INational Committee of Nano-Engineering (NCNE)

Presents:

“Nanotechnology work health and safety seminar”

6:00 pm Thursday 21th March 2013 

Engineers Australia 11 National Circuit, Barton,

More information here 

IEEE ACT Chapter & ANU Department of Engineering

Presents:

“Nanoparticles for energy conversion/storage and biolabelling”

A Seminar by Pro. Thomas Nann

10:00 am Tuesday 26th February 2013 

The Australian National University (ANU)

Seminar Room, RSPE Link , ANU

Abstract: Nanomaterials offer a range of interesting, mesoscopic properties that cannot be found in molecular or solid materials. These mesoscopic properties include (but are not limited to) improved catalytic efficiency, tuneable optical properties and altogether new effects that can be exploited for a whole range of applications. We will discuss different synthesis methods for a range of nanoparticles and their application in the fields of energy conversion and biolabelling. A special emphasis of the presentation will be on nanomaterials in the context of artificial photosynthesis.

Short biography: Professor Thomas Nann is Associate Director of the Ian Wark Research Institute and Director of the South Australian node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility. A chemist by training, Thomas' career began at the University of Freiburg, Germany, where he completed his PhD in electrochemistry. He then commenced his independent work on the synthesis, characterisation and functionalisation of nanomaterials in Freiburg, where he was awarded his habilitation in 2004. In 2006 he accepted an appointment to the Chair of Nanosciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK which he held for almost four years. Since June 2010, Thomas has been a Research Professor at the Ian Wark Research Institute at UniSA. In 2011 he was awarded one of the prestigious ARC Future Fellowships. Thomas' current research interests are focussed on the synthesis, characterisation and application of functional nanomaterials and their application in the areas of energy, health and catalysis. He has a track record of fundamental research on these topics which is documented by numerous publications in high ranking journals. Furthermore, he has successfully supervised PhD and PostDoctoral students, concluded many industrial collaborative projects, holds several patents and is a member on editorial boards of scientific journals.

IEEE ACT Section web pages are at http://www.ieeeact.org/

IEEE ACT Chapter Electron Devices and Photonics Societies & ANU Department of Electronic Materials Engineering

Presents:

“UICA and IVA: Theory, Connections and Applications to fMRl Analysis”

A Lecture by Pro. Tulay Adali, PhD 

11:00 am to 12:00 pm Friday 25th January 2013 

The Australian National University (ANU)

Seminar Room, A-105, ANU RSISE ( Research School of Information and Engineering)

RSVP by email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by 20 January 2013

Lecture Content:

Data-driven methods are based on a simple generative model and hence can minimize the assumptions on the nature of data. They have emerged as promising alternatives to the traditional model-based approaches in many applications where the underlying dynamics are hard to characterize. Independent component analysis (ICA), in particular, has been a popular data-driven approach and an active area of research. Starting from a simple linear mixing model and imposing the constraint of statistical independence on the underlying components, ICA can recover the linearly mixed components subject to only a scaling and permutation ambiguity. It has been successfully applied to numerous data analysis problems in areas as diverse as biomedicine, communications, finance, geophysics, and remote sensing.

This talk reviews the fundamentals and properties of ICA, and provides a unified view of two main approaches for achieving ICA, those that make use of non-Gaussianity and second-order statistics. Then, the generalization of ICA for analysis of multiple datasets, independent vector analysis (IVA), is introduced and the connections between ICA and IVA are highlighted, in particular in the way both approaches make use of signal diversity. Several key problems for achieving a successful decomposition, such as matrix optimization and density matching are discussed as well, along with examples of their application to medical image analysis.

Speaker Biography:

Tulay Adali received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1992 and joined the faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, the same year where she currently is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. She has held visiting positions at rieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, Paris, France,  Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark, Katholieke Universiteit,  Leuven, Belgium, and University of Campinas, Brazil.

Prof. Adali assisted in the organization of a number of international conferences and workshops including the IEEE International Conference on
Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), the IEEE International Workshop on Neural Networks for Signal Processing (NNSP), and the IEEE
International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP). She was the General Co-Chair, NNSP (2001--2003); Technical Chair, MLSP
(2004--2008); Program Co-Chair, MLSP (2008 and 2009), 2009 International  Conference on Independent Component Analysis and Source Separation;
Publicity Chair, ICASSP (2000 and 2005); and Publications Co-Chair, ICASSP 2008.

Prof. Adali chaired the IEEE Signal Processing Society's MLSP Technical  Committee (2003--2005, 2011--2013), served on the SPS Conference Board (1998--2006), and the Bio Imaging and Signal Processing Technical Committee (2004--2007). She was an Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2003--2006), IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (2007--2013),  IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Signal Processing (2010-2013), and  Elsevier Signal Processing Journal (2007--2010). She is currently serving on the  MLSP and Signal Processing Theory and Methods Technical Committees, and  the Editorial Boards of the IEEE Proceedings and Journal of Signal Processing  Systems for Signal, Image, and Video Technology.

Prof. Adali is a Fellow of the IEEE and the AIMBE, and the recipient of a 2010 IEEE  Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award and an NSF CAREER Award. She is an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer for 2012 and 2013.  Her research interests are in the areas of statistical signal processing, machine learning for signal processing, and biomedical data analysis.

IEEE ACT Section web pages are at http://www.ieeeact.org/

IEEE ACT Chapter Electron Devices and Photonics Societies & ANU Department of Electronic Materials Engineering

Presents:

“Ultra-High Capacity Optical Transmission Systems”

A Lecture by LAndrew Ellis, PhD, Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Photonics Society

2:00 pm Friday 7th December 2012 with refreshments at 1:50 pm

The Australian National University (ANU)

Seminar Room, ANU Cockcroft/Oliphant Link Building 58d, Mills Road

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Lecture Content:

With the remorseless growth in demand for telecommunication services, the capacity of optical fiber links first exceeded the capabilities of electronics, requiring the introduction of wavelength division multiplexing, and is now approaching a fundamental limit. This limit is due to a trade-off between the familiar Shannon limit at low signal powers, and nonlinear effects at high powers. Before considering the implications of the capacity crunch when demand finally hits this limit, this lecture will review the technological achievements which took the industry from its first commercial service with the Dorset (UK) police in 1975 through to the 10 Tbit/s systems of today.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Andrew Ellis was born in Underwood, England in 1965 and gained a BSc in Physics with a minor inmathematics from the University of Sussex, Brighton, England in 1987. He was awarded his PhD in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from The University of Aston in Birmingham, Birmingham, England in 1997 for his study on All Optical Networking beyond 10 Gbit/s.

He previously worked for British Telecom Research Laboratories as a Senior Research Engineer investigating the use of optical amplifiers and advanced modulation formats in optical networks and the Corning Research Centre as a Senior Research Fellow where he led activities in high speed optical component characterization.

Currently, he heads the Transmission and Sensors Group at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland, where he is also a member of the Department of Physics, University College Cork. He is also an adjunct Professor of Electronic Engineering at Dublin City University, and a founder of the Dublin based start-up Pilot Photonics. He research interests include all optical OFDM, optical and electrical signal processing, the mechanisms limiting capacity in optical communication systems, and the application of photonics to sensing.

Dr. Ellis is a member of the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Engineering Technology, and is a Chartered Physicist. He is an Associate Editor of Optics Express and acts as a reviewer for IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, Photonics Technology Letters and Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics. He has published over 150 journal papers and over 24 patents in the field of Photonics. 

IEEE ACT Section web pages are at http://www.ieeeact.org/

IEEE Aerospace & Electronic Systems Society and  IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society ACT&NSW Chapter

Presents:

“NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE”

A Lecture by Larry Chasteen, PhD, Distinguished Lecturer of the AESS

3:30-4:30 pm Friday 23 November 2012 with refreshments at 3:00 pm

Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA)

Lecture Theatre 10, Blue Block 32 Canberra

RSVP by email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by 20 November 2012

Lecture Content:

The Bush Administration made major changes to the National Missile Defense (NMD) system

that had been developed earlier by the Clinton Administration and established a limited system

in Alaska to counter threats from North Korea. But even with the new emphasis on anti-terrorism

and closer relations with Russia, NMD was still a very controversial topic as seen with the U.S.

proposal to install parts of the Missile Defense System in Europe for protection against Iran. The

European proposal had negative impacts on the US/Russia relations during the later years of the

Bush Administration. The Obama administration is trying to mend relations with Russia by taking a

new look at the system proposed for Europe.

