2007 Nominations

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2007 IEEE Boston Section Nominations

For Chairman: William Carakatsane

Mr. Carakatsane is currently employed with Avid Technology Inc. in Tewksbury Ma as a Hardware Engineer in their Video Business Unit. Bill works on the companies Non Linear Video Edit systems used both in the movie and television industries to edit and finish feature presentations.

Bill previously worked at Force Computers Inc. in Westborough Ma in the Embedded Systems group. His responsibilities included the design of network interface cards and VME input/output interface cards. Prior to his Force Computers employment he worked at Digital Equipment Corp. in the Storage Subsystems Group in Shrewsbury Ma. At Digital he worked on RAID Array Storage Systems for Alpha and Intel platforms. Bill has also worked at Applicon Corp and Modicon Inc. in prior assignments.

Mr. Carakatsane received his B.S in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University in 1978.

Bill’s IEEE association began shortly after graduation with involvement in the North Shore Subsection of the Boston Section. There he progressed through the offices posts to become Chairman. Currently Bill is the Subsection Chairman and representative to CNEC of which he is also Chairman.

Bill has served at the national level of the IEEE as Secretary of the Region 1 Committee from 1992-1994 after which he served as Parliamentarian for a number of years. During this time Bill has also served on the Boston Section as an Elected Committee Member, Treasurer, Secretary and is currently Vice Chairman of the Section.

Bill’s hobbies are fishing, ice fishing in the winters, electronics and his amateur call sign is KB1MMP.

For Vice Chair: Lori Jeromin

For Vice Chair Lori Jeromin is a native of Waldwick, New Jersey. She received the B.S. degree in mathematics in 1978 from Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA and the S.M. degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1982. Since 1978, she has been with MIT, Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, MA. Her primary research interests include communications theory, information theory and their applications to RF and optical satellite and other wireless communications systems.

Ms. Jeromin has served as Vice Chair and Chair of the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Communications Society. She has served as member-at-large and Treasurer of the Boston Executive Committee, and is currently Secretary.

For Secretary: John Conrad

John Conrad who is currently employed at Textron Systems in Wilmington, Ma, as a Program Manager in the Advanced Solutions Center. Textron is a defense contractor that has developed a wide variety of products including smart weapons, unattended ground sensors, surveillance systems and aircraft landing systems. John works on new business opportunities that will potentially move the company into new, growing, business areas.

John has been in the Boston area for eighteen months since relocating back to Boston after working as an independent contractor for seven years, in Tampa, Florida. He originally worked for Marconi Radar Systems in Chelmsford, England, for ten years before moving to Buffalo, NY, in 1984 to work for Bell Aerospace.

John discovered the benefits of the IEEE when he moved to Tampa and quickly took on a variety of positions on the Florida West Coast Section, EXCOM ending up as Section Chair in 2004. He is currently the Boston Section Treasurer and PACE Chair and is also Treasurer of the 2006 IEEE Wireless & Microwave Technology Conference.

For Treasurer: Gary Scalzi

Gary J. Scalzi received his BSEE and MSEE degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1985 and 1990, respectively, from Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Mr. Scalzi has over 15 years experience in various engineering positions in both military and commercial markets. He has authored or co-authored papers in various journal, conference and industry publications. He also teaches a graduate course in microwave system engineering at Tufts University, Medford, MA. He is currently with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/SNHA) at Hanscom AFB, MA, where his areas of interest include microwave receivers, receive and transmit digital beamforming and phased array antennas. Mr. Scalzi is a member of the IEEE and Sigma Xi. He is currently serving as an at-large member of the Executive committee of the Boston section of the IEEE.

Prior to joining AFRL, he worked as a senior engineer for a startup company, Global Communication Devices, which was developing single chip SiGe 802.11 radios. He also worked for IBM, Hittite Microwave Corp, Rome Air Development Center, and has worked as an industry consultant as well. His roles have included GaAs MMIC designer, RF board designer, product engineer, and microwave systems engineer.

For At-Large Member (2007 -2008)

Gil Cooke

Gil Cooke received the Bachelor of Engineering degree in electrical engineering from McGill University Montreal in 1962. He came to the United States in 1964 and has spent most of his engineering career working on large engineering and construction projects while residing in California, the mid- west and Massachusetts. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Massachusetts, California, Rhodes Island and other states. In 1978, he settled with his family in Framingham, a Boston suburb, and his passion for history began soon afterward.

Cooke is an active member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He served as chairman and director of the IEEE Detroit Chapter and has been active with technical programs in Boston during the 80’s. He was appointed chairman of the Industry Application Society’s History Committee and later volunteered to become publicity chair for the IEEE Conferences on Homeland Security. He now sits on the steering committee to organize the next conference to be held in Boston April 2005.

In 2004, Cooke was appointed to the committee of the IEEE Center of History. This was renewed for another term in 2005. At the local level, as chair of the Milestone Committee, IEEE Boston Section, he’s researched, promoted, and raised funds to commemorate two major electrical engineering milestones:

Boston’s Electric Fire Alarm System – 1852

Power System of Boston’s Rapid Transit – 1889

Because these events were so well received by the general public, other milestones are in the works - Alexander Graham Bell (telephone 1876), Reginald Fessenden (AM radio broadcast 1906), and the National Electric Code (rules of electric construction 1897).

He is also working on a museum exhibit depicting the history, evolution, and utilization of electricity in Somerville Massachusetts. This is a collaborative effort with the Somerville Museum, Somerville Historical Commission, Tufts History Department, the electric utility, with prospective sponsors. Cooke is an active member of the Society for Industrial Archeology (SIA) and belongs to various historical societies. Recently, he joined a planning committee being formed in Boston to celebrate Ben Franklin’s 300th birthday. January 31, 2005

Karen Panetta

Karen Panetta is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University and Director of the Simulation Research Laboratory at Tufts University. She is also the founder and co-director of the Multimedia-Arts program at Tufts University. Dr. Panetta received the B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University.

Before joining the faculty at Tufts, Dr. Panetta was employed as a computer engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation. Her current research in Simulation and Modeling has won her research team five awards from NASA for “Outstanding Contributions to NASA Research” and “Excellence in Research”. She is a NASA Langley Research Scientist “JOVE” Fellow, is a recipient of the NSF Career Award and won the 2003 Madeline and Henry Fischer Best Engineering Teacher Award. Dr. Panetta was also awarded a Mass High Tech All-Star by Mass High Tech Magazine.

Karen is a Senior Member of both the IEEE and Society for Computer Simulation and is the Chair for the IEEE Educational Society, Central New England Section. She has been the advisor for the Tufts IEEE Student Chapter for 12 years. As the IEEE advisor, Karen has helped her students organize IEEE SPAC (Student Professional Awareness Conferences), participate in; interdisciplinary engineering competitions, IEEE student paper and design competitions and the IEEE Micromouse robotics competition. Her students have won awards in all categories, including a silver medal for their IEEE student chapter website.

She also serves on the Boston University Engineering Alumni Board and is a board member for the Center for Balance by Design.

Dr. Panetta is dedicated to promoting women in engineering and has created the nationally acclaimed “Nerd Girls” program, where undergraduate engineers research renewable energy topics and serve as role models for younger students.

Believing that real world experience is critical for engineering education, Dr. Panetta maintains consulting positions in industry and brings her experience back to the classroom. She is a Design Consultant for Tycoelectronics, M/A-Com Inc. and consults for Massachusetts school systems and Science Museums across the United States to inspire engineering and technology education.

Updated: April 07, 2008.