: Working on updating the LinkedIn page for the section. Wanting to make it into a public page. 
Treasurer: Finances in good shape. Unsure what a recent deposit was. High performing chapters get extra money. $500 for STEM week. Milestone at Intel was paid for and the extent is scheduled for 30 July. Intel will be paying for the ceremony. 1st high voltage transmission line in North America was from Willamette Falls and Portland and will also get a Milestone recognition. NWSE on 11 April was held at PSU IEEE gave two awards. 
Secretary: Work with Diwakar to re-set up a regular newsletter of information to the entire Section.

PSU Student Branch Report:
- Planning a gadget fest three day hands on for high school students. PSU Summer of STEM. Several different 3 day sessions. July 15-17 and July 29-31. Looking for $500. Motion to support was proposed and passed. Have enough student volunteers. Already have 30 signups. 
- Had two workshops this term and both were successful. Working on a good transition to the newly elected officers. 

Chapter Reports:
RAS - First tech challenge is finished but still working with a team. Rose city robotics collaborative to make Oregon a hub for robotics activities and are using a Nvidia curriculum. How can we be a part of this initiative. 

Solid state circuits society - lecture last week at RA1, by society chair, had about 35 attendees. Upcoming lecture on photonics next Friday. 18 June will have a social event for the society. Looking for $500. Motion approved. 

Computer society - not sure how to get more interested in the topics. Need to connect with the student officers directly to get the word out. Emails no one reads as there are too many of them. Maybe send to the student branch officers to redistribute?

PACE - Sustech annual conference was held last month over 3 days. 180 attendees, which was a record. Met the CalState Long Beach student branch. They use Instagram for their chapter to get information out to their student members.

Nano - No updates 

Agenda:
- Agenda approval
- Approval of last month's meeting minutes
- New Business
- IEEE Tri-Section Students and YP conference (Oregon x Seattle x Vancouver) discussion
- Roundup of SWRSEF
- Occasional Social Hour instead of ExCom discussion
- Summer Social ideas discussion
- Officer and Chapter Reports

Highlights:
Power Electronics Society Chapter is looking to establish and requests everyone encourage folks to join as twelve are needed for a Chapter. David and Daniel were judges to the SW Washington Science and Engineering Fair. Award was presented to Richard Dorrance of the Solid State Circuits Society Chapter for best Distinguished Speaker Chapter. The Power and Energy Society Chapter had a group of students visiting to celebrate Engineers Week.

Action Items Captured:
- David will come up with a venue for April meeting and will get the VTools event up early so folks have sufficient time to plan.

Attendees:
David Silver, Tatyana Dhaliwal, Ed Epp, Eric Hall, Daniel Goodrich, Richard Dorrance, Kishan Joshi, Jose Garcia, Mohammad Alshaiji, Alex Higgins, Ed Perkins, Sohrab Aftabjahani, Naznin Akter, Diwakar, Rick Smith

Minutes:
6:35pm meeting called to order
Agenda approved, previous minutes approved

New Business:
- Richard: Solid State Circuits is planning to organize a spring social. Will use the award money received, but possible request for additional funds.
- Naznin: Photonics Society Day of Light event on 9 May at Oregon State University Corvallis - looking for budget of about $500-600, rest will covered by nominal registration fee and chapter funds. Approval of Section funds.
- Naznin: WIE International Leaders Conference 2025 in California. $2,500 for conference attendee and travel. Looking for full or partial funding from Section. David supports this. Dan: From a financial point of view we can support this. Motion approved.
- Naznin: Planning to attend the IEEE Mentoring Meet Working with Alberto as well.
- Naznin: WIE+YP OR AG in-person event. Looking for $500 budget. Motion approved.
- Kishan: Power Electronics Society Chapter establishment. Please network with folks to encourage to join. Need twelve folks for a chapter. Reach out to Oregon State?
- Ed: There used to be a monthly newsletter to the entire section as to what's up in the Section.
- Sohrab: Any updates to money that Intel has provided to the Section or Chapter?
- Mohammad: The local PSU chapter is planning to hold a soldering workshop in the Spring Term. We are requesting funding for 15 soldering kits for interested students. They are little radio kits. Final amount tbd, but no more than $500. Would like a few photos of the kits and of the event. Motion approved to purchase the kits.