The NMD program will continue to be a key technical and policy issue facing the U.S. and the rest

of the world. The Bush Administration focused more on testing and developing new equipment

for the NMD system and also investigated a wider variety of sensors (such as space-based and

sea-based systems) to detect incoming missiles. The Obama Administration developed a phased

adaptive approach to NMD – develop advanced capabilities but install the new equipment only

when the threat required the new systems.

This talk will provide background information on the policy issues facing NMD. It will also provide

technical information on the major systems developed by the Bush Administration. The talk will

also provide system engineering details on the proposed elements of the system that have been

developed by the Obama Administration and are being installed in Europe. Several videos will be

used to explain these topics.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Larry Chasteen was the 1998 Dallas IEEE Section Chair and received the IEEE 3rd Millennium

Medal for his service to the IEEE. He was also a 2000 IEEE Congressional Fellow and worked

on the National Missile Defense Program for the US Congress. He had previously worked 25

years in the defense industry for Texas Instruments and Raytheon specializing in radar and smart

weapons. He also served in the Viet Nam War as a USAF B-52 pilot and retired from the USAF

Reserves in 2000 with the rank of Colonel. He now teaches Strategy and Entrepreneurship at

the University of TX at Dallas. His research concerns evolving technical communities and their

clustering. He was also a Fulbright Professor to Germany in 2006 and a science advisor at the

State Department in 2007.

UNSW Canberra (ADFA) map is the next page

IEEE ACT Section web pages are at http://www.ieeeact.org/

From Wireless to Astronomy: Lessons from an Engineering Career

Abstract

The wireless revolution in progress has produced dramatic changes in our work and social activities. The speaker, Dr Bird, was fortunate to have witnessed first-hand some of the wireless research that caused some of these changes. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s he participated in a project that aimed to achieve the then ten times the current data rate for indoor wireless local area networks. Earlier he was involved in the AUSSAT second generation satellite system design that at the time pioneered the use of CAD for satellite antennas. Read more...

Model Based Systems Engineering Approach to Tactical Information Exchange Joint Capability Modelling

Abstract

The Defence Tactical Information Exchange (TIE) environment is more than just a collection of communications hardware. The TIE domain requires skilled personnel and supporting systems to raise, implement, maintain and operate Tactical Data Link (TDL) networks. Hence, this domain can be viewed as a joint enabling capability. To ensure the effective integration of TDLs in joint operations, a systems approach was used to develop a joint capability model of a Multi-Tactical Data Link Network. This model identifies generic roles, activities and interactions, exhibiting specific patterns relevant to this type of joint capability, adding to the domain knowledge of TDLs in the context of joint operations.

DSTO’s Joint Operations Division employed a Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methodology to develop a generic and executable TIE joint capability model. The model allows solution independent identification of functional requirements for this increasingly complex domain and provides a supporting knowledge repository and information model. This generic model is a resource that can be used by projects introducing new or integrating with existing data network architectures.

This paper discusses the tailored methodology employed by the DSTO team to develop the generic TIE joint capability model as well as how the team intend to use the model in delivering support to capability development and operational C4ISR integration.

Bio of Daniel Gillespie

Daniel Gillespie. Daniel Gillespie currently works in the Joint Systems Research discipline of Joint Operations Division. He is a former serving member of the Royal Australian Air Force and joined the Department of Defence as a public servant in 2000. He has worked in a variety of roles including hardware engineering, reliability analysis, weapons systems, radar and RF signals processing and analysis. He received his Masters in Systems Engineering from the University of New South Wales in 2010 and is currently undertaking a Masters in Science (Operations Research and Statistics).

Time: From 5 pm, Thursday 24 November 2011

Location: Research School of Physics and Engineering Building 60, Mills Road, Australian National University

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The IEEE ACT Section will be holding a BBQ and its annual general meeting on 24 November 2011.

The schedule is:

5:00 pm onwards : arrival to ANU / RSPE, Link Room, drinks available

5:45 pm: BBQ

6:30 pm: AGM meeting with elections

6:30 pm: Entertainment for family

7:30 – 8:00 End

Signal Processing for Satellite Navigation

When: 20 October 2011 at 11:00am

Where: Research School of Information Science and Engineering

Presenter: Pr. Andrew Dempster, University of New South Wales.

Abstract:

This talk aims to summarize the areas where UNSW is carrying out signal processing research in satellite navigation. These topics include: processing of new signals; acquisition and tracking; dealing with multipath, cross-correlation and interference; and using GPS for remote sensing. Read more...