Boston Section Executive Committee Nominations

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IEEE Boston Section Executive Committee Nominations - 2009

For Chair: John Conrad

John Conrad works at Textron Systems in Wilmington, MA, as a Program Manager in the Advanced Solutions Center. Textron is a multi-billion dollar defense contractor that develops 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.

He obtained a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Leeds University in England and an MBA from Canisius College in Buffalo. His first job was for Marconi Radar Systems in Chelmsford, England, before moving to Buffalo, NY, in 1984 to work for Bell Aerospace. He has been in the Boston area for two years, relocating back to the area after working as an independent contractor for seven years, in Tampa, Florida.

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 Secretary.

For Vice Chair: Bruce Hecht

Bruce Hecht is a Staff Design Engineer with Analog Devices in Wilmington, Mass. Bruce’s interests are in the design of high-speed and precision circuits, with R&D focus on advanced BiCMOS circuits and MEMS components. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in EE from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Bruce is a past Chair of the Boston Section (2003) and currently serves as the Boston Section’s Chapter Co-ordinator. His other roles within IEEE include Boston Chapter Chair for the Solid-State Circuits Society, SSCS Membership Committee Chair, Bipolar/BiCMOS BCTM Conference Committee, and Region 1 Strategic Planning Committee.

For Secretary: 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. In 2007, Karen co-founded BA Logix Inc., the first Tufts University School of Engineering start-up company. She now serves as the Chief Research Scientist for BA Logix Inc.

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. She is the recipient of the 2006 Boston University Outstanding Alumni Award.

Karen is an IEEE Fellow, a Senior Member of the Society for Computer Simulation and is the Chair for the IEEE Educational Society, Central New England Section. Karen is also the IEEE Women in Engineering Committee Chair and the Editor-In-Chief for the IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine. 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 is the newly appointed IEEE Boston Section Student Activities director and is on the IEEE Boston Section Executive Board as the Treasurer for 2008.

Dr. Panetta serves on the Boston University Engineering Alumni Board and is a board member for the Center for Balance by Design. She is also a member of the ACM, SWE, SPHE and ASEE.

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. This program is aimed at breaking down the barriers that prevent women from entering the engineering disciplines and bridging the gap between attracting girls into engineering and sustaining them through their engineering curriculum. It strives to help undergraduate students build confidence in their skills, while preparing them for professional careers. The Nerd Girl program has successfully promoted engineering to students, educators and government officials. Dr. Panetta and her team have presented their work to over 8000 Massachusetts school children and educators. The team is also the recipient of the Alt-Wheels Festival “Best Exhibit” for their renewable energy research in transportation.

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.

For Treasurer: Soon Wan

Soon Wan was born in Singapore. Before coming to United States of America in 1995, he served two and a half years of mandatory military service for Singapore Army. Upon the completion of his commander training, he was posted to the Battalion HQ Manpower. Soon has received the Battalion Best Officer Award for his outstanding leadership and performance.

Soon graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic (Singapore) as the top student with the highest merit diploma. Then, he pursued his Electrical and Computer Engineering degree at Merrimack College (North Andover, MA), and graduated with Summa Cum Laude, and again as the top graduate student in 2000. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, an international Electrical Engineering Honor Society. He was elected to Who’s Who among students in American Universities and Colleges in recognition of outstanding merit and accomplishment as a student at Merrimack College. Soon was featured as a technology whiz kid on the Mass High Tech newsletter in 1999.

Currently, Soon is a Senior Design Engineer in the Research and Development Engineering group at VICOR Corporation (Andover, MA). He works with a team to design and develop high power density DC/DC power converter with innovative technologies and patented topologies.

Soon was has served as 2007 Regional Activities Board (RAB) GOLD Chair, and this year he was reappointed as the 2008 Members & Geographic Activities Board (MGA) GOLD Committee Chair. He felt this is a great opportunity for him to continue to serve the IEEE. This assignment will give him the chance to enhance his leadership abilities, and widen his network with MGA leaders from major boards as well as MGA committee members, and the leadership of IEEE as a whole. Soon is looking forward to build IEEE GOLD into the next decade to an entirely new level of visibility and growth.

Soon’s IEEE experience began when he became an IEEE Student Member in 1996. He was Merrimack College IEEE Student Branch President for 3 years, and his major accomplishment was to organize the Region 1 Student Conference in 1999. As an undergraduate student, he always wanted to introduce the high school students “What is Engineering?”, and to inspire them to become an engineer in their future. So, he has visited many high schools, and demonstrated his Micromouse (an autonomous robot with artificial intelligent to solve a 16x16 maze). He began the fun of developing his Micromouse when he was in the high school, and he has won the 1992 International Micromouse Competition in Hong Kong. He built a different one when he was in the college, and won the first place in several IEEE Micromouse competitions.