IEEE Tri-Section Students and YP conference
- Also known previously as IEEE Tech Fest. David has a flyer for proposal.
- Requesting funding to make this happen. The request to the section is for $2,500 in funding.
- Our funding will be contingent on the MGA funding being approved then see how else we might be able to help out.

Roundup of SWRSEF
- David and Daniel were judges to the SW Washington Science and Engineering Fair.
- Gave an award to a student from Camus? High School. He'll advance to the statewide science fair as well.
Reminder that the NWSE Fair will be held at PSU on 11 April.
- A few folks will attend to present the IEEE award.
- Heidi will attend the to help award the WIE one.

Occasional Social Hour instead of ExCom discussion
- April 8 in person for a social/networking/light business.
- Section will cover appetizers and some beverages, but not full dinner.
- David will come up with a venue. Get the VTools event up early.
- Mohammad: Can students attend? Yes.

Summer Social ideas?
Hillsboro Hops
Video Game venue like Quarter World
Wedgehead pinball in NE PDX

Officer and Chapter Reports
Officer Reports
Vice Chair: Nothing at this time
Treasurer: Milestones: No progress on transmission lines, no progress on Intel one either. About 15 PSU students coming to BPA for visit on 21 March.
Secretary: Work with Diwakar to re-set up a regular newsletter of information to the entire Section.

Chapter Reports:
Young Professionals: (Amritesh) - There is TopGolf Networking Social on Monday March 31st from 7-9pm. Please post the YP social on vtools so that folks not on the email list can get information.
Robotics & Automation Society Chapter (Ed Epp) - Girls robotics team is continuing even though the competition is now done and Ed is continuing to mentor. Discussions with PSU student branch for robotics sessions with the students after spring break.
Nanotechnology Society Chapter (Ed Perkins) - Had a distinguished lecture on Spintronics Beyond Memory Operations in January.
Electronics Packaging Society Chapter (Ed Perkins) - Got compliance paperwork filed
WIE (Heidi) - STEM kits to be provided and the event will be in April or May. Rick is interested to help as well. Empowering Women Engineers: Effective Strategies for Finding the Right Mentor Panel discussion on 22 March. April, May, June events are still TBD. Planning an event with SWE as well.
Solid State Circuits Society Chapter (Richard Dorrance) - Award was presented to Richard for best Distinguished Speaker Chapter. Had lecture on Continuous-Time Pipelined Analog-to-Digital Converters from SSCS Distinguished Lecturer Prof. Shanthi Pavan from IIT Madras on 25 February when he was visiting Portland. Next lecture will be in early April. Working on the upcoming speakers for the rest of the year.
PACE (Rick Smith) - Request funding to travel to SusTech to support the conference as Oregon Section representative. Motion approved. Gave an IEEE overview presentation to PSU Student Branch last month.
Computer Society Chapter (Sohrab) - https://eps.ieee.org/images/files/HIR_2023/ch10_power.pdf Speaker for using LLMs tentative for 27 March. Heterogeneous Integration and Roadmap
Signal Processing Society Chapter (Xiao Fu) -
Power & Energy Society Chapter (Tatyana) - Had a bunch of students visiting on 6 march to celebrate Engineers Week. Lecture on Army Microgrids for Energy Resilience was held 18 February.
Photonics Society Chapter (Naznin) - Planning some events. Will share details when everything is sorted.
PSU Student Branch (Mohammad) - Planning to reorganize of the IEEE chapter next term and will be bringing a greater focus on societies. Our initial plans involve the PES, RAS, Computer, Communication, and Solid State Circuits societies with the hope to expand to other societies after the trial run.
SusTech 2025 - Workshop upcoming on 20 April on Designing for the Circular Economy as a hybrid meeting. Student Poster Contest is ongoing. 21-22 April for 2 Days of Conference. 130 accepted papers. YP/WIE reception on Monday. Doing well on registrations.

