Busy year for IEEE Young Professionals

From learning about radio emissions produced by the galaxy to sophisticated equipment on satellites in space, the Southern Alberta IEEE chapter provided plenty of opportunity for graduate students to hear about cool projects and meet cool people over the course of the academic year. 

IEEE, an international organization of electrical and electronic engineers, aims to foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. “Generally undergraduate students have lot of opportunities and interaction but grad school is limited due to time availability,” says Tushar Sharma, a first year student in electrical and computer engineering and chair of IEEE Young Professionals, Southern Alberta Section, Region 7. “IEEE is committed to helping us evaluate our career goals, polish our professional image and help start a lifelong and diverse professional network.”

NASA to CASSIOPE
IEEE’s first presentation, in September, was about NASA’s Radio Jove project which encourages students from grade school to grad school to build a kit or use remote radio telescopes to monitor radio emissions produced by the sun, planets and the galaxy.  Students from physics and engineering turned out along with faculty from the Physics Department.

Later in the year, IEEE and the Geomatics Graduate Group invited David Knudsen from the Physics and Astronomy Department to discuss University of Calgary-designed and built instruments that took off with CASSIOPE last fall, the first made-in-Canada multi-purpose small satellite mission from the Canadian Space Agency. Scientists at the university led the development of three of the eight instruments in the Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e-POP) which will help the satellite probe space weather in the upper atmosphere.  

Students also enjoyed presentations about the history of global positioning systems (GPS) and other satellite-based navigation systems presented by Saeed Daneshmand and Ali Jafarnia from the Department of Geomatics.

Advancing humanity through technology
As for next year, IEEE is planning to explore the theme of “Advancing Humanity through Technology.” With support from Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate Association, Geomatics Graduate group and Iradio lab, IEEE is working with alumni and educational societies like the Astronomy Teacher Training Institute to develop a schedule of events.

“The opportunity of being an engineer is not given to everyone,” says Sharma. “We intend to serve humanity by using intellect, exploring, researching and posing solutions to global problems and IEEE gives us a sneak peek into this competitive world and helps us prepare for it.”