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1 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9 October - November 2018, vol. 65, No. 9 One of the attractions in MakerFaire, NYC 2018 (left and right) The robot hand could be controlled remotely by a normal human hand (right) The task was to destroy a regular automobile (below) Controllers Robotic hand of destruction

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Page 1: October - November 2018, vol. 65, No. 9 - IEEE · The MakerFaire show, as usual a potpourri of DIY exhibits and some not so-easily DIY commercial products especially trinkets and

1 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

October - November 2018, vol. 65, No. 9

One of the attractions in

MakerFaire, NYC 2018

(left and right)

The robot hand could be controlled

remotely by a normal human hand

(right)

The task was to destroy a

regular automobile

(below)

Controllers

Robotic hand of destruction

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2 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

Happiness is nothing more than

good health and a bad memory

Albert Schweitzer Theologian, organist, writer, philosopher and physician

(known famously for his work in Africa)

1875 – 1965

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3 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

Principal officers of the

IEEE New York Section

2018

Currently, the New York Section of IEEE comprises of the following Active Chapters of the IEEE Societies:

• Computational Intelligence Society

• Computer Society

• Communications Society

• Technology Management Society

• Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society

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4 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

• Instrumentation and Measurement Society

• Power and Energy Society

• Industrial Applications Society

• Solid State Circuits/Electron Devices Societies

• Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society

• Vehicular Technology Society

• Broadcast Technology Society

&

The following Affinity Groups as defined by IEEE

• Consultants’ Network

• Life Members Affinity Group (LMAG)

• Women in Engineering

• Young Professionals

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5 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

p. 6 Quick date checks for the NY Section ExComm meetings

p. 7 From the keyboard of the Editor:

p. 9 What did I see at the MakerFaire 2018, Corona Park, Flushing, New York

p. 14 IEEE NY Section 2018 Election Slate

p. 15 See panoramic views of the Mars terrain as seen by Curiosity from the comfort of

your armchair

p. 16 Link to an interesting lecture on quantum universe

p. 17 Call for volunteers for the NY regional Future City competition

p. 18 Highlights of some technical activities in NY City are (sponsored by IEEE and others)

during October/November, 2018

p. 24 Useful links to chapter web sites of NY Chapters

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6 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

QUICK DATE CHECKS FOR NY SECTION EXCOMM MEETINGS

The following are the presumed dates for the 2017 Executive Committee meetings at IEEE NY Section

(unless otherwise notified in advance, always held on the second Wednesday of the month)

10 January 14 February

21 March 11 April 9 May* 13 June

No meetings during the months of July and August 12 September

10 October 14 November 12 December

4 pm at ConEd Building Election of the Section officers

5.30 pm sharp at ConEd Building RSVP to Paul Sartori ([email protected]) ASAP

********************

Unless otherwise notified, all ExComm meetings are scheduled for 12:30 pm at the ConEd Building, 4 Irving Place, New York. All members of the New York Section are invited to participate in the ExComm meetings. However, for reasons of security controlled by ConEd, the owner of the venue, all members desirous of attending any ExComm meeting must notify the Section chair. Thank you for your understanding

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7 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

In September

we had the privilege of visiting the MakerFaire, NYC, the annual DIY event, supposedly the biggest of

its genre in our region if not the world. Every year the IEEE NY Section participates in the fair by

making a small financial contribution and in return we get some booth space to showcase our efforts

in encouraging the young to take up engineering when they go to college.

§ This year the fair was realized during the weekend of Saturday & Sunday, 22 – 23 September. I

sometimes tend to believe that MakerFaire has made a pact with the mother nature. I have been

attending this fair for the past five years and never I have seen any rain during those weekends. They

sky could look gray but rain? Never!

The Monitor editor at the

entrance to the pavilion

IEEE booth at the

MakerFaire, NYC, 2018

Dr. Charles Rubenstein

planned the booth activities

§ As in the past occasions in this year too, Dr. Charles Rubenstein, LSM and a former director of

Region 1 organized the IEEE booth activities. That demanded much work and we congratulate him for

the tremendous effort and time he put in to make our participation in the event so successful. Charles

also arranged for some goodies emblazoned with letters IEEE as gifts to be distributed among the

young engineers of the future who visited the booth. Motivating young people to study STEAM

(Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) subjects, as everyone will agree, is

important for the future of humanity. Several other IEEE mentors from various Sections of IEEE lent

a helping hand by explaining the attractions of engineering to those young minds. I personally knew

some of our volunteers: Charles Rubinstein, Bala Prasanna, Wilson Milian, and Soon Wan. My

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apologies for not noting down the names of other volunteers at MakerFaire. If you are one of them

and are reading this piece and your name does not appear please send me an e-mail (a.dutta-

[email protected]) and I’ll insert your name forthwith.

The entire Wan family,

addicted to robotics

Stephanie, Soon Wan’s

eldest daughter also writes

on robotics

Cristina Arduino and the

editor with Soon Wan

§ Though there was no end to attractions and surprises I had a feeling that this year’s fair was

somewhat less packed with exhibits compared with previous years. I didn’t the huge tents pf the past

pitched by the giant tech companies of the Silicon Valley and Redmond. The makers of

microcontrollers — Arduino, Raspberry and ARM — were not prominently visible either. Also absent

was the paella feast to which the press and all exhibitors were invited on the evening of Friday before

the two days of the fair. Though I may be wrong, I had an impression that the number of visitors was

also less compared to those in previous MF fairs. I hope that this year’s event was a singular oddity

and the interest in MF NY will not wane. We need MakerFaire to encourage the creative young minds

to flourish.

§ In this edition of the Monitor you also view a link to 360 degrees’ panoramic views of the Mars

terrain as seen by the NASA’s Curiosity Rover. Click on the link and enjoy the views. They are

spectacular.

§ Those who follow the recent trends in research in electronics know that quantum electronics is a hot

topic. I found a link to a lecture by Prof Neil Turok delivered on 4 June 2018 at my alma mater

Imperial College University, London, England. No progress can be had without a deep understanding

of quantum world. Here we get an opportunity to learn about these mysteries of Mother Nature

without getting embroiled by complicated mathematics and more over it is free.

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9 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

§ Lastly, we give you the highlights of some of the technical activities in the city and vicinity realized

in recent months.

LEARN TO DO IT YOURSELF (DIY)

The New York Hall of Science (aka Queens Science museum)

that holds the MakerFaire DIY show

The MakerFaire show, as usual a potpourri of DIY exhibits and some not so-easily DIY commercial

products especially trinkets and garments. The latter were put up for sale only because the fair draws

a large crowd that be tempted to buy gifts on impulse. The emphasis was on innovative ideas that

could be turned into tangible products. And there were many of those. It was well nigh impossible to

visit every stand and talk to the owners of those ideas. However, the Monitor visited many of them

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and here are their descriptions. A few DYIers promised to write about their ideas and products they

hope to launch. We promise to publish them in this newsletter if and as we get them.

Are you an amateur astronomer or a mentor for students who are interested in learning the

nature of our universe or multiverse? Robert Fitzsimons, an Irish DIYer has devised a product

that can be affixed to an umbrella (it rains a lot on the emerald isle!). A small (approx. 10 in x

10 in) screen below the dome of the umbrella displays an illuminated image of the sky seen in the

direction at which the inside handle of umbrella points to. To see any other part of the sky all you have

to do is to point the umbrella in the desired direction.

Did you ever think of a tiny microscope that can be constructed by Origami folding small

pieces of paper (slightly thicker than ordinary 20 lb variety) that hold a tiny convex lens? The

entire assembly can take less than five minutes and costs very little. This is the brainchild of a

Stanford professor Manu Prakash and his graduate student Jim Cybulski. The idea was to offer an

inexpensive but fully workable microscope mainly for the purpose of teaching and field work in

situations where high powered microscopes (Zeiss or Reichert) are not available or not even advisable

having just to prevent their theft. The scientists received funding from several foundations and the

result is a remarkable product (www.foldscope.com). We briefly tried one of them and it worked very

well even to untrained eyes. It is very inexpensive but can offer a magnification of 2000. Though

made mostly of paper it is resilient and may be focused by lightly pressing the paper holder. We were

told that for use in schools 20 of them could be had for as little as $35. A slightly more elaborate

version with some attachment costs less than $40 each. The product can be easily used by personnel

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of environmental protection agencies. It is interesting that the microscope can be placed on a

smartphone and an image of the sample may be sent to anywhere in the world. The Foldscope (as it

called) is not a toy but a genuine teaching too. The evolution of Foldscope has been covered by

English language media such as Popular Science, the Atlantic, Huffington Post, CNN, NPR and PLOS

Blog. If you or your colleagues are interested in introducing the portable microscope I recommend a

visit to their Web site.

Foldscope poster

Ken Ta, Director of Sales

Close-up of a Foldscope

The Monitor editor with Rebella Konte of

the Foldscope team

Inexpensive LEDs and digital technology have given designers a new dimension for creating

novel products. MakerFaire reserved a fairly darkened large hall for the products that use

LEDs as their principal components. The DIYer Young Bum Kim designed some apples

contained in square baskets hanging from the top (it could be your ceiling or a supported hanger. The

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hanging apples created by Kim give the impression that they are real, in three dimension and

illuminated, all optical illusion and LED tricks.

The LED Apple

Creator: Young Bum King

When I did my undergraduate studies at Imperial College, London, England we had a cranky

Hungarian professor. He had a heavy accent and was a workaholic. Once he spent some time

in a hospital. On the Christmas day while everybody was planning some fun at the hospital

this professor insisted that the nurse bring him some paper and a pen. He wanted to work. (Actually,

the doctor ordered him to take complete rest and not to take any workload.) But he insisted on his pen

and paper. Much later I had the privilege to work in his lab for a project. My assignment was to make

a triode valve from scratch. The name of the professor? Denis Gabor, the inventor of holography and

the recipient of the Nobel prize in 1971. There is no Nobel prize in engineering. So, they give him the

prize in physics. It’s true, not a fake story.

Thus, I was thus thrilled to see an application of holography and digital technology. The URL link to

the purveyor of this semi DYI product is http://www.lookingglassfactory.com . The simplest product

of Lookingglass consists of a 8.2” (long) x 3.7” (wide) x 6.1” (high) block of glass mounted like a

picture frame. It comes with software that works with downloadable holographic models. The DYI

aspect comes into light when the user chooses from the coterie of “canned” models and combines

them to create his/her desired artwork or a more complex 3-dimensional holographic model. The

resultant model can be moved (but not touching) by motion of fingers in front of the glass block. We

tried our hand in front of one glass tablet and moved a holographic frog. Our interactions with the

holograms may be viewed at https://youtu.be/Tnw1ZdL18iI . For more technical information please

see the company’s web site (as above). Prof. Denis Gabor would be pleased!

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There was no shortage of fun toys constructed with microcontrollers and bits of wood, wires

and strings, literally! See how a mechanical tongue would lick a lollypop for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g9XhIslM5c

If you are a model railways enthusiast, you could not afford to miss:

https://youtu.be/cqBdjkdDINY

If you work with wood and may like to see beautifully shaped toys are constructed visit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfGj_IaGu5I or https://youtu.be/E71dHHSIK8I

California-based Microarduino offered stackable Arduino-centric STEM modules that teaches

programming basics to kids in basic steps. We tried our hands. Visit our findings at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzqalwL020I

I found the Hall of Science also very interesting. The museum has installed a wall-to-wall

aquarium and the animated exhibits inside are interactive. They can be moved by the motion

of hand; a wonderful experience for children to learn about marine life. See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_0xnRxAxYs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xoj7mucAPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5SWpAflaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb2Dojjdto0

You be wrong to assume that MakerFaire was only a DYI for technical gadgets. There were

music and dance DYI too. Both music and dance were “imported” from Brazil, The dance is

known as “Capoeira”. This dance form in which only the legs are used

https://youtu.be/5MiCQtciHIQ Capoeira

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRf-8rrz_Cc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFRZEgRvKxk

There were many other DYIers who exhibited their creations. I would really like the reader know these

products from the respective creator’s words. Keeping with the goals of IEEE, I would like to encourage

these young and not-so-young innovators to express themselves. So, please wait!

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14 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

This year the election of the principal officers of the New York Section will be held on 12 December

2018 at 5.30 p.m. sharp. We hope that you will participate in the election process by voting for your

preferences. Please send a mail to [email protected] indicating your presence with your name and

the IEEE membership number. For reasons of security please be punctual. The following is the official

IEEE announcement.

IEEE New York Section Notice of Elections for 2019

In accordance with its Operations & Procedures Manual, the IEEE New York (NY) Section is advising all

IEEE NY Section members that an election for officers and certain working activity committee chair positions

for calendar year 2019 is scheduled to be held on December 12, 2018, beginning at 5:30 pm at the Con Edison

Co. of New York, 4 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003.

The Executive Committee (Excom) of the IEEE NY Section is pleased to announce its slate of officers for elected positions to the NY Section’s Excom for calendar year 2019. The list of candidates for the various positions was approved by the NY Section Executive Committee on November 14, 2018, and, since there were no valid petitions submitted by the August 15, 2018 deadline, for any of the positions, the list of candidates is the same as that approved at the November 14th Excom meeting.

2019 Slate of Candidates as Approved by the NY Section Excom

Section Officer Positions:

Section Chair: David Horn OR Robert M. Pellegrino

Section Vice Chair – Chapter Operations: Vacant

Section Vice Chair – Section Activities: Chamara Johnson

Section Treasurer: Thomas Villani

Section Secretary: Amy Batallones

Elected Committee Chair Positions:

Chapter Organization Committee Chair: Paul Sartori

Historian: Amitava Dutta-Roy

Long Range Planning Committee Chair: Vacant

Operations & Procedures Manual Committee Chair: Vacant

Publications Committee Chair: Vacant

Webmaster: Harold Ruchelman

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15 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

All members in “good standing” (good standing refers to active members who have paid their IEEE dues for calendar year 2018) who are Graduate Student member grade or higher are eligible to cast a vote for the candidates for office. Student Members of the NY Section are not eligible to cast a vote for the candidates for office. In addition, IEEE Society Affiliates are not IEEE members and therefore not eligible to vote.

For security reasons, IEEE New York Section members who want to cast a vote at the election meeting must arrive at Con Edison Co, of NY, 4 Irving Place & E 14th Street, New York, NY 10003 [Ground floor Reception Room] NO LATER THAN 5:30 PM on Dec. 12, 2018. PLEASE BRING A PHOTO ID SUCH AS DRIVER’S LICENSE AND YOUR CURRENT IEEE MEMBERSHIP CARD FOR SECURITY ACCESS AND ELIGIBILITY TO VOTE. ANYONE ARRIVING AFTER 5:30 PM OR MISSING A PHOTO ID AND IEEE MEMBERSHIP CARD WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO VOTE.

Panoramic Views of Mars Terrain as seen by NASA’s Curiosity

For a better views please visit: https://www.360cities.net/image/mars-panorama-curiosity-solar-day-2082

Submitted by William Coyne, Life Senior Member, Fmr chair Ny Section (1985-1986)

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Brush up your knowledge about Quantum Universe

Prof. Turok is a professor of physics at Imperial College University, London. For the complete lecture please visit http://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/186589/the-universe-incredibly-simple-says-renowned/.

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17 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

FUTURE CITY COMPETITION 2018 IN our past issues you read the announcement of this year’s Future City competition. The

regional competition will be held on 19 January 2018 and the venue is Middle School P.S. 126, 80 St.

Catherine Street, New York City. We still need volunteer to act as judges. If you can spare some time

for this benevolent effort to encourage young girls and boys to study STEAM subjects please contact

the IEEE NY Section chair David Horn, [email protected] or call him at 631 560 2309 ASAP.

Please remember that the judges should arrive at the school around 8.15 am and the awards will be

given starting at 3.300 pm. If you decide to volunteer the NY Section will thank you for your good

deed.

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12 October 2018: Celebration of the

Distinguished Lecture on Cyber Security: A presentation “Is Computer

Hardware the Next Frontier of Cyber Security?” by Prof Ramesh Karri,

Chair, Cyber Security at

NYU Tandon School of Engineering, NYC Joint sponsors: IEEE SMC NY Chapter, IEEE NY Section Students’ Branch, Computer Soc NY

Chapter, IEEE Education Committee. Present 38 guests and 20 IEEE members

********************************************************************************************

16 October 2018

Rechargeable Batteries: Technology, Market and the Future Speaker: Mariann O’Connor

Joint sponsors: NY Chapters of PES, IAS and LMAG

ABSTRACT: With the growth of ubiquitous cloud-based computing applications, we have seen a

renewed focus in research on Data Center power usage optimization and its practical application. With

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19 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

an increase in power requirements from streaming to storing medical records combined with the costs

of infrastructure, companies are evaluating how they can economically and quickly scale to meet

demand. This talk covered the evolution of the Data Center over the past ten years, the categorization

of Data Centers into the different types that exist, the role of colocations, converged and hyper-

converged infrastructure, and the products used in Data Centers today. Of special interest is the use of

rechargeable batteries in the Data Center and their expanded role in powering businesses, electric cars,

IoT devices and supplementing the grid capacity.

Speaker: Mariann O’Connor was the Business Development Manager, National Account Manager

and Data Center Segment Specialist focusing on single phase and three phase UPS solutions at Eaton.

Rechargeable batteries: Technology, Market and the Future

Sukumar Alampur, Arnold Wong, Mariann O’Connor and Amarjit Rana

26 October 2018

Using Networks to Study Relationships between

Metabolic Processes and Disease Sponsors: NY Chapters of SMC, Com Soc and

Education Comm and IEEE NYC Students’ Branch at LIU

Abstract: Metabolic processes in the human body form interacting networks and can be analyzed as such.

This includes biomedical reactions, gene expression, brain function and all other processes that keep

us alive. The malfunction of any of these processes can result in disease. The diagnosis and treatment

of disease can be improved by analyzing such networks. These networks are large and complex. The

fact that they interact makes the problem of analyzing then even more challenging. But as computer

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processing power and memory capacity have grown and the Internet has become a resource for

collecting and sharing medical and biological data, it has become possible to carry out meaningful

analysis pf even large human biological networks. The key to this is the development of network

models and algorithms to work with them. A network is a graph with nodes and edges that have

properties associated with them. These properties include capacity, reaction time, failure probability,

and functionality. The nodes represent components of a (biological) process; the edges represent

relationships among nodes.

A network that describes a process is called a network model. In the talk the authors present

several network models for relationships among diseases and metabolic functions, including both

chemical and genetic processes. We will then describe algorithm and data structures that we have

used to analyze specific problems. If a graph contains two distinct types of nodes and all edges go

between nodes in one set and nodes in the other, it is a bigraph. If there is an edge between every pair

of nodes in a part of the graph (subgraph), we call this subgraph a clique. If, furthermore, the graph is

bipartite, we refer to the subgraph as biclique. Cliques represent a very strong relationship among its

nodes. In the worst case, it is computationally very difficult to identify all cliques or bicliques in a

network. We present an efficient algorithm for finding all bicliques in real networks and show results

on a network with roughly 2000 nodes where two sets of nodes represent diseases and metabolic

functions.

A graph may contain subgraphs with identical structures, i.e., the nodes in one subgraph are

connected in the same way as the nodes in another. Such collections of subgraphs are called motifs.

Motifs indicate similarities in the relationships among nodes in one set with relationship in the other.

The motifs may match only topologically, i.e., we can match the nodes in one set to the nodes in the

other set and the connectivity among the nodes is the same in both cases. If the properties of the

nodes and edges involved also match, then there is functional similarity as well as a structural one.

