BrainSurge

Speaker: Adam Noel

Topic: Game Theory: What a Dilemma!

Game theory as a field of study has already been extensively developed over the last 60 years. While most of its applications have been in economics, the concepts of game theory can be related to many areas of electrical and computer engineering. This talk will focus on a social perspective of game theory to present the classical 7 “Deadly Dilemmas” - including the prisoner’s dilemma, chicken, battle of the sexes, stag hunt, and others. Some basic qualitative mechanics of game theory will be introduced so that we can understand these dilemmas and potentially manipulate the games to resolve them. Applications in ECE will also be noted.

BIOGRAPHY

Adam Noel obtained his B.Eng from Memorial University in St. John’s, NL. His co-op experiences include the defence (General Dynamics) and telecommunications (Alcatel-Lucent) industries. He has also worked with the Communications Research Centre in Ottawa and the Institute for Ocean Technology in St. John’s. He is currently a MASc student in the UBC ECE Communications group, with a general interest in cognitive radio.

Job Title: New Grad - Electrical Engineering Trainee

Job Code: NG-2010-104

Job Location: Toronto, Ontario

Division: Engineering and Construction Services – Protection and Control Engineering

Number required: One position available

Job Description:

Electrical engineers at Hydro One are engaged in a variety of different roles. You may be hired to perform power system studies and planning, design and construct new transmission and distribution lines as well as transformer stations, oversee the installation and testing of new systems, or assist with the operation of the power grid. During the first two years of training, all New Grads will have the opportunity to work both at the head office and in field positions.

Division:

Engineering and Construction Services

Location: Toronto

New Grads hired into Engineering and Construction Services may be responsible for:

- Protection, Control, and metering system design

In addition, New Grads will be involved with the provision of technical support to the field, failure investigation, new technology and their applications, technical development and preparation of standard specifications, coordination of engineering, procurement and construction projects.

Selection Criteria

- Minimum Education: Bachelor of Electrical Engineering/Applied Science, Engineering & Management, Systems Design Engineering, or Engineering Science/Physics

- Specialization or experience with power systems preferred

Candidates selected for this position will be included in Hydro One’s New Grad training and development program. Over the course of this two-year program you will have the opportunity to rotate through several jobs allowing you to gain experience working on different projects and in different environments. In addition, you will be provided with a range of technical and non-technical training.

If you share our passion for safety and our customer focus, and are ready to play a lead role in building a bright future, we’d love to hear from you! Please apply online at www.HydroOne.com before Friday, January 29, 2010 at 5:00 PM.

New Graduate (May 2010 Start) Position Titles:

How to Apply:

PMC’s new grad opportunities are open to April 2010 graduates as well as alumni with less than 3 years of industry experience.

Please submit your candidacy via PMC’s career portal (http://www.pmc-sierra.com/careers/).

Speaker 1: Angshul Majumdar

TOPIC: Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Traditional methods to reduce energy consumption are not optimally designed for energy saving. They tinker with the different networking protocols or propose application and data dependent sensing mechanisms which bring only slight improvement in energy efficiency. To bring in the next level of energy reduction, we rely on recent theoretical breakthroughs in maths. I will discuss how the sensor network problem can be framed as a problem of matrix completion from sub-sampled entries, similar to the Netflix problem. The discussion will be devoid of maths, it will only include intuitive insights and qualitative understanding of the problem. Some astonishing results will also be shown.

BIOGRAPHY
Angshul Majumdar completed his Bachelor’s degree from Bengal Engineering and Science University, India. Before joining UBC as a grad student in 2007, he was working in Technology Advisory Service for PricewaterhouseCoopers.
He completed his Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC. Currently he is a PhD student at the Signal and Image Processing Lab. In the last term, he went for a research internship at Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton. He worked on the signal processing aspects of MR imaging for next generation scanners which are supposed to cut current scan times by 60-80%. Angshul is mainly interested in signal processing algorithms with applications as diverse as Medial Image Reconstruction, Color and Hyperspectral Imaging and Energy Efficient Distributed Sensor Networks.

Speaker 2: Roee Diamant

TOPIