IEEE Boston Section
Upcoming Events!
About the Speaker: Ryan Lagoy currently works at Starry, Inc. as the Senior Manager of Systems Engineering, developing and integrating new technology for internet applications. He previously worked at BAE Systems, in the Engineering Leadership Development Program. His interests and experience include systems engineering, RF/Microwave system design, electromagnetic theory and modeling, digital signal processing, and software development. 
Web-based Course with live Instructor!
Times & Dates: 6 – 8PM ET, March 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 28 and 30
IEEE Members Rate: $190.00
Non-members Rate: $235.00
Decision (Run/Cancel) Date for this Course is: Friday, March 3, 2023
Speakers: Richard Preston, MITRE Corporation
Course Format: Live lectures interspersed with lab exercises in Visual Studio
This course is organized by the MITRE Corporation and being offered as part of the IEEE Boston Section’s professional development program.
Summary:
In recent years, there has been an enormous surge of interest in quantum computing. Government, academic, and commercial organizations have spent billions of dollars attempting to create reliable, general-purpose quantum computers. These systems leverage the unusual properties of quantum mechanics to perform computations that could never be performed on conventional computers in our lifetime. Such calculations have a wide range of applications, including:
• Engineering new materials
• Simulating how systems behave in extreme environments
• Finding new medicines that target specific diseases
• Building secure transmission channels that cannot be eavesdropped
How do quantum computers accomplish these bold claims? How could we use this technology to tackle our most difficult challenges? And how do programmers like you access it? In this course, we will explore the answers to these questions and help you unlock the ability to write quantum software and simulate quantum algorithms. Students should bring some basic programming experience and an open mind as we delve into a new computing paradigm.
Format: Live virtual lectures with self-paced exercises.
Target Audience: Practicing software engineers. Objective: Develop the practicable skills needed to implement and study quantum algorithms in software.
Prerequisites:
Students are assumed to have exposure to the following concepts:
• Complex numbers
• Vectors & Matrices
• Bra-ket and tensor notation
• Digital information
• Endianness
• Digital logic
• Low- and high-level programming
• Visual Studio
Learning materials covering the course prerequisites will be provided in advance. This way, students can fill in any gaps in their knowledge and everyone starts on the same page on day 1.
Outline:
• Multi-qubit systems
• Quantum circuits
• Quantum protocols
• Quantum algorithms
• Q# programming
The Visual Studio exercises are Q# operations that must be implemented correctly for a unit test to pass. This approach allows students to get immediate feedback on how well they understand a concept. We use the Discord platform as a course forum, where students can ask questions at any time and collaborate on solving the coding challenges.
Instructor Bio:
Richard Preston is a lead engineer at the MITRE Corporation. He graduated Tufts University in 2019 with an MS in Electrical Engineering and BS in Computer Engineering. Since then, Richard has worked on R&D projects spanning a wide variety of technology areas, including network security, machine learning, cloud & edge computing, IT automation, software engineering, and quantum computing. Currently, he leads a research effort aimed at helping software engineers apply quantum algorithms to real-world problems. Richard has taught quantum software development at MITRE, MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute, IEEE Boston, and Tufts University, and is passionate about helping to grow the quantum-capable workforce.
©2021 The MITRE Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited.
Public Release Case Number 21-3742.
Web-based Course with live Instructor!
Times & Dates: 6 – 8PM ET, March 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 28 and 30
IEEE Members Rate: $190.00
Non-members Rate: $235.00
Decision (Run/Cancel) Date for this Course is: Friday, March 3, 2023
Speakers: Richard Preston, MITRE Corporation
Course Format: Live lectures interspersed with lab exercises in Visual Studio
This course is organized by the MITRE Corporation and being offered as part of the IEEE Boston Section’s professional development program.
Summary:
In recent years, there has been an enormous surge of interest in quantum computing. Government, academic, and commercial organizations have spent billions of dollars attempting to create reliable, general-purpose quantum computers. These systems leverage the unusual properties of quantum mechanics to perform computations that could never be performed on conventional computers in our lifetime. Such calculations have a wide range of applications, including:
• Engineering new materials
• Simulating how systems behave in extreme environments
• Finding new medicines that target specific diseases
• Building secure transmission channels that cannot be eavesdropped
How do quantum computers accomplish these bold claims? How could we use this technology to tackle our most difficult challenges? And how do programmers like you access it? In this course, we will explore the answers to these questions and help you unlock the ability to write quantum software and simulate quantum algorithms. Students should bring some basic programming experience and an open mind as we delve into a new computing paradigm.
Format: Live virtual lectures with self-paced exercises.
