Maria Efthimiou


PES Day 2021 Webinar: Towards a Sustainable Energy Future

Dear colleagues and friends,

 

We would like to invite you to the IEEE PES day webinar hosted by the IEEE PES Student Branch Chapter at UoM and Women in Power in UK&I.

 

Webinar: PES Day 2021 Webinar: Towards a Sustainable Energy Future

Time: Thursday, 22nd April 2021, 15:00– 17:00 BST

Location: Online

 

We will have the pleasure to host three female leaders in the power and energy field, sharing their views on sustainability and the importance of societies such as the IEEE Power and Energy Society.

 

Talk 1: PES Women in Power Initiative Abstract The presentation will provide an overview of the IEEE/PES Women in Power (WIP) initiative. WIP fosters diverse leadership by supporting the career advancement, networking and education of women in the energy industry. The goal is not to simply increase the number of women in the industry but to promote women into leadership positions as well. The skills, networking and mentorship that are offered benefit women throughout the industry, whether they are students, engineers, attorneys, policy makers or accountants. WIP is not just for women. Everyone is welcome to join.

 

Biography of Dr Jessica Bian

Dr. Jessica Bian is the President-Elect of the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES). She was the PES Secretary from 2016 to 2019. She is a visionary leader and architect, has spearheaded electric industry’s reliability metrics and grid risk assessment. Currently, she is the Vice President of Grid Services at Grid-X Partners. Before that, she was with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Washington, DC. Previously, she was the Director of Performance Analysis at North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) in Atlanta, Georgia. Under her leadership, a total of 18 industry-wide reliability indicators were established to determine grid reliability, adequacy, and associated risks. She is widely recognized as a pioneer and trusted world leader in the field.

 

Talk 2: IEEE PES & Education Abstract Prof. Edvina Uzunovic will talk about IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) history and the current PES organizational structure. It is important to know how PES operates, the important committees and how it is structured, such that one can find an interest/benefit for herself/himself. In addition, Edvina will talk about the PES internet sites, PES University and PES Resource Center, and material that one can find there.

 

Biography of Prof Edvina Uzunovic

Prof. Edvina Uzunovic has over 20 years of experience in the power systems industry and academia. She was a vital contributor to the success of several leading power industry organizations, ranging from utilities to manufacturers. She fulfilled different roles as a Technical Officer, Senior Quantitative Analyst and Senior R&TD Engineer. In 2012, Edvina transitioned from industry to academia and is currently a Professor in the ECE department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Edvina has received several awards including first place at the IEEE PES Student Poster Contest in 1999; the EPRI Awards for 2002 Innovators and Technology Award for the contributions to the FACTS technology; and US National Committee of CIGRE Recognition Awards for noteworthy 2002 and 2006 CIGRE Technical papers.

 

Talk 3: Sustainable power grids Abstract The energy system is in a global transition towards a sustainable society. Resource efficiency and environmental concerns push towards change into the use of renewable energy resources and to optimize the energy usage. This transition has been motivated by climate and energy goals and a growth in energy needs. The United Nations adapted a resolution for a sustainable development with 16 goals until 2030 and the European Commission has launched the targets towards 2030 of at least 27% renewable energy in final energy consumption at European level. The electric power system is being modernized to enable this transition for a sustainable society. New power grid developments include possibilities and challenges with generation, delivery, and usage of electricity as an integrated part of the energy system. This involves new forms of usage of electricity, for example, for transportation and demand response, and to the updating of existing electricity infrastructures. For electricity generation, the trend is toward new large-scale developments like offshore wind farms, as well as small-scale developments like rooftop solar energy. At the same time digitalization of society is creating new opportunities for control and automation as well as new business models and energy related services. Another key area for developments is the circular economics, which results in a new dimension for the life cycle cost assessment for all technical systems. This presentation will provide a general discussion about the developments of the electric power system for a sustainable society. It will also highlight recent events including power capacity shortages in Sweden and the power loss incident in Texas.

 

Biography of Prof Lina Bertling Tjernberg

Prof. Lina Bertling Tjernberg is a Professor in Power Grid Technology at KTH the Royal Institute of Technology. She is the Director of the Energy platform and is the Coordinator of Life long learning at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her research and teaching are focused on developments of the future sustainable electric power grid with a special interest in reliability analysis, predictive maintenance and asset management. She is a Senior Member of IEEE and is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE PES. She has been the Chair of the Swedish PE/PEL Chapter (2009-2019) and has served in the Governing Board of IEEE PES (2012-2016). She has been an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid Technologies and chaired the first IEEE ISGT Europe Conference. She is involved as an advisor and expert in the Program Committee of the World Energy Council, the National Strategic Council for Wind Power, the ISGAN Academy of Smart Grid, the National Committee of CIRED, and she is part of the expert pool for the EU commission.

