IEEE Rising Stars 2023

Description: People working for a company feel obligated to do what their manager asks them to do, since they are being paid by the company. However, it is different for a volunteer organization, such as the IEEE. It is challenging to convince volunteers to do the things you want them to do. First, you must effectively engage with them. Second, you must have a strong value proposition for them. This talk will show you how to build and lead a group of volunteers, based on my 51 years of IEEE membership with many leadership positions on the local, national and international levels.

Bio: John D. McDonald, P.E., is Smart Grid Business Development Leader for GE’s Grid Solutions business. John has 48 years of experience in the electric utility transmission and distribution industry. John received his B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. (Power Engineering) degrees from Purdue University, and an M.B.A. (Finance) degree from the University of California-Berkeley. John is a Life Fellow of IEEE (member for 51 years), member of IEEE HKN (inducted 51 years ago), and was awarded the IEEE Millennium Medal, the IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Excellence in Power Distribution Engineering Award, the IEEE PES Substations Committee Distinguished Service Award, the IEEE PES Meritorious Service Award, the 2016 CIGRE Distinguished Member Award, the 2016 CIGRE USNC Attwood Associate Award, the 2021 CIGRE Honorary Member Award and the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC) Lifetime Achievement Award. John is Past President of the IEEE PES, the VP for Technical Activities for the US National Committee (USNC) of CIGRE, the Past Chair of the IEEE PES Substations Committee, the IEEE Division VII Past Director, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. John was on the Board of Governors of the IEEE-SA (Standards Association), is an IEEE Foundation Director and Chair of its 50 th Anniversary Celebration Committee, and is a Founding Board Member and Treasurer of the SECC. John

Description:

Bio: Kent Dicks is a serial healthcare entrepreneur with over 16 years in Digital Health with multiple exits, including his last company, which was one of the first IoMT of healthcare, selling to a $5Bn publicly traded company where he became CEO of the Connect division. Kent has received numerous awards, including the Edison Award, Healthcare Entrepreneur of the Year and currently sits on a major Worldwide Healthcare Enterprise Partner Advisory Council along with fortune 100 companies. Kent has testified to a congressional sub-committee on Veterans Affairs concerning connecting in rural areas. Kent is a major patient holder in Wearables, Medical Devices, Embedded OS, Rapid Diagnostics and AI / Machine Learning and has been issued 30+ patents with 100+ patent applications.

Description:This session is for you whether you know where you want to go in your career/business and life or you are still working on your WHY and wondering what is possible. We will give you ideas, tips, support, and guidance to ignite your path to success! Explore why your purpose, vision and values drive your goals and determine whether you
will accomplish them or be part of the 92% that fail. You can have the results you want and deserve, join us to get on the path to success.

Bio: Carolyn Andrews is a leadership expert who believes in inspiring people, guiding them to find their purpose and helping them develop the skills and talents to realize their dreams. She believes that everyone can and should be a leader in all areas of their life including their career, family, community and faith life. Her superpower is that she believes in you even when you can’t see your amazing potential.She is a certified business and executive coach, international speaker and author. She is an IEEE member with a senior executive level technology background. Her business experience ranges from Fortune 100 companies to organizations with less than 50 staff.Carolyn believes that leadership is not just a skill, it is how we live our life. It is how we think and act whether we are in our business, our home, or our community. It is how we guide ourselves and interact with others. Her mission is to transform business owners and corporate executives into empowered leaders who EXCEL, ACHIEVE and INSPIRE others to a higher level of success.She would love to get to know you and spend some time with you discussing leadership and how it can change your life. Send her an email at [email protected] and request a strategy session.

Description: IEEE had a long history in supporting and enabling members to found successful tech startups which later became hugely successful companies. IEEE Entrepreneurship’s mission is to foster entrepreneurial engineering and technological innovation for the benefit of humanity. This presentation will cover the key partnerships and the exclusive benefits for IEEE members who are entrepreneurs to take advantage of the “Powered by IEEE” program.

