Tuesday, April 9, 2013 |

TechNews

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UTSAV GANDHI

3

Main campus plays host to Build-It Competition, CAURS, AIAA events

Utsav Gandhi
CAMPUS EDITOR

Saturday, 6 April 2013 was a very
busy day on the IIT main campus, with a
host of largeescale events planned alongside
the culmination of Greek Week and Preview
weekend: Primarily organized and coordinate
ed by students, the fantastic weather allowed
the events to run along smoothly and visitors
to leave with a positive and successful learning
experience

Armour College of Engineering (in
partnership with the Themes Student Council)
and the IIT Chapter of Tau Beta Pi organized
the first ever IIT Buildeit Competition: An Ime
promptu Design Competition from 8:30am to
3:00pm: This design competition was an ap
plied science competition where teams come
peted against each other to design and build
the best solution to an engineering problem
using the materials provided:

More than 70 high school students

from 8710 different high schools in the area
were present to test out their budding design
and engineering skills: The materials provided
were simple daily items like clothes pins, paper
clips, balloons, pencils, plastic spoon, straws,
PlayeDoh, rubber bands and tin foil: The event
marked the culmination of months of plan,
ning on behalf of the TBP President, Luis An,
gelo Larco: Participants were treated to a lunch
in the Commons and parents were also given
an architectural tour of the campus: The event
concluded with a successful design testing of
the models created in Siegel Hall and a pre
sentation about inspiring students to pursue
STEM education:

The Idea Shop was host to the an,
nual American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics (AIAA) Region III (Midwest
regional) conference which provided an op,
portunity for students from universities in the
Midwest to come together and share the latest
research and developments in the aerospace
and aeronautics fields: There was some great
competition as students presented papers for

cash prize incentives:

The conference also provided stue
dents an opportunity to network with experts
in the field and peers as well as practice their
public speaking skills: In connection to AIAA’s
mission (“to sponsor student conferences in
each AIAA Region as a means to encourage
students in aerospace related fields to discuss
research, exchange knowledge and generate
interest in the field of aerospace engineering”);
papers were presented in different category:
undergraduate, graduate, team, freshman/
sophomore and student branch outreach:

Finally, Hermann Hall was also host
to the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research
Symposium (CAURS), the premier research
presentation and networking event founded
in 2005 to ‘promote, encourage, and celebrate
the efforts and dedication of undergraduate
students conducting research at institutions in
and around the Chicagoland area’: Organized
as a daylong, studentemanaged event, the an,
nual research symposium event follows a mode
el that offers a unique blend of networking,

event management and minimal financial or
administrative costs to partnering institutions
The daylong event consisted of two poster ses
sions (morning and evening) featuring all stue
dent participants, as well as oral presentations
from students selected to give 107minute talks:

In addition, a dedicated time for
postereviewing, a networking session with
graduate school representatives, and informal
roundtable discussions with various other aca
demic and industry representatives provided
students ample opportunity to discover the
work being done by their peers and to net,
work The event concluded in the evening with
dinner, a keynote address from a distinguished
researcher from one of the CAURS member
institutions and an awards ceremony recognize
ing the achievements of the day’s outstanding
presenters: Judged by graduate students and
faculty members, the event also saw conversae
tions on topics such as underrepresented mi,
norities in science, the graduate/professional
school application process, internships and
stepping into academia:

ECE Seminar Series presents engineer Juin J. Liou

Swasti Khuntia
LAYOUT EDITOR

The search for Electrical and Come
puter Engineering Department Chair contine
ued this past week wherein Dr: Juin J: Liou
of University of Central Florida delivered his
talk and fought for his candidacy It was also
a part of the Seminar Series of ECE Depart,
ment organized on Friday, April 5 2013: The
lecture was hosted by Dr: Vincent T Turitto,
Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Die
rector of Pritzker Institute of Biomedical Sci,
ence and Engineering

Juin J: Liou received the BS: (hone
ors), MS, and PhD: degrees in electrical
engineering from the University of Florida,
Gainesville in 1982, 1983 and 1987 respece
tively In 1987 he joined the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering at the
University of Central Florida (UCF), Ore
lando, Florida where he is now the Pegasus
Distinguished Professor and UCFEAnalog
Devices Fellow His current research interests

are Micro/Nanoelectronics ComputereAided
Design, RF device modeling and simulation
and electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection
design and simulation

Dr: Liou holds 8 US: patents (3
more filed and pending) and has published 9
books, more than 250 journal papers (includ
ing 17 invited review articles), and more than
200 papers (including 84 keynote and invited
papers) in international and national confer,
ence proceedings: He has been awarded more
than $110 million of research contracts and
grants from various federal agencies (viz,
NSF, DARPA, Navy, Air Force, NASA, NIST),
the state government, and the industry (viz,
Semiconductor Research Corp, Intel Corp,
Intersil Corp, Lockheed Martin, etc:), and
has held consulting positions with research
laboratories and companies in the United
States, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore:
In addition, Dr: Liou has served as a technical
reviewer for various journals and publishers,
as a general chair or technical program chair
for a large number of international confer,
ences, as a regional editor (in USA, Canada

TEDxIIT prepares for main event

Shreeyeh Rajan
TECHNEWS WRITER

With just one week to go, the whole
TEDxIIT team has been all over the place:
Whether it’s deciding what posters to go up
on the main event, what food to buy, or what
should the volunteers do on Saturday, things
have been rather busy

We had one of our two volunteer
sessions on April 4, 2013 and it went great:
While some of them opted to be speaker bud,
dies, the others were perfectly fine with help,
ing out in setting up, ushering and cleaning up:
With around 40 volunteers, the team’s getting
all the help we can: As Amy Lee Segami puts it,
“Volunteers help us in bringing the IIT com,
munity and the IIT alumni together, beyond
the borders of HT"

