February From The Chair

Hello to all members of the IEEE in the Hampton Roads Section. I will be your chairman for this upcoming year. I am excited to serve you in this capacity. I work at Norfolk Naval Shipyard as a Nuclear Engineer although my degree is in Electrical Engineering from Old Dominion University. My first order of business is to thank Kurt Clemente for serving as Hampton Roads Section Chair for the past two years. Kurt brought many items to the table that we worked on as your Executive Committee, but I believe the biggest one is the requirement for continuing education for professional engineers. Our technical talks fit the requirement for continuing education. As chairman for the section it is my goal that the executive committee of the Hampton Roads Section supports you in this requirement for maintaining your license as a professional engineer. I know that this is one of the foremost ideas that Kurt mentioned in the executive meetings, in fact I cannot remember an executive meeting over the past two years in which this topic was not discussed. Once again, thank you Kurt for your service over the past two years.
Secondly, I want to congratulate the winners of our Student Paper presentation held in January at Christopher Newport University. One of the many topics that is discussed in executive committee is how can we get more involved with the student groups. I realize that it will be difficult but not overwhelming. In addition, the executive committee is looking at how we conduct the student paper presentation as turnout has been lower than expected.
The Section will be celebrating it’s 50th anniversary in 2011. I will be forming an ad hoc committee that will be developing the program for this event. My plan is to meet outside of executive committee and the normal technical program to work on this. This ad hoc committee will be open to all members, especially any member who has event planning experience. I would like to have at least 4 additional members for the committee. Please contact me directly if you are interested in helping. We will be providing a report to the executive committee. Our February technical meeting will be on UHF Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems and will be held at Al Fresco’s in Newport News. Dr. Reddy, a Hampton Roads Senior Member of the IEEE, is actively involved in combining the technology of UHF RFID with computational electromagnetic tools, thereby increasing the range of the system. In March, we are planning a technical program on generators. We are open for April and if anyone has an idea for a program, please contact the Vice-Chairman, Greg Hodges, as he will be setting up the technical programs. May is our family social and there has been discussion of having the program coincide with Jefferson Labs open house.
I am looking forward to meeting everyone in February.
Regards,
James Bolitho
2009 Chair
Hampton Roads Section

jbolitho@ieee.org