Bio: Vice-Chair for Partnerships for IEEE Entrepreneurship, and we have signed up 6 corporate partners under the “Powered by IEEE” Program that includes free or discount
services from AWS for Startups, Oracle for Startups, Slidebean, Neonvest, and C2MI. There is also a free mentor/mentee matching program from IEEE Entrepreneurship. I would like to give a presentation of these free IEEE resources including startups related educational webinars from my Silicon Valley Young Professional Startup SIG.

Description: Strategies for navigating your early career and setting yourself up for growth and advancement.

Bio: Mark Bohenick is a graduate of Penn State University where he honed his problem solving and systems engineering skills while majoring in Engineering Science (BS, MS). Over his 15 year career at the Naval Nuclear Laboratory, Mark has taken on leadership positions in various engineering disciplines working on advanced and innovative systems. Today he is the engineering manager of a team of electrical, computer and software engineers who are tasked with qualifying mission-critical instrumentation and control system software. When not helping his team overcome obstacles and solve problems, Mark is active with his wife and kids, and chocolate Lab, Guinness.

Description: In this talk, Stewart will teach you about 3 financial basics, the different phases of the net worth life cycle, and many other things to consider along your financial planning journey.

Bio: Stewart Ongchin retired at age 46 in 2021 after spending 25 years at Intel in various areas from manufacturing to technology development. He has an B.S. in Material Science and Engineering from Cornell University and an M.S and MBA from MIT. Stewart enjoys pursuing his passion of financial coaching and spending time with his wife and 2 kids, ages 13 and 15, who keep him busy.

Description: Ok, so you’re getting an engineering degree. Then what? R&D is a great career path, but it’s not your only option. This talk will explore the range of options that exist for folks with an engineering degree.

Bio: Daniel Bogdanoff is a test gear geek, technical marketer, and content strategist at Keysight Technologies. He is best known for his videos on the Keysight Labs YouTube channel and as an author published on numerous media sites like Electronic Design and Hackaday. He holds a BS degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M. In his spare time, Daniel enjoys whitewater kayaking and mountain biking in the Rocky Mountains. Questions? Ask him on Twitter: @DanielBogdanoff

Description: What if Engineers and technologists could measure their economic contribution directly in terms of risk elimination from physical systems instead of being dependent on outdated economic metrics such as GDP or units of consumption? What if we could use Blockchain technology to provide a time function upon which the physical state of the world may be identified, curated, synchronized and analyzed using advanced mathematical techniques? This sounds like a blockchain developed by Engineers for Engineers. By technologists for technologists. A decentralized exchange of material fact built around game theory, if you will.

Bio: Amber E Orr is a Professional Engineer practicing in the State of Washington, USA. She is a Senior Member of IEEE, is on the Executive Board for Region 6 and also serves as the Section Chair for Spokane, Washington. She received the Special Directors Award for Excellence in Performance, 2019 and was the only recipient in the Western Hemisphere of the IEEE MGA Leadership Award for 2018. She serves on several committees in addition to her Board positions. She has a history working in both Industrial and Power and Energy sectors. She is currently the Engineering Manager at Mason County Public Utility #3 in Shelton, Washington on the Puget Sound near Seattle.

Bio: Kathleen A. Kramer, PhD, is a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of San Diego. She received her MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and her BS in Electrical Engineering (with a second major in Physics) magna cum laude from Loyola Marymount University. She has worked as a Member of Technical Staff doing research at several companies including ViaSat, Hewlett Packard and Bell Communications Research.

Author or co-author of over 100 publications, her research interests are in the areas of multi-sensor data fusion, intelligent systems, neural and fuzzy systems. She has recent published journal articles in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, theInternational Journal of Intelligent Systems, and the Journal of Robotics. The work she authored or co-authored in 2014 was presented at the 10th International Conference on Communications (Bucharest, Romania), the 2014 International Symposium on Communications, Control, and Signal Processing (Athens, Greece), the 2014 International Symposium on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications (Alberobello, Italy) and the 23rd International Conference on Systems Engineering (Las Vegas, NV).