The volunteers showed so much
interest in being speaker buddies (an IIT stue
dent who assists the speaker the entire day): I
emailed all the volunteers on Thursday night
to select the speaker of their choice (if they
wanted to) and then I went to grab some dine
ner at the BOG: An hour later, I checked my
email to find 10 unread emails about speaker
buddies: The spots were taken in less than an

hour! I thank all the volunteers for taking part
in this event

The amount of interest that the vol,
unteers have been showing the past few days is
really contagious: We’re now more excited than
ever

The TEDxIIT event will be on April
13th 2013 starting from 9:30 am: until 6:00
pm: in the IIT Tower Auditorium: There are
limited seats so start applying now! The link to
apply for the event is:

https://docs.google.com/
forms/d/lkBuSeyZI/IFC66WN2N97P6KId1/dqxe
QVFcGovchMéWI/viewform?pli:1

Since it’s a full day event, will there
be food? Of course, we will have free breakfast,
free lunch and snacks: How many speakers will
be there? There will be 12 speakers including
faculty, aluan students and members noneafe
filiated to IIT What if I’m really interested but
I can’t make it? No problem: We will have live
streaming available on the TEDxIIT website:
http://mypages:iit:edu/~tedxiit/

So, tell your family, friends and
relatives from all over the world that they can
watch it on the website: It doesn’t matter if your
family is in India, if your friends are in Korea
or if your relatives are in Africa, tell them all:

Let’s be exponential!

 

and South America) of the Microelectronics
Reliability journal, and as a guest editor of 3
special issues of Microelectronics Reliability
and SolideState Electronics:

The presentation by Dr Liou had
three parts, namely, his background, research
activities and vision statement: After present,
ing his academic background, he presented an
overview of his ESD research activities: Start,
ing with the basics, Dr: Liou explained how
electrostatic discharge (ESD) is one of the
most prevalent threats to electronic compo,
nents: ESD is an event where a finite amount
of charge is transferred from one object (e:g:,
human body) to the other (e:g:, microchip):
This process can result in a very high current
passing through the microchip within a very
short period oftime:

More than 35% of chip damages
can be attributed to such an event: Citing the
high priority of ESD in the semiconductor
industry, he emphasized designing onechip
ESD structures to protect integrated circuits
against the ESD stress: The continuing scaling
of CMOS technology makes the ESDeinduced

failures even more prominent and one can
predict with certainty that the availability of
effective and robust ESD protection solutions
will become a critical and essential compo,
nent to the successful advancement and come
mercialization of the nextegeneration CMOS,
based electronics:

Talking about how to make IIT one
of the top schools, Dr: Liou said that he would
emphasize on three important components,
ie:, faculty, resources and leadership: Setting
a high goal, inspiring faculty members to be
passionate and proud of what they do, believe
ing that team work and interdisciplinary col,
laboration are critical components are just a
few components of his vision statement: He
stressed on value integrity, freedom and cree
ativity

Concluding his talk, Dr: Liou dis,
cussed how faculty research and scholarly
activities, closely correlated with graduate
education, can be amplified through relevant
collaboration and can respond to the needs of
a changing research scenario: The talk was at,
tended by ECE faculty members and students:

IEEE second general body meeting

Swasti Khuntia
LAYOUT EDITOR

IEEE@IIT organized their second
general body meeting of the Spring semester
on Thursday 4th April: The agenda of meeting
included discussion about projects funded by
IEEE, Teshirt design contest, election/nominae
tions for the executive board, upcoming com,
pany tours and IEEE spring barbeque: Kicking
off the meeting, George Williams, Secretary of
the Student’s Chapter, welcomed everyone at
the second meeting ofIEEE@IIT

The students were very enthusiastic
about the T7 shirt design contest: Around 10 de
sign nominations were shown to the audience,
and the winner would be awarded a whopping
$100 and the winning design would also be
printed: There are a few upcoming company
tours organized by IEEE@IIT The first one is
the ComEd West Loop Substation Tour, which
was organized Friday 5th April: There is also
another company tour to S&C Electric on 19th
April and the deadline to signeup is 15th April:
Moreover, possible future tours to companies
like Motorola Mobility, NokiaeSiemens Net,
works, GE are being discussed:

Discussing the projects that are
funded by IEEE, like Raspberry Pi, Quadcope
ter, the Mutitouch project, Guitar Amp and Are

dupilot, George asked the interested students
to attend the project meeting in the Galvin
Center at IIT Tower, 16thfloor on 11th April:
A video showcasing the Raspberry Pi project
was shown in the meeting too: Although the
design is not going to be the same as in video,
a general idea about what to do in the project
was easily inferred from the video:

Juan Wang, PhD scholar talked
about the Multitouch project that she will also
be responsible for heading: Showing avideo on
creating a Multitouch tablet, she said that the
project would have some similar design steps:
Interested students can still join any of the
projects by signing the online sheet created for
project participation, and attending the next
project meeting on 11th April:

The nominations for IEEE@IIT ex,
ecutive board were open till 7th April: Elece
tions will be held on 22nd April until 25thApe
ril, right before the next general meeting: Till
the election date, one can campaign for his/
her nominee: The IEEE Spring barbeque will
be held on 26th April at the Siegel Field, where
you have the opportunity to meet the new ex,
ecutive members as well interact with other
group members: All queries regarding IEEE@
IIT can be forwarded to ieee@iit:edu: Students
will be notified about upcoming events via e7
mail and Facebook group: