Abstract: Aging electrical wiring has been identified as an area of critical national and international concern. Faults in aircraft wiring have been implicated in a number of severe aircraft incidents including the TWA800 and SwissAir111 crashes. Electrical wiring is the number one cause of home and building fires, and is responsible for numerous incidents in consumer product safety, photovoltaic systems, vehicular safety/reliability, safety of nuclear facilities, reliability of power distribution systems and communication systems, and others. What could possibly be so hard about finding these electrical faults? This lecture describes the real-world challenges in electrical systems – live signals, switching systems, grounding and moisture, vibration, and more. We’ll talk about how electromagnetics, signal processing, artificial intelligence, chip and hardware design all merge to create new sensors that can detect and locate faults in critical systems. In particular, I’ll describe the development and use of spread spectrum time domain reflectometry (SSTDR) for finding faults on live electrical systems. Using a tiny pseudo-noise (PN) code similar to your cell phone or GPS signal, SSTDR hides within the noise margin of existing signals, enabling continuous monitoring and location of very hard-to-find intermittent faults. And along with SSTDR came a very broad family of broadband reflectometry systems and algorithms for analysis of the reflection signatures, which we’ll discuss. And what is coming next? It turns out that the same reflectometry methods used to detect, locate, and diagnose faults can also measure complex impedance, which is what a vector network analyzer (VNA) is very good at. But spread spectrum can do it live (energized), in electrically noisy environments, and can control the signal to noise ratio to find very small changes in impedance. Along with the technical journey, I’ll also describe my entrepreneurship journey as we took this exciting research off the bench and into the real world. Today SSTDR is used in aircraft manufacturing, handheld electrical testing, undersea cable testing, and has recently been approved for installation on Network Rail systems (UK). But our work is not done. Electrical systems are complex and varied, and some very gnarly problems remain. I’ll share a vision for the future, and some ideas about what it will take to get there. Speaker(s): Dr. Cynthia M. Furse, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/379068

The Montreal Chapters of the IEEE Control Systems (CS) and Systems, Man & Cybernetics (SMC) cordially invite you to attend the following in-person talk given by Dr. Juan Ren, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University. Co-sponsored by: Concordia University Speaker(s): Dr. Juan Ren, Room: EV002.184, Bldg: EV Building, Concordia University , Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3G 1M8

This workshop will enable you to feel confident in asking for the compensation you deserve. We cover everything from how to navigate asking your manager for more money, to what you should be looking for before signing a new employment contract. We leave time for group discussion and Q&A to ensure all your questions are answered. This workshop is led by Jillian Climie, who has spent her career in executive compensation, and Sophie Warwick, who specializes in developing in-house gender equity policies and chairing Employee Resource Groups. Speaker(s): Jillian Climie, Sophie Warwick Agenda: Key takeaways: - What compensation & benefits are appropriate to push on (beyond salary). - How compensation decisions are made within employers. - What you should and shouldn’t use as a rationale for a pay increase. - The biases women face in negotiations, and how to work around them. - When you should be bringing up compensation, and how to frame the ask. Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/381008

The Montreal Chapters of the IEEE Control Systems (CS) and Systems, Man & Cybernetics (SMC) cordially invite you to attend the following in-person talk, to be given by Dr. Mae Seto, Professor at the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University. Co-sponsored by: Concordia University Speaker(s): Dr. Mae Seto Room: EV002.309, Bldg: EV Building, Concordia University , Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3G 1M8

R7 LMAG Executive Teleconference - MONTHLY MEETING Oakville, Ontario, Canada, L6H 2B1, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/385102