Oregon Section ExCom

Agenda:

- Agenda approval
- Approval of last month's meeting minutes
- New Business
- Science Fair signup
- Milestones update
- Rising Stars presentation
- Report out from R4/R6 meeting
- Officer and Chapter Reports

Highlights:
The two Milestones projects are moving along. Amritesh and Diwakar provided a conference review for the Rising Stars 2025 conference. David provided a report out on the combined Region 4 / Region 6 Meeting.

Attendees:

Eric Hall, Jose Garcia, David Silver, Ed Epp, Daniel Goodrich, Xiao Fu, Richard Dorrance, Rick Smith, Diwakar Agrawal, Ed Perkins, Heidi, Sohrab Aftabjahani, Amritesh, Michael Bates

Minutes:
Meeting was called to order at 6:30pm.

Agenda approved
Last months minutes small modification: "Intel is changing the matching funds that it will provide." and strike the amount.
Last month's meeting minutes approved

New Business
Science Fair - Three folks have signed up to support. Dan, David, Heidi. Sign up for "Special Award category". Let Dan know if you are volunteering. IEEE provided $500 to each Science Fair, both the Oregon one and the SW Washington one.

Milestones - Willamette Falls is moving along. USB one is approved as well, Richard has made the request for support to CTO of Intel but has not heard back. The Milestones program has a technology focus not a people focus.

Rising Stars 2025 Conference:
Amritesh and Diwakar attended the Rising Stars 2025 conference in Las Vegas Nevada and provided a report out.

They had a very wonderful experience. Had an enjoyable time talking with folks. The IEEE executives were very supportive.

A lot of amazing speakers that were part of the agenda through all three days. Sessions included the Young Professionals Workshop, a Job Search Workshop, a Financial Planning workshop, several sessions on managing your engineering career and several informative Panel sessions.

Amritesh: Long time attendee. Great meeting the different speakers, meet new folks, and reconnect with folks.

Potential Speakers for Oregon Section that were identified include:
- Michael Andrews / Carolyn Andrews who were the Conference Organizers and were very interested in a soft-skills session and help with with interpersonal skills.
- John McDonald who is an IEEE Fellow
- Ed Tiedemann who is a SVP at Qualcomm
- Kathleen A. Kramer who is the IEEE CEO
- Joy Dow who is a Wealth Management Advisor
- Industry folks such as YC Wang from Digikey, Joe Dossantos from Workday AI, and Falguni from Expedia.

The suggestion is to have webinars or Distinguished Speaker series with these folks. Perhaps have another social with guest speaker. We won't limit to just the Young Professionals group. Reach beyond Oregon Section as well. Let's try to make at least three of these.

Sohrab: Is conference meeting materials available? No. Was most interested in the cybersecurity talk.

Report out for Region 4 / Region 6 Meeting:
- David went through a slide show of photos. Slide show link
- Congrats to Ed Epp on his award!
- Lots of great training was provided.
- There were a lot of great networking opportunities with the other Section Chairs. Some other sections have a lot of activities. Let's try to get a few more going.

Officer Reports
Vice Chair: Nothing to report. Plans to talk with Ed when he is better.
Treasurer: $158k in account. Have spent about $1500 so far and know some travel items are coming in. Things are good.
Secretary: Nothing to report

Chapter Reports:
Ed Perkins: When are chapter reports due? 10 February was the due date.

Young Professionals: (Amritesh) - YP Social is being planned at Top Golf in March. Received $800 from the Global YP group. April have a virtual event lecture on Chips Act. Idea to have a half day workshop on Chips Act at Intel for students. Ask about Community College students, those that are part of the Microelectronics Technology program.