Again, in the worst case, it is computationally difficult to find all motifs in a network or collection of

networks. We present an algorithm for finding motifs in a network or collection of networks> We

present an algorithm for finding motifs in actual networks representing gene interactions that take

place in different organisms. This allows us to identify biological similarities among organisms

involved. (Attended by 21 guests and 13 IEEE members.)

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Speakers: Prof Aaron Kershcnbaum earned his PhD degree from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

His professional career started at Network Analysis Corporation (NAC) where he worked on

ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. Later, he returned to join the faculty of the Poly and helped

to establish the New York State Center for Advanced Technology in telecommunications. During his

time in Poly he supervised 34 PhD theses. He then joined IBM Research where he worked on network

optimization, software security, and natural language processing. In 2008, he retired from IBM.

Endowed with tremendous energy Dr. Kershenbaum did research at Columbia University School of

Public Health and the University of Pennsylvania Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

He is currently a part-time Research Professor at Drexel School of Medicine.

Prof Bob Schiaffino earned his PhD degree in computer science from Poly, New York under the

mentorship of Prof Kershenbaum. The pair later developed the theory and practice of studying

diseases through the eyes of a network analyst. Schiaffino is a a professor of computer science and

Iona College, New Rochelle, NY.

The problem!

Professors Aaron Kershenbaum

and Bob Schiaffino

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5 November 2018

Recent Developments in Graph Databases

Sponsor: IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Chapter in New York

Abstract:

The Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) NY Section Chapter hosted a lecture by Christina Schweikert,

Ph.D. In this talk, Dr. Schweikert first gave a background on graph databases and the advantages they have in

comparison with traditional relational database management systems in terms of data representation and

query efficiency. Of the NoSQL type databases, graph databases have an advantage when the data to be

modeled is of a network type structure. In addition, graph alogorithms can be applied to discover paths and

properties of the network. We also discussed case studies for using graph databases in industry ranging from

fraud detection to recommendation engines and data management. Neo4j was demonstrated as a sample graph

database implementation. (There were 28 attendees, 4 of which are IEEE members.)

Speaker: Christina Schweikert, Ph.D. Dr. Schweikert is an associate professor at St. John’s

University, Queens, New York.

Prof Frank Hsu, chair of CIS NY and Prof Christina Schweikert

A group photo taken after Prof. Schweikert’s presentation

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16 November 2018

Intelligent IoT – 3rd Platform

Sponsored by NY Chapters of IEEE SMC Society, ComSoc,

Cybernetics Soc, Education Committee and IEEE Students’ Branch at LIU

Abstract: Not available

Speaker: Dr. Shu-Ping Chang, Software Development Manager, AI Engineering, IBM Thomas J.

Watson Center, Yorktown Heights, New York.

20 November 2018

Do you Have a Social Security Benefits Strategy?

Sponsors: IEEE PES &IAS NY Chapters,

Speaker: Robert Leitner, CFP, RIA

Many Americans think Social Security is simple and straightforward, often it is not. Just recently, the

bipartisan budget act made some significant changes to Social Security laws about claiming retirement

and spousal benefits.

Making a mistake when selecting your benefit option can cost tens of thousands of dollars over the

course of retirement. Consequently, it’s a good idea to talk with experts in the field, gather the

information you need, and make informed benefits decisions.

**********************************************************************************************

29 November through 1 December 2018

WIE Forum East IEEE Region 1 (Professional Development) Conference

The conference was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains, NY. The IEEE Women in

Engineering (WIE) Forum USA East is dedicated to inspiring and empowering women in technology.

For more information see < http://www.sites.ieee.org/wie-forum-usa-east >. 185 people registered

for this event. This included sponsors, speakers and committee members. This professional

development conference was very successful and received many positive responses from attendees.

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24 IEEE NY Monitor, Vol. 65, No. 9

Important links www.ieee.org

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/ https://ny-ieee-smc.weebly.com/

Request to chairs of all NY Section Chapters and Affinity Groups:

If you happen to have a website please let us know the URL and we’ll give links to those sites. Thank you.