Target Audience: Practicing software engineers. Objective: Develop the practicable skills needed to implement and study quantum algorithms in software.
Prerequisites:
Students are assumed to have exposure to the following concepts:
• Complex numbers
• Vectors & Matrices
• Bra-ket and tensor notation
• Digital information
• Endianness
• Digital logic
• Low- and high-level programming
• Visual Studio
Learning materials covering the course prerequisites will be provided in advance. This way, students can fill in any gaps in their knowledge and everyone starts on the same page on day 1.
Outline:
• Multi-qubit systems
• Quantum circuits
• Quantum protocols
• Quantum algorithms
• Q# programming
The Visual Studio exercises are Q# operations that must be implemented correctly for a unit test to pass. This approach allows students to get immediate feedback on how well they understand a concept. We use the Discord platform as a course forum, where students can ask questions at any time and collaborate on solving the coding challenges.
Instructor Bio:
Richard Preston is a lead engineer at the MITRE Corporation. He graduated Tufts University in 2019 with an MS in Electrical Engineering and BS in Computer Engineering. Since then, Richard has worked on R&D projects spanning a wide variety of technology areas, including network security, machine learning, cloud & edge computing, IT automation, software engineering, and quantum computing. Currently, he leads a research effort aimed at helping software engineers apply quantum algorithms to real-world problems. Richard has taught quantum software development at MITRE, MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute, IEEE Boston, and Tufts University, and is passionate about helping to grow the quantum-capable workforce.
©2021 The MITRE Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited.
Public Release Case Number 21-3742.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
First Video Release, Thursday, March 30, 2023. Additional videos released weekly in advance of that week’s live session!
Live Workshops: 6:00PM – 7:30PM EDT, Thursdays, April 6, 13, 20, 27
Attendees will have access to the recorded session and exercises for two months (until June 27, 2023) after the live session ends!
IEEE Member Early Rate: $180.00
IEEE Member Rate after March 20th: $195.00
Non-Member Early Rate: $195.00
Non-Member Rate after March 20th: $215.00
Decision to run/cancel course: Friday, March 24, 2023
Speaker: Dan Boschen
This is a hands-on course combining pre-recorded lectures with live Q&A and workshop sessions in the popular and powerful open-source Python programming language.
New Format with Pre-Recorded Videos: The course format has been updated to release pre-recorded video lectures that students can watch on their own schedule, and an unlimited number of times, prior to live Q&A workshop sessions on Zoom with the instructor. The videos will also be available to the students for viewing for up to two months after the conclusion of the course.
Overview: Dan provides simple, straight-forward navigation through the multiple configurations and options, providing a best-practices approach for quickly getting up to speed using Python for modelling and analysis for applications in signal processing and digital design verification. Students will be using the Anaconda distribution, which combines Python with the most popular data science applications, and Jupyter Notebooks for a rich, interactive experience.
The course begins with basic Python data structures and constructs, including key “Pythonic” concepts, followed by an overview and use of popular packages for scientific computing enabling rapid prototyping for system design.
During the course students will create example designs including a sigma delta converter and direct digital synthesizer both in floating point and fixed point. This will include considerations for cycle and bit accurate models useful for digital design verification (FPGA/ASIC), while bringing forward the signal processing tools for frequency and time domain analysis.
Jupyter Notebooks: This course makes extensive use of Jupyter Notebooks which combines running Python code with interactive plots and graphics for a rich user experience. Jupyter Notebooks is an open-source web-based application (that can be run locally) that allows users to create and share visually appealing documents containing code, graphics, visualizations and interactive plots. Students will be able to interact with the notebook contents and use “take-it-with-you” results for future applications in signal processing.
Target Audience: This course is targeted toward users with little to no prior experience in Python, however familiarity with other modern programming languages and an exposure to object-oriented constructs is very helpful. Students should be comfortable with basic signal processing concepts in the frequency and time domain. Familiarity with Matlab or Octave is not required, but the equivalent operations in Python using the NumPy package will be provided for those students that do currently use Matlab and/or Octave for signal processing applications.
Benefits of Attending / Goals of Course: Attendees will gain an overall appreciation of using Python and quickly get up to speed in best practice use of Python and related tools specific to modeling and simulation for signal processing analysis and design.
All set-up information for the installation of all tools will be provided before the start of class.
Topics / Schedule:
Pre-recorded lectures (3 hours each) will be distributed Friday prior to all Workshop dates. Workshop/ Q&A Sessions are 6pm-7:30pm on the dates listed below:
Thursday, April 6, 2023
Topic 1: Intro to Jupyter Notebooks, the Spyder IDE and the course design examples. Core Python constructs.