RAS Society Chapter (Ed Epp) - Regional competition was held on Saturday. Benson HS has two teams that participated. Ed focuses on underserved students and his team is interested in continuing even though they were knocked out of the competition. They are doing some autonomous work using Apple tags. Ed has reached out to the PSU RAS Student chapter to propose an event.

Nano Society Chapter (Ed Perkins) - Held an event at PSU at the Physics department. Had an attendance of about 20 folks.
EPS Chapter is floundering and does not have a lot of officers at this time.
Sustech - Planning is going well. Over 150 paper submitted. Reviews are on-going. Will be held in Santa Ana California in April.

WIE (Heidi) - Top Golf event. STEM curriculum and STEM kits will have an in-person event. New member has come to Oregon and has reached out and is interested in volunteering, will get her invited to future events, starting from March. David has the STEM kits and can deliver.

Solid State Circuits Society Chapter (Richard Dorrance) - Going to flagship conference next week and will be receiving the best distinguished lecture program with a certificate and $1000. Feb 25 - Next Distinguished Lecture, want folks to attend in person. Working to get more lectures throughout the year. Looking for volunteers for pre-college events as well.

PACE (Rick Smith) - Continue to provide support to Sustech. PSU Student chapter has reached out for an overview of the Section. AR: We should build out a deck for such talks. Contact area folks as well to see if they have material.

Computer Society Chapter (Sohrab) - Traveling to a conference. Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap Chairing Cybersecurity working group.

Signal Processing Society Chapter (Xiao Fu) - Nothing going on now. Monthly seminar to restart in March.

Oregon Section ExCom

Agenda:
- New business
- Financial reporting is due for all chapters - reminder
- Any officer problems within the Chapters?
- How did the vTools Voting go for everyone?
- Discuss sending rep to IEEE-USA's annual Congressional Visits Day (CVD) April 8-9, 2025 in Washington, DC.
- Discuss Business for upcoming R6 meeting
- Science Fair
- Milestones
- Officer and Society Chapter Reports
- PSU Student Branch Report


Highlights:
- New folks are transitioning into roles at Section and Chapter level
- Congrats to Ed Epp for the Region 6 Outstanding IEEE Member Award for Outstanding Educator, Mentor or Facilitator in the area of STEM award
- Congrats to Richard Dorrance for the 2024 IEEE SSCS Chapter with Best Distinguished Lecturer Program Award
- PSU Student Branch officers attended
- Next meeting 11 February and will be held virtually
- May is the next in-person ExCom planned. Intention is to have the meeting at PSU so that students may attend.

Action Items Captured:
- Please let David know as he can help with issues that Chapters may be facing.
- Identify whether someone wants to participate in the Congressional Visit day in April.
- Those in new roles, please work with the former office holder on any transition activities needed.
- Please provide ideas on what kind of gifts to give science fair students and please help judge at the Science Fair, if possible.
- Get an appropriate room reserved at PSU for the May ExCom meeting

Attendees:
David Silver, Jose Garcia, Daniel Goodrich, Eric Hall, Alex Higgins, Mohammad Alshaiji, Richard Dorrance, Rick Smith, Diwakar Agrawal, Tatyana Dhaliwal, Ed Epp, Sohrab Aftabjahani

Minutes:
Meeting was called to order at 6:30pm.

New Business:
Rick - Fund raising - Matching funds from Intel for RAS activities. Intel is limiting the matching funds that it will provide per year per employee. Encourage Intel employees to put in their hours to get additional matching funds to offset just a few that had put in a lot of hours. Log the hours on a timely basis. It is not a main source of income for the Section, but it does help with providing robot kits and other things for activities.

Chapter problems - please let David know as he can help with some of the issues. Please be aware that Feb 10 is the reporting deadline for chapters. “High performing chapter" is at risk if reporting is not done timely.

Vtools voting. How did it go?
- Rick - there was not enough position statements to be found.
- Richard- Emails need to be clearer as to what the election is for. It was not very straightforward.
- Daniel- Some folks could not do certain activities.

Congressional Visits Day will be held 8-9 April 2025.
- There is an application process.
- It is a bit political with some prepared talking to do.

