HIGHLIGHTS Created by: 2014 - 2015 IEEE Board
Vol. 2 - SPRING 2015
IEEE-UCR Quarterly Newsletter
Greetings everyone! It is now the spring quarter of this amazing year. IEEE-UCR has been given the opportunity to do some awesome things this year, from professional development to just bonding with one another. For some, our graduating seniors, it’s the last quarter of our college lives. The end of a chapter. But if we have learned from being in IEEE, it’s that we never stop learning. I’m going to miss this great bunch I call my IEEE family, because that is what we are a family. We are all going in separate directions after June. Some to enter industry and start our careers while others to continue their education. But I know we are leaving some awesome leaders behind to continue opening doors for the org and welcoming new members each day. We all hope to leave something for everyone to remember us by and here it is, this newsletter. Not all of our memories are in this newsletter but these are some of the greatest moments Project Updates that have been spent with the IEEE family.
In This Issue
So let’s look back at what we have done since our first newsletter because so much has happened since then. And let’s also meet those great leaders that are to continue growing this IEEE family and lead the next generation of members.
Merit Badge Day
Talks and Tours
Enjoy!
New Board Bios
Upcoming Events
- Rosalba Anzora, 2014-2015 Public Relations P.S. Congratulations Class of 2015! Great job on all the hard work you have done.
Spring Merit Badge Day - Volunteers and scouts
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Project Updates UAV The UAV is currently in its final phase of its development. By the end of the April all of our subsystems will be fully implemented and tested. Starting in May we will be conducting systems integration testing, as well as writing the technical journal and preparing for the safety briefing. In early March we passed the major milestone of conducting the successful test flight of our first full sized airframe prototype (Bison 1). Construction on Bison 2 is nearing completion and we should be conducting the first test flight on April 12th. Once that is completed we will take the lessons learned and begin production of the final competition airframe which is scheduled to be completed on May 3rd.
UAV Team
Micromouse
The Micromouse Robotics project is for students to design, build, and program a mobile robot from scratch and have the robot autonomously navigate, search, and solve an unknown 16x16 cell maze in the fastest time possible. UCR held an internal Micromouse Robotics competition on April 5th, which 7 teams competed in. The success of organizing and hosting this competition has brought considerable positive attention to the UC Riverside campus. As a result, IEEE at Also, we need help funding the transportation of the equip- UCR was nominated to host the IEEE Region 6 Southern ment and the team to Maryland for the competition. If you Meeting Micromouse and Student Design Competition, would like more information or would like to contribute which was previously held at UCLA. please go to the following link to see our campaign: http:// Currently, the UCR Micromouse Robotics teams are finishbit.ly/1ykGGlh. ing up hardware designing/building and have moved on to - Andrew Olguin, 2014-2015 UAV Coordinator software development. The software implementation is crucial to getting the robot to traverse and search through the maze. To do so, sensor feedback, motor control, as well as searching and mapping algorithms must be executed simultaneously. The successful flight of the competition airframe (The Flying Bison) will mark the beginning of system integration testing phase. We will start the testing by tuning the autopilot to the Flying Bison airframe and using Bison 2 for flight tests of the payload and communication systems. By June 1st we expect our Unmanned Aerial System to be fully tested and the team to be ready for flight operations.
The IEEE UCR teams will be competing with external universities at three competitions during this spring quarter: UCR Region 6 on May 2nd, UCLA AAMC on May 10th, and UCSD CAMM on May 17th. Best wishes to all the teams! - Rex Lu, 2014-2015 Robotics Coordinatior
Display Board The IEEE Display Board is an interactive slideshow that users can control with a Kinect. It gives
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people information about BCOE news, information about club meetings and events and even weather all updated in real-time. The project will become a permanent addition in the on campus cafe, Bytes, for anyone to use once completed. The students on the team are working with web based languages to make both the slides and to program the Kinect. The majority of students on the project are learning these languages from scratch. So far, we have finished half of the slides and are able to keep them updated in real-time using a database, various APIs, and a web crawler we also built. The end goal of this project is to have students learn new, useful programming languages and learn about fields such as web-design and computer vision. They also learn to work as part of a team to design and create a product from the ground up, and to make something to leave for people on campus to use years after they graduate. - Kashyap Krishna, 2015-2016 Display Board Coordinator
Electric Car Electric Car is a brand new project that started this quarter. Our goal is to build a car to compete in the Formula SAE Electric competition next year in Lincoln, Nebraska. We started recruiting to form a multidisciplinary team to design the electrical powertrain. As of now, we are undergoing the initial research stage. By the end of the quarter we aim to draw a proposal, which will include specs, simulation results, and a cost-benefit analysis. Using this proposal, we aim to raise funds and collaborate with SAE. - Sonya Ragothaman, 2015-2016 Electric Car Coordinator
3D Printer Talk After the presentation, Steven and John took us to see their 17-foot tall 3-D printer they brought all the way from Illinois. We had a great time learning about 3-D printers, seeing them in action and networking with some of the top dogs in the 3-D printing field. - Russell Perry, 2014-2015 Chair
Alumni Panel On February 3rd, 2015, we hosted our first Alumni Panel. We welcomed back alumni that had previously been on the IEEE board. The following attended: Eu-Jin Ooi (Class of 2014), Josh Morales (Class of 2014), Roben Van Dusen (Class of 2014), Rosemblim Lugo (Class of 2014), and Sean Chen (Class of 2013). All are electrical engineers working in the industry, except Josh who is attending Graduate School here at UCR. During the panel, each alum shared their experiences as undergrad. As well as, how they went about starting post grad life. While some applied for grad school others were applying for jobs and internships. Our members took this opportunity also to ask questions about how they chose to
Talks and Tours 3D Printer Talk On February 2nd 2015, IEEE@UCR and the IEEE Computer Society cohosted a talk by Steve Wygant & John Olafson from SeeMeCNC about the current filed of 3-D printing and where the field is heading. We had over 70 professionals and students attend the event. It was a great opportunity to learn about how the craze of 3-D printing started, who the major players are now, and what the field of 3-D printing will look like in a few years. We also learned about what technical skills it takes to design and build a 3-D printer.
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work in industry or go to grad school. The night ended well . Can’t wait for next year’s. - Rosalba Anzora, 2014-2015 Public Relations
Western Digital Tour Friday the 17th of April, saw students from IEEE@UCR visiting the headquarters of Western Digital in Irvine, Ca. Students from IEEE mingled with peers from Pomona, Long Beach and other universities from around the area. The Western Digital tour started with a panel of current employees of the company with various backgrounds. Panelists answered student questions on different aspects of working with Western Digital and their journey to get there. Following the panel, a tear down of a WD hard drive began along with a presentation and explanation of all the ways engineers and computer scientists come together to create such an intricate and essential device. The large group of students from a plethora of universities was then split up into groups of whichever form of production they were more interested in such as circuit board prototyping and manufacturing. Overall, it was an informative tour featuring enlightening views of the lives of current employees and a glimpse into the future for those who would now like to be. - Daniel Garcia, 2015-2016 Program Chair
Silicon Valley Trip
tions, like did he always think he would work for Google, how did he start his career at Google, and etc. He gladly answered all of our questions and told us so much about what it was like on a day to day basis at work. We ended our Friday having dinner in downtown Mountain View with UCR Alum, and former board member, Andrew Ong. He told us about his job at Raytheon and his post Grad life. And we caught him up with all we have been doing here at IEEE-UCR. Some of our new board was with us so they had the great opportunity to connect with a former board member and ask for advice for the year to come. On Saturday, April 25th, 2015, some of us got to attend the IEEE - Women in Engineering Career Fair in San Jose. It was a great opportunity to network and a chance to leave our resumes with some of the top companies in the industry. We also learned about some of the great benefits IEEE has to offer its national members. We ended our trip visiting the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. That was one place that everyone should visit when given the chance. It was amazing to see how much society has advanced, continues to advance, and soon we will be apart of that advancement as well. Apart from the great time everyone had on the tours, I think the best part was being able to bond with one another. I got to meet members that I hadn’t met before and got to know a few I had seen before a bit better. So thank you to everyone who was able to attend the trip and making it memorable.
This year we got to make the most epic trip IEEE has ever coordinated to Silicon Valley. Even though it was only for two - Rosalba Anzora, 2014-2015 Public Relations days, it was two days filled with exciting and adventurous fun! The trip started on April 24th, 2015 at 3am. Most of the members met up Friday morning to begin their 7 hour drive to the bay area, while some who left the day before eagerly awaited their arrival. We all were given the opportunity to tour Facebook, arranged by Brian Crites, which was AWESOME! We got to see how Facebook employees eat, play, and work. We had all heard of the great amenities Facebook employees have, but it is much different once you get to experience it. The have an on campus arcade with many different games. The one that got the most attention from most of us was FIFA. The also have a variety of restaurants where they get to eat for free. We got to stop at their Sweet Shop, where there is a wide selection of pastries, ice cream, and frozen yogurt. We ended our time at the Facebook HQ taking a selfie in front of there big like sign they have at the front of campus. We also got to tour Google right after Facebook. Some of us got lost at Google using Google Maps, which was pretty funny. We got to tour their visitor center, guided by UCR Alum Chris Manghane. We were able to ask him all kinds of ques-
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Outreach Merit Badge Day (Jan. 31 & Apr. 11) IEEE hosted our second Merit Badge Day of the school year on January 31st, 2015. Over a hundred boy scouts visited UCR and the Bourns College of Engineering to earn some merit badges and learn about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in the process. January’s event involved topics regarding Electricity, Electronics, and Digital Technology. Likewise, over a hundred boy scouts also attended our third Merit Badge Day, which was held on April 11th 2015, many of whom had attended the previous merit badge day. April saw scouts earning merit badges on Energy, Engineering, and Robotics. The events have been a great success with volunteers and scouts alike enjoying their time. Our Merit Badge Days have
successfully engaged boy scouts and retained their interest throughout. Our success can be attributed to our amazing and creative volunteers. - Daniel Garcia, 2015-2016 Program Chair
2015-2016 Board Chair Alberto Tam Yong "I'm very excited for the upcoming school year and working with the newly elected board. We have several IEEE projects, so I can't wait to see how much these teams grow; and I hope to see our IEEE family grow as well."
Vice Chair Jasmine Moreno “Becoming Vice Chair is very exciting. I cannot wait to contribute more to IEEE, and grow closer to the board. It is going to be a difficult position, but I know it will be a great learning experience.�
UAV Coordinator Brandon Lu
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Got Questions/ Comments?
Upcoming Events IEEE Region 6 Southern Area Meeting And Micromouse Competition
For General Information: ieeeucr@gmail.com For Project Information:
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Brandon Lu 2014-2015 Project Coordinator
DARPA Robotics Challenge
June 5-6, 2015
blu006@ucr.edu
Kevin Yang 2015-2016 Project Coordinator kyang014@ucr.edu
Interested in Guest Speaking, Giving a Technical Talk, Providing a Tour, or Donating to the UCR Student Branch Contact our Public Relations Officer: Rosalba Anzora ranzo001@ucr.edu Professional Development Officer: Cody Simons csimo005@ucr.edu
Thank you all for your time.
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