Thursday, April 13, 2023
Topic 2: Core Python constructs; iterators, functions, reading writing data files.
Thursday, April 20, 2023
Topic 3: Signal processing simulation with popular packages including NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib.
Thursday, April 27, 2023
Topic 4: Bit/cycle accurate modelling and analysis using the design examples and simulation packages
Speaker’s Bio:
Dan Boschen has a MS in Communications and Signal Processing from Northeastern University, with over 25 years of experience in system and hardware design for radio transceivers and modems. He has held various positions at Signal Technologies, MITRE, Airvana and Hittite Microwave designing and developing transceiver hardware from baseband to antenna for wireless communications systems and has taught courses on DSP to international audiences for over 15 years. Dan is a contributor to Signal Processing Stack Exchange https://dsp.stackexchange.com/, and is currently at Microchip (formerly Microsemi and Symmetricom) leading design efforts for advanced frequency and time solutions.
For more background information, please view Dan’s Linked-In page.
IEEE Signal Processing Society, IEEE Education Society, IEEE Women in Engineering
INFORMATION AND EVENT REGISTRATION
Dinner Served at 6:00 pm, and lecture is from 6:30–8:30 pm EST
Location: Alumnae Hall, 40 Talbot Avenue, Medford MA 02155, and on zoom.
This is a Notation Track workshop. Development Domain: Leadership and Collaboration, Personal Development
Guest speaker, Anu Gokhale, is invited to Tufts as one of the exceptional leaders in STEM. Anu will talk about her research and share her insights on becoming a leader.
The in-person event is open to Tufts graduate students and post docs, and industry professionals in STEM fields.
The zoom webinar is open to the public.
Dr. Anu A. Gokhale is currently a Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Information Systems at Saint Augustine’s University. Formerly, she was a Distinguished Professor and Coordinator of the Computer Systems Technology program at Illinois State University (ISU). Gokhale has completed thirty years as faculty and has received several College and University research, teaching and service awards. She was in Cairo, Egypt in August 2022 as Fulbright Specialist in Data Analytics. Gokhale was named Fulbright Distinguished Chair in STEM+C at the University of Pernambuco, Brazil, 2016-17; was a Faculty Fellow in Israel and Fulbright Specialist in Cybersecurity in India during summer 2017. As a Visiting Professor in College of Business at Shandong University in Jinan, China in spring 2017, her focus was on e-commerce. Her achievements encompass extensively cited refereed publications; groundbreaking externally funded research supported by a continuous 20-year stream of grants from state and federal agencies including the National Science Foundation; and elevation of the ISU student experience through excellence in teaching, mentorship, and the creation of opportunities for students to get involved in research. Originally from India, she has a master’s in physics‒electronics from the College of William & Mary, and a doctorate from Iowa State University. Dr. Gokhale authored a second edition of her book Introduction to Telecommunications, which has an international edition in Chinese. She continues to be an invited keynote speaker at various conferences. She is an active volunteer in IEEE and was honored with the IEEE Third Millennium Medal and 2019 Region 4 Outstanding Professional Award. She consults for business and industry to increase productivity using data analytics and business intelligence while leveraging e-technologies. Gokhale has delivered multiple workshops focusing on inclusion & diversity as well as “STEM for All” public policy.
News!
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Panel at the 2022 IEEE Convene Meeting held in Boston on October 28, moderated by 2022 IEEE Boston Section Chair, Denise Griffin (center). Panel speakers: Kathy Herring-Hayashi, Region 6 Director Elect (left); Maira Samary, 2022 IEEE Boston Section Treasurer (right); and Dalma Novak, Division 10 Director (not pictured).
SPECIAL NOTICE – CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19)
IEEE Boston Section recognized for Excellence in Membership Recruitment Performance
IEEE Boston Section was founded Feb 13, 1903, and serves more than 8,500 members of the IEEE. There are 29 chapters and affinity groups covering topics of interest from Aerospace & Electronic Systems, to Entrepreneur Network to Women in Engineering to Young Professionals. The chapters and affinity groups organize more than 100 meetings a year. In addition to the IEEE organization activities, the Boston Section organizes and sponsors up to seven conferences in any given year, as well as more than 45 short courses. The Boston Section publishes a bi-weekly newsletter and, currently, a monthly Digital Reflector newspaper included in IEEE membership.
The IEEE Boston Section also offers social programs such as the section annual meeting, Milestone events, and other non-technical professional activities to round out the local events. The Section also hosts one of the largest and longest running entrepreneurial support groups in IEEE.
More than 150 volunteers help create and coordinate events throughout the year.