 IEEE Region 4 and Region 6 Joint Meeting will be held in San Francisco on 25 January 2025.
 - Ed will be attending to receive the Region 6 Outstanding IEEE Member Award for Outstanding Educator, Mentor or Facilitator in the area of STEM award.
 - David will also be attending.
 - Any business to raise to R6? Daniel- how to promote new membership? Diwakar says that he even has trouble providing a value add to Intel employees as to why to join IEEE. Sohrab- discounts to conferences. Richard- some employers already provide access to papers and pay for membership and conferences. Tatyana- member of honor societies can get hiring incentives at the federal government. Sohrab-being the part of a community is also important. Can we get a list of points of benefits, for different levels of their careers? IEEE likely already has some of these materials.

NWSE fair - The state fair will be held Friday 11 April 2025 at Portland State University.
- Richard can help organize but cannot help as he is lecturing on Fridays.
- IEEE gives several awards. Overall one. WIE award as well.
- Please consider to attend and help out.
- What kind of gifts to give science fair students? What do high schoolers want?

Milestones There are these all over the country but there's not yet one in Oregon. Goes through the IEEE History Center.
- The Willamette Falls milestone is progressing. We’ve budgeted for the plaque, are finalizing the plaque language, and will be seeking approval from ODOT and Oregon City.  Dan is leading the effort.
- There is also a milestone planned for Intel to recognize the USB development, although it has stalled. Dan G. will contact the milestone coordinator about its status, and may ask some Intel folks to help get it moving forward. Has to be 24/7 accessible.

Mailers- To send gifts to guest speakers. Richard and Sohrab took a few. They are wireless chargers for phones. Sustainability conference may also want some.

Officer and Society Chapter Reports:
Vice Chair - need to get inputs from Ed.
Treasurer - We are in good shape financially. Can help with student branches, as needed.
Secretary - Had a good handoff from previous secretary who also has said that he is available for further assistance as needed.

PACE
- Working on IEEE SusTech 2025 conference that will be held April 20-23, 2025 in LA.
- Best to get ahold of Rick via phone, text or call is fine. He is dividing his time between homes at the coast and Hillsboro.

Solid-State Circuits Society
- The chapter will receive the 2024 IEEE SSCS Chapter with Best Distinguished Lecturer Program Award and will be recognized at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, ISSCC 2025, the societies flagship conference, which is February 16-20, as well as published in the Spring issue of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine, and on the Society website and e-newsletter. This award recognizes a chapter that has consistently organized IEEE SSCS Distinguished Lectures (DL) and have invited a diverse roster of SSCS DL’s to visit their Chapter.
- Feb 25 is the tentative date for the next lecture and will get the event into vtools when the details finalize.

Robotics and Automation Society
- FIRST robotics challenge team at Benson HS. Created a girls build team with a kit and funds from Intel. Girls were deeply engaged and took ownership of their work. May not have enough time with the team as some teams meet daily and for longer.
- ROS2 (robotic operating system) is being built. There is a presentation available for the architecture. Perhaps this can be shared at the student branches?

Senior Member Elevation Coordination
- Diwakar can help organize. Good role modeling when officers are senior members as well so folks should work on the CV and materials.

Computer Society
- Had a talk on Halloween that was rescheduled to 5 December.
- Had a secretary but he went to India and not sure what is going on.
- Plan for at least one talk per quarter.

Power & Energy Society
- Brand new chair. Did a handoff with past chair.
- Have a speaker set up for February, but needs final confirmation. Will get event set up.
- Plan for meeting every third Tuesday.
- Daughter’s school Columbia Adventist in Battleground WA will have a career fair at some time and would like volunteers.