 

More info


IEEE Region 8 Today Call for Contributors Content

This is a Call for Contributors, for the IEEE Region 8 Today initiative which aims to be the voice of the IEEE R8 members.

A Contributor has the following very important role:

  • He or she is the one that creates the new content for the News Portal.
  • He or she is the contact person for all local members with the News Portal.
  • He or she is the one that collects the local news, translates them (if needed), and commits them to the platform.

The following skills are required and will be taken into account for the application evaluation:

  • Excellent use of English
  • Advanced writing skills (we need samples of your work and past experience)

The following skills are desired and will be taken into account for application evaluation:

  • Experience in WordPress article authoring
  • Enhanced communication skills

If you are interested in making your Section and Local Activities further known, then, you can apply to become an IEEE Region 8 Today Contributor, and have a chance to be the voice of your Section!

We need:

  • A biography brief
  • A letter describing why we should pick you as a contributor
  • At least two samples of your published articles
  • Recommendation letter from your Local Section

The above data will only be used for application evaluation and will not be shared.

Please send us your application by email at [email protected] by 30 March 2021.


IEEE SSIT Webinar Series

The IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology Webinar Series invites applications for Call for Student Outreach Volunteers. The IEEE SSIT Webinar Series is a pilot project activity of the Chapter’s Committee of IEEE SSIT. We are engaging with practising technologists and researcher to compile a series of interesting and engaging global webinars to facilitate understanding of the complex interaction between technology, science and society, its impact on individuals and society in general, professional and social responsibility in the practice of engineering, science, and technology, and open discussion on the resulting issues.

 

We are looking for energetic IEEE student members to join us as outreach volunteers.

 

If you wish to contribute to this activity? Please click here to apply.

 

Please help to promote the IEEE SSIT Webinar Series by distributing this information to your colleagues and students. If you have any questions or need further information, please do not hesitate to contact Saiteja Goud K by email at [email protected]. Thank you!


Action for Industry Committee

Action for Industry (AfI) Sub-Committee (est. in 2014) is focused on providing membership value to companies.

 

The Sub-Committee is composed of a Chair, Past Chair, full members and corresponding members. The committee acts in close co-operation with local Sections throughout R8, through Industry Ambassadors that are appointed by Sections (SIAs).

 

IEEE Region 8 Action for Industry Subcommittee for 2024 is consisted of the following IEEE Region 8 volunteers:

 

Toni Mattila

(Finland)

Chair

John Matogo

(Kenya)

Past Chair

Nihel ben Youssef

(Tunisia)

Sohaib Qamar Sheikh

(UK&Ireland)

Cosmin Moisa

(Romania)

Maria Efthymiou

(Cyprus)

Stamatis Dragoumanos

(Greece)

Serge Dos Santos

(France)

Mohammad Galal

(Egypt)

Contact email: [email protected]


IEEE HAC/SIGHT Funding Opportunities

 

IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee (HAC)/IEEE SIGHT have announced the first funding opportunity of 2021! The Call for Proposals is being offered to support IEEE member grassroots humanitarian technology and sustainable development projects that utilize technology to address the COVID-19 situation.

 

Ready to apply? Create an account on the online funding portal to submit a proposal for any of the programs.

 

More details and the Call for Proposals can be found on the HAC website.


IEEE Pre-University STEM Programs Needed

Are you an IEEE Volunteer leading Pre-University STEM outreach programs?

 

Share your programs on the IEEE Pre-University Volunteer STEM Portal so we can demonstrate the collective impact IEEE is making to inspire the STEM professionals of tomorrow.

TryEngineering.org launched a new IEEE Pre-University Volunteer STEM Portal to support IEEE volunteers in their STEM outreach initiatives as well as building local STEM communities.

 

The new STEM portal is the place to be for all things related to pre-university STEM programs at IEEE, featuring a searchable database of programs and  “how-to” resources developed by volunteers like you. Share your programs today!

 

Together, Let’s Share. Give Back. And Inspire as many students as possible.

 

For more information: [email protected]


IEEE Medal of Honor from IEEE Awards Board

Congratulations to Jacob Ziv for winning such a prestigious award at the 2021 Medals.