Soon received the Richard E. Merwin Scholarship from IEEE Computer Society in recognition of his exemplary involvement in Student Branch activities and his excellent academic achievement. He also received Power Engineering Society scholarship award.

In 2000, Soon founded the IEEE Boston GOLD Affinity Group. He was determined to help the transition of student members to young professional members. He has led the Boston GOLD committee in many activities that were not typically part of IEEE meetings; however, he mixed the fun with the fundamentals to increase meeting attendance. He encouraged Boston GOLD to take very seriously its dual mission of inspiring young professionals to be involved with the IEEE while inviting them to widen their social and career network. To achieve this, he has created a distinctive array of monthly events. In 2001, Boston GOLD received the IEEE Regional Activities Award for Outstanding GOLD program by organizing successful technical and non-technical programs for young professionals.

Soon became the Region 1 GOLD Coordinator in 2005, and he set his mission to rebuild Region 1 GOLD activities, and improve the retention rate of young memberships. He also was a member of the Region 1 Strategic Planning Committee. He has created the GOLD Best Practice document that is widely used by all the GOLD Chairs in the entity world. Under Soon’s leadership, Region 1 GOLD won the Best Regional GOLD Award in 2006, with members voted as their most favorite Regional GOLD activities. All his efforts were recognized, and he received the 2006 RAB GOLD Achievement award for “outstanding leadership and dedication to improving the Region 1 GOLD program by establishing best practices”.

As an IEEE member, Soon has not only been able to enhance his technical skills (e.g. through technical literature and conferences) but have also actively participated in activities and events held by Sections, Chapters and Regions, which have given him the opportunity to interact with other members. Hence, it allowed him to enrich his knowledge by sharing experiences, ultimately creating links between professionals, universities and industries.

For At Large: Members (2009-2010): Constantine Taki. Markos

Constantine Taki Markos joined the Raytheon Company, headquartered in Waltham, MA, in 2006 as a Senior Systems Engineer, and is responsible for the planning, scheduling and integration of large and complex systems. He is an integration lead within a team that coordinates activities for other systems engineers.

Prior to working at Raytheon, Mr. Markos worked for Visidyne, Inc., Burlington, MA from 1997 to 2005 as an Electrical Engineer, and was an integral part of the success of many programs. He completed several systems integration projects for non-contact optical phase measurement technologies. Under a Phase I/II SBIR program, Mr. Markos demonstrated the feasibility of using Visidyne’s core phase measurement technology to track helmets in a cockpit with 6-degrees of freedom. In 1998, Mr. Markos initiated a funded research project studying the effects of phase changes in light propagating through multi-mode graded-index optical fibers. An experiment was conducted to study the effects of differential-mode-delay in fibers in two-dimensions. In 1997, Mr. Markos completed a Phase I SBIR program for the Air Force to demonstrate the feasibility of applying Visidyne’s core phase measurement technology to the problem of high accuracy optical beam steering. He was Lead Electrical Engineer for the design, building and testing of all electronics. In addition, he used his background in spatial light modulators for the construction of a fiber optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer used in conjunction with a liquid crystal phase modulator to show feasibility of an optical phased array beam steering chip.

Mr. Markos has been an IEEE member since 1994. Within the Boston Section, he is the Vice Chair of the North Shore Subsection and is Secretary of the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. Mr. Markos has also been a member of SPIE since 1998, HKN since 1995 and Sigma Xi since 2000. He received his BSEE, with honors, from University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) in 1997. In 2000, he received his MSEE from UML, where he concentrated his studies in electro-optics. He is currently working towards his Ph. D. in applied and computational electromagnetics where he is studying the effects of optical waves through thin films.

For At Large Member (2009-2010): Gil Cooke

Gil Cooke received the Bachelor of Engineering degree in electrical engineering from McGill University. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Massachusetts, California and other states. He was responsible for projects in the power industry, public transportation, and water works.

Cooke is an active member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE. He served as chairman and director of PES Detroit Chapter in 1976-78 and has been active with technical programs in Boston during the 80’s.

Cooke was appointed to the committee of the IEEE Center of History. This appointment was renewed in 2005 and 2006. As chair of the IEEE Boston Section History and Milestone Committee, he was instrumental in commemorating three electrical engineering milestones awarded in Boston.

He’s written papers and articles on electrical engineering history and has authored “The Story of L-Street Power Station, 1898-2006”, a book recently published.

Updated: April 14, 2008.