PSU student branch
- Have a student chapter plan for the year and planning for one a month. Next meeting this Friday.
- Resume event for the upcoming PSU hiring fair.
- Trying to get everyone under the same banner. Trying to get more graduate students involved as well as there are quite a few part time students. Please make sure that student events are in vTools.
- Alex- the student chapter needs to be reconstituted as an umbrella group for different technical chapters.
- Mohammed- would like to have guest speakers from industry. Daniel can provide a BPA tour in Vancouver-Up to 35 folks on a tour. How can students get more involved in technical societies. Tatyana-Corp of Engineers has a visit program at the Hydroelectric design center. Bonneville power may also have dam tours.
- Alex- it’s hard to get students involved in things.
- David- there used to be a newsletter that went out, especially to the students.
- Diwakar- IEEE has a lot of resources for students. Resume building and the like.
- Daniel- There is a role for student liaison. Someone to oversee all of the student branches.
- David- Proposal: Have an Excom meeting in May at PSU. Alex can get us a room.
- Ed- would like the contact for the student RAS chapter. Ed has robotics tutorials and whatnot that may be interesting to students. Alex can help get space to just a workshop.
- Networking and soft skills are also something that we can help students with.

 

Attendees: Diwakar, Dan, Ed Epp, Richard, David, Ed Perkins, Naznin, Sean Murphy, Jose, Heidi, Rick, Sohrab

 

Minutes for Sept ’24 approved

Highlights

  • Ed Perkins: Follow up on the cost of bringing a move truck
  • Ed Perkins: look for mechanism to offer NEDME general admission to the section
  • All: David will send out the budget by email. Please review and provide feedback before Nov Excom
  • Election: progressing well. Final slate being reviewed. Dan will follow up with a couple of applicants
  • Approved $900 on behalf of computer society for Sohrab to travel for open source conference.

 

Chapter report

  • Area meeting
  • Global humanitarian Technology conference (GHTC) – Ed Perkins will be attending and reporting back (23-25th Oct - Philadelphia)
  • Rising Stars – 3 people [Naznin, Amritesh?, Diwakar]
    • Michael is not going
  • Ed Epp nominated for R6 education support award
  • Winter social finalized, gifts finalized - Dec 7
  • Move trucks – IEEE has move trucks for disaster relief – possibly display at some schools [Ed Perkins will follow up on the cost]
  • https://wie.ieee.org/grants-scholarships/frances-b-hugle/ - If anyone know a candidate female student, pass on the information about the scholarship.

 

Vice Chair report

  • NEDME – Diwakar to include in section email (Hillsboro)
    • Ed Perkins (free), Rick Smith, Sohrab are interested in going. Ed/David will figure out a mechanism to reimburse general admission ($40)
    • Ed will looking the mechanism to offer to the section
  • Sustech – marching ahead
  • Region awards nominations are open (Ed will send info to Diwakar to add in section email)

 

Treasurer report

  • Working on the budget
  • With 2 months left we are over $4k (instead of 17k), higher than earlier interest.
  • David will send the budget by email. Request to all is to review before Nov Excom and provide feedback to David if any item is missing.
  • Winter social annual awards dinner – Lake Oswego grill. Dec 7 at 7pm. – Mark the calendar. David will send out the vtools link for headcount.

 

Secretary report

  • Diwakar is out for vacation for Nov Excom. Dan will run the meeting.

 

Sohrab requested money for travel to a “open source conference”. Computer society has the money to cover the expense but no officers. Hence requesting approval from Excom. Motion is to cover up to $900 for travel expenses to open compute conference with computer society funds. Sohrab will dispense his learnings to the section via setting a webinar after the conference. Motion approved.

 

WIE international conference update - Naznin

 

Heidi

  • Nov 8 National Stem day – Setup daily challenges in schools. Money ($500) has already been allocated.
  • IEEE stem summit 23-25th – Diwakar to add to the section mailing list.

 

Election update (Michael)

  • Committee: Michael (Chair), John Prohodsky
  • Election for chair, vice chair, secretary, treasurer.
  • Current nominees (motion to approve the slate – approved)
    • David – chair
    • Jose - vice chair
    • Dan – treasurer
    • Naznin – secretary
    • Joseph hall – secretary
    • 3 other people – contingent