Chapter News

SSCS Chapters Chairs Confer

Fu Li, IEEE Region 6 Chapter Coordinator, spoke at the third annual SSCS lunch for Chapter Chairs held during the ISSCC. Attending were 20 representatives from SSCS chapters and five additional SSCS AdCom leaders. Li's presentation was timely, as the third week of February is the deadline for chapters and sections to report their activities to the IEEE Regional Activities office. He reminded chapters that their L31 meeting reports are used to determine financial rebates to sections. All chapters are allocated $180 through their IEEE sections. Chapters were reminded to request those funds from their sections to help with events and projects.

Seven chapters presented highlights of their year-long activities; Japan, Korea, Dallas, Ireland, Shariff University Student Chapter, Toronto, and Taiwan. Activities organized by chapters included:

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Chairs of SSCS chapters from the head of the table clockwise: Jan Van der Spiegel (Chair of the Chapters Committee), Christer Svensson (Chair of the Distinguished Lectures Program), next to the waiter is Dr. Katsuro Sasaki (Vice Chair of Japan Chapter), Dr. Tsuneo Tsukahara (Treasurer of Japan Chapter), Moon Key Lee (Chair of Seoul Chapter), Kwang Sun Yoon (Secretary of Seoul Chapter), Michael Peter Kennedy (Chair of Ireland Chapter), and facing the camera is Zhihua Wang (Chair of Beijing Chapter). Standing in profile and greeting a Chapter Chair is SSCS President Bruce Wooley.

New Distinguished Lecturers

Since the Chapters Chairs meeting in February, three new Distinguished Lecturers have been named: Vojin G. Oklobdzija of UC Davis, Dick Hester of Texas Instruments, and Massoud Pedram of UCLA. SSCS Distinguished Lecturers have recently been hosted by the University of Michigan; Polytechnic of Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain; TIMA Laboratory, Grenoble, France; and chapter meetings in Toronto and Montreal. Details of Distinguished Lecture topics are online at www.sscs.org/DL  or by autoretrievable email from info.distlec.ssc@ieee.org.

Joint ED/SSC Student Chapter Establishment at the University of Tehran: A Step Toward Integrity

Ali Khakifirooz, Interim Chair, ED/SSC Student Chapter
khaki@mtl.mit.edu

Established in 1996, the University of Tehran's IEEE Student Chapter has played a major role in introducing the Institute's premier goals to Iranian academics. Our student branch has held a number of successful workshops alongside the normal activities, and this has led to enthusiasm among the students to arrange such activities in student chapters. We also had weekly seminars on microelectronics presented by graduate students and faculty members and were honored to have several excellent lectures by Prof. Kenneth R. Laker (former president, IEEE), Prof. M. Pedram of USC, Dr. G. G. Shahidi of IBM, Prof. A. Hajimiri of Caltech, Profs. A. Nathan and M. I. Elmasry of U. Waterloo, Prof. J. D. Meindl of Georgia Tech, and Dr. F. Assaderaghi of IBM. One of the main programs that motivated our branch to establish a joint ED/SSC Student Chapter was the involvement of branch members in organizing the 12th International Conference on Microelectronics (ICM 2000), technically cosponsored by the EDS.

In addition to the students' interest, the impressive quality of the research being conducted in our labs has developed an atmosphere in which every individual is encouraged to contribute ideas. Establishing a student chapter simply directs such contributions and lets us gain experience from our peers worldwide and to share our experiences with them.

We know that the first year of a student branch is very critical to its development. Therefore, we have an detailed plan to continue our weekly seminars, to start research projects for undergraduate students, to coorganize the 4th Iranian Student Conference on Electrical Engineering (ISCEE'01), to increase the technical knowledge of the students by presenting conference videotapes and web casts, to plan Distinguished Lecturers programs, and to start a promotional campaign to recruit new Society members. I would like to thank the faculty and my friends who made this possible, and I am looking forward to their continued support. I would also like to acknowledge the invaluable support and encouragement of EDS and SSCS Chapter Chairs and officers.

Special thanks goes to our Chapter Vice Chair, Ms. Mahnaz Maddah, who is managing the activities during my leave of absence at MIT.

Dallas Meetings

Spring 2001 speakers at the Dallas Chapter included Dr. Paul Yu, "A 14b 40MSample/s pipelined ADC with DFCA," and Jan Van der Spiegel, "Biologically inspired vision sensors." Using the CD recording of the ISSCC 2000 Short Course at one chapter meeting, attendees listened to one of the conference speakers, Dr. Allen Podell, speak on "The lowdown on low noise amplifiers."

Germany Chapter

Holger Blume, Chapter Chair
blume@eecs.rwth-aachen.de

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Board members of the SSCS Germany Chapter met on 2 February 2001 during the 25th Multi Project Chip Workshop in Aachen, Germany. (l-r) Prof. W. Bonath (Treasurer), Dr. K. Ayadi (Educational Activities), Dr. H. Blume (Chair), and Prof. Dr. K. Schmidt (Vice Chair).

Just starting its second year, the SSCS Germany Chapter is developing programs to serve its membership. In the winter of 2000, inspired by Prof. Dr. R. Jansen, the former Chair of the IEEE Germany Section, Holger Blume, senior engineer of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Systems (EECS) Department at Aachen Institute of Technology, RWTH Aachen, invited the 550 members of the Solid-State Circuits Society in Germany to participate in forming the first German SSCS chapter. Officers of the Chapter now come from many regions of Germany and different academic institutions and companies.

In its first year, the Germany Chapter started several activities. A weekly series of lectures and presentations entitled VLSI Architecture for Digital Signal Processing took place at the Aachen Institute of Technology. Organized by Holger Blume and Tobias Noll (Chair of the EECS Department), the series has included outstanding contributions by, for example:

Students of RWTH Aachen have participated in several excursions organized through the Chapter to semiconductor companies such as Infineon, Mitsubishi, and Nokia.

In February, Prof. Dr. K. Schmidt from the University of Applied Sciences in Furtwangen (Chapter Vice Chair) and Prof. Dr. K. Bonath from the University of Applied Sciences Giessen (Chapter Treasurer) coorganized the 25th Multi Project Chip Workshop in Baden-Württemberg. This semiannual workshop is now a cooperative event of the SSCS Chapter and the MPC (Multi-Project-Chip Group).

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