 

IEEE MEDAL OF HONOR, to JACOB ZIV (LFIEEE)—Andrew and Erna Viterbi
Faculty of Electrical Engineering Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

 

JACOB ZIV (LFIEEE)—Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

 

Professor Jacob Ziv has contributed in the most fundamental and profound way to the field of information theory for more than 5 decades of his professional activity. The most notable contribution of Prof. Ziv is the Lempel-Ziv (LZ) algorithm, which was a milestone contribution, reported in three basic papers. The LZ algorithm is an innovative and practical methodology that enables data compression and reconstruction in an efficient way, without assuming availability of the statistical characterization of the data. Apart of being highly innovative, based on solid and original theoretical grounds recognized by the most prestigious IT Society Best Paper Award, it has also strong interdisciplinary aspects, as well as immense practical implications.

 

The LZ compression algorithm has changed the very way communications and data storage and processing, are conceived. The LZ compression algorithm has had an unparalleled impact on the daily lives of computer users, as well as in innumerable operations of commercial electronic products worldwide. The evolutions of computing and communications technology continuously pose extremely severe demands on storage, bandwidth, and speed. LZ compression plays the pivotal role in meeting these demands, making the use of lossless data compression pervasive in day-to-day computing.

 

Among other most prestigious world-class recognitions Prof. Ziv is the recipient of the inaugural BBVA Foundation Frontiers in Knowledge Award in the category of Information and Communication Technologies for his seminal, groundbreaking data compression algorithm, which is present in virtually every computer in the world.

 

The scientific contribution of Prof. Ziv spans way beyond the LZ monumental achievement. His studies through the many years of his activity demonstrate deep insights and exceptional originality, and they immediately turn to be classical references, just after their publications. The impact of Prof. Ziv's technical contributions is profound, in the very meaning of this word. He is one of the very few whose fundamental contribution is world acclaimed, way beyond the professional circles of the information theory society or even the whole IEEE.

 

It is worth noting that Jacob has been recognized as a superior educational and administrative leader in his own country, serving as President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities as well as chair for the research funding entity for all its universities. Outside his country, he has been honored by foreign membership in four of the most prestigious U.S. Academies and has been otherwise recognized with honors in Germany, Italy, Spain and the European Union.


Region 8 Fellows for the Class of 2021

Austria Section
Bernhard Jakoby
for contributions to fluidic sensor
Dieter Schmalstieg
for contributions to augmented reality

 

Benelux Section
Filip De Turck
for contributions to network resource management and adaptive service delivery
Jacquelien Scherpen
for contributions to nonlinear model reduction and passivity-based control
Johan Nuyts
for contributions to theory and algorithms for image reconstruction in emission and transmission tomography
Nathan Van De Wouw
for contributions to hybrid, data-based and networked control
Wim Bogaerts
for contributions to design methodologies for silicon photonics components and circuits

 

Denmark Section
Poul Sorensen
for contributions to wind power converter control and grid integration

 

Egypt Section
Salah Obayya
for contributions to computational photonics

 

Finland Section
Enrique Acha
for contributions to power electronics modelling and applications in electrical power systems
Mehdi Bennis
for contributions to resource optimization in heterogeneous and low-latency wireless networks
Tuomas Virtanen
for contributions to sound event detection and source separation

 

France Section
Claude Samson
for contributions to mobile and underactuated mechanical systems control
Laurent Larger
for contributions to optoelectronic delay oscillators and neuromorphic processing applications
Lori Lamel
for contributions to automatic speech recognition
Stephane Mangin
for contributions to ultrafast magnetisation manipulation

 

Germany Section
Haris Gacanin
for development of operations and management systems for home broadband networks
Mehdi Tahoori
for contributions to resilient nanoscale integrated circuits
Stephan Ten Brink
for contributions to iterative detection and decoding
Wil Van Der Aalst
for contributions to process mining and workflow processes
Wolfgang Utschick
for contributions to signal processing algorithms for multi-antenna communications systems
Xiaoxiang Zhu
for contributions to artificial intelligence and data science in Earth observation and global urban mapping

 

Israel Section
Sharon Gannot
for contributions to acoustical modelling and statistical learning in speech enhancement
Yakov Krasik
for contributions to plasma-based electron sources

 