Her teaching interests include signal processing, communications, and capstone design. Her recent course offerings include the electrical engineering senior design sequence, signals and systems, wireless communications, and communication principles.

She currently serves as a member of the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET. A senior member of IEEE, she is a Past Chair of the IEEE San Diego section. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Aerospace Electronic Systems Society and chairs the San Diego IEEE Aerospace Electronic Systems Society San Diego Chapter. She has been recognized by both IEEE and SWE for a variety of leadership activities and was nominated in 2014 for an ATHENA Pinnacle award. She supports San Diego outreach activities such as Expand Your Horizons, FIRST LEGO League and the FIRST Technical Challenge. She is currently chief advisor to the USD chapter of Tau Beta Pi (California Alpha Epsilon) and is a member of other honor societies including IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu, Sigma Pi Sigma, and Alpha Sigma Nu.

Description: IEEE’s mission is to advance technology for the benefit of humanity. Today, the world faces its greatest modern-day threat—climate change. As the world’s largest technical professional organization, IEEE can serve as a vital connection between policy makers and the engineering and technology community worldwide in bringing technology solutions to meet this global challenge. Hear how IEEE is committed to helping combat and mitigate the effects of climate change through pragmatic and accessible technical solutions and providing engineers and technologists with a neutral space for discussion and action.

Bio: Emre Ayranci is the IEEE Young Professionals (YP) Committee chair and SSCS Future Networks (5G & beyond) Rep. He has served at several IEEE leadership positions such as SSCS YP Committee Chair, SSCS Secretary/ Governance Chair, IEEE YP Vice Chair/TAB YP rep, Benelux YP and Professional activities Chair, Denmark student rep, founder and chair
of Technical University of Denmark and Sabanci University student branches. He is currently the Director of RFIC Design at pSemi/Murata in San Diego focusing on 5G RF front end integrated circuits for flagship smartphones with over 30 granted and pending patents, after experiences at Intel, Broadcom, Marvel, German Aerospace Center and a startup as a lead designer for 10-100Gb/s wireline and wireless transceivers. He is the author and co-author of several ISSCC and JSSC papers, a book chapter on data converters, IEEE R8 student paper contest (SPC) finalist and IEEE Denmark SPC best paper award recipient.

Description: Cruise is making fully autonomous self-driving cars a reality. Learn from speaker Jingtao Xia, a Senior Vehicle Integration at Cruise, about what it takes to integrate the technologies that drive autonomous cars. Themes include an intro to self-driving technology, hardware/software integration, and system-level debugging.

Bio: Sachidananda Babu has been working in NASA for more than 35 years, prior that he worked at Intel submicron R&D and TIFR, India. While at NASA he initially worked on Focal Plane Technologies for many space flight projects like Cassini, Gravity Probe B, Spitzer, SWIFT, SOHO, Landsat, JWST, JPSS, and others. Last 10 years he has been managing the technology validation program at NASA Earth Science Technology Office. He is recipient of many NASA group and personal awards including “ NASA Exceptional Service Medal”. Past 6 years he has been organizing CubeSat/SmallSat missions focused sessions at SPIE and IEEE conferences. He has also been speaking to young professionals at carrier and special events at these conferences.

Bio: Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates is a digital storage analyst and business and technology consultant. He has over 40 years in the data storage industry with engineering and senior management positions at several companies. Coughlin Associates consults, publishes books and market and technology reports (including The Media and Entertainment Storage Report and an Emerging Memory Report), and puts on digital storage-oriented events. He is a regular storage and memory contributor for forbes.com and M&E organization websites. He is an IEEE Fellow, IEEE President Elect in 2023, Past-President of IEEE-USA, Past Director of IEEE Region 6 and Past Chair of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Section, Chair of the Consultants Network of Silicon Valley and is also active with SNIA and SMPTE. For more information on Tom Coughlin and his publications and activities go to www.tomcoughlin.com.

Moderator: Tom Coughlin