November 2010 From The Chair

The September presentation by Dr. Yoon of Norfolk State University was extremely interesting. He shared a video clip of a neural nano-probe that helped a violin player overcome a case of the shakes. The amazing thing was that the violin player was awake during the procedure, playing the violin. I recently had an aunt die from a grand mal seizure, so this kind of technology, if it could be applied to help people like my special aunt, would be a tremendous benefit to mankind. Probably the most exciting part of my evening was the tour of Norfolk State’s industrial sized cleanroom. The setup was very nice and big.

The October meeting, held with the Power and Energy Society Chapter, was also very enlightening. By some experts’ analysis, there is forty years of petroleum left on our planet if consumed at the current rate; less if the consumption rate increases. Fifty percent of all trips that we take in our vehicles are less than twenty miles in length, which is well within the distance covered by the capacity of an electric car’s battery. Charging the batteries is a different story. In Virginia, we are billed on our consumption, whereas other states actually have demand management. The timing to charge your car is different in Virginia than say in Maryland. Or to run your clothes dryer or whatever electrical load you have in your house.

In November, we will have our student paper presentation at Hampton University. I want to thank Dr. Nare and Hampton University for hosting this event for the section. Please come out and support our engineers of tomorrow.

We have not received any additional volunteers for the section officers other than Jason Naramore for Chairman and Mike Cooper as Vice-Chair. These are two fine individuals that I have had the opportunity to work with over the past two years. I feel very comfortable that the Section will be in fine hands with Jason and Mike. It is not too late to volunteer. We can combine the secretary and treasurer positions if we only get one volunteer or keep them separate if we get two volunteers. Please contact any section officer if you are interested in being an officer in the coming year

This will be my last section chair message. I want to thank my officers for their assistance for the past two years. I have been richly rewarded with the time that I have spent as your chair, well beyond the effort that I put in. I have met some really interesting people and I believe even more strongly today, that the Hampton Roads Section could be one of the best sections in the Region and in the entire IEEE organization; we have that much engineering diversity. But we have to go out and make it happen. It has been a little bit of a struggle for me over the past two years, between finishing my MBA and the surgeries that I had to endure, but if I had it to do all over again, I would once again volunteer to be an officer in our section. Thank you for all of your support and I look forward to seeing you all at the next meeting.

Regards,
James Bolitho
2010 Chair
Hampton Roads Section