Italy Section
Chiara Petrioli
for contributions to wireless and underwater networks
Gabriella Cincotti
for contributions to planar photonic devices and beam diffraction in anisotropic media
Gianluca Antonelli
for contributions to modeling and control of underwater robots
Gianluigi Pillonetto
for contributions to kernel-based linear system identification
Giovanni Mazzanti
for contributions to high voltage direct current cable systems
Luciano Tarricone
for contributions to microwave interactions with living systems and biomedical applications
Luisa Verdoliva
for contribution to multimedia forensics
Marco Mellia
for contributions to Internet traffic analysis
Roberto Oboe
for contributions to remote motion control systems

 

Portugal Section
Joao Gama
for contributions to mining data streams

 

South Africa Section
Saurabh Sinha
for leading micro/nanoelectronics research and education in Africa

 

Spain Section
Enrique Herrera-viedma
for contributions to fuzzy decision systems and linguistic modeling
Jose Lozano
for contributions to the estimation of distribution algorithms in evolutionary computation
Jose Neira
for contributions to simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) for robot navigation
Oriol Gomis Bellmunt
for contributions to grid integration of renewable energy sources
Sergio Vazquez
for contributions to control techniques for power converters and drives

 

Sweden Section
Erik Strom
for contributions to reliable low latency communications and synchronization of code-division systems
Stefanos Kaxiras
for contributions to high-performance and power-efficient memory hierarchies
Zhinong Ying
for contributions to mobile terminal antenna technology

 

Switzerland Section
David Basin
for contributions to formal methods for information security
Matthias Grossglauser
for contributions to the modeling and analysis of network traffic and data

 

Turkey Section
Hilmi Demir
for contributions to semiconductor nanocrystal optoelectronics, colloidal nanophotonics, and lighting

 

United Arab Emirates Section
Ling Shao
for contributions to computer vision and representation learning

 

United Kingdom and Ireland Section
Ashwin Seshia
for contributions to resonant-based inertial and mode-localized sensors
Dragan Jovcic
for contributions to improvements in multi-terminal HVDC transmission grids and development of HVDC transformers
Gan Zheng
for contributions to optimization and design of multiuser multi-antenna communications
Hanyang Wang
for contributions to mobile terminal antennas
Honghai Liu
for contributions to theory and applications of human-machine systems
Jaafar M.h. Elmirghani
for contributions to energy-efficient communications
Jonathan Garibaldi
for contributions to computational intelligence techniques in data analysis and decision support
Julia Schnabel
for contributions to medical image computing
Patrick Wheeler
for contributions to matrix power converter technology
Robert Henderson
for contributions to solid-state single photon imaging
Stephen Hodges
for leadership in pervasive computing systems
Yi Huang
for contributions to rectenna technology
Zhongdong Wang
for contributions to insulating liquids and frequency response analysis methods for power transformers

 

Western Saudi Arabia Section
Wolfgang Heidrich
for contributions to high dynamic range display and computational cameras


Announcing the 2020 MGA Achievement Award Recipients

On 21 November 2020, the IEEE Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) Board approved the recipient of the 2020 MGA Achievement Award:

 

Jenifer Castillo

Region 9 – Puerto Rico and Caribbean Section, USA

“For sustained and outstanding achievements in promoting Students, YP, and WIE membership development in Latin America and the Caribbean”

Albert Lysko

Region 8 – South Africa Section, South Africa

“For dedication and exemplary leadership in promoting, strengthening and proactively supporting IEEE activities and volunteerism at the local and global levels”

Suresh Nair

Region 10 – Kerala Section, India

“For exemplary leadership and outstanding contributions to the IEEE community by inspiring a generation of engineering professionals towards the vision of ethical advancement of technology for the benefit of humanity”

TEAM: Engineers Assisting Ventilator Maintenance project

Region 9 – Rio de Janeiro Section

“For engaging IEEE volunteers to work collaboratively with external institutions on a project that served the Rio de Janeiro area in fighting against COVID-19”

Amit Kumar

Region 10 – Hyderabad Section

“For exemplary leadership and distinguished contributions in promoting IEEE activities at the Section, Council, and Region levels”

Nia Kurnianingsih

Region 10 – Indonesia Section

“For organizing a successful regional Congress involving students, YP, WIE and LM, and excellent information management service to Region 10”

 

To recognize individuals, or a team, involved with MGA and its organizational units for singular achievement in the development and completion of a project(s) or activity(ies), directed to the fulfillment of one or more of the MGA goals. This award is designed to recognize those substantive projects or achievements of a relatively short nature (one to three years), but that has left an undeniable imprint on the fabric of regional operations.

The MGA Achievement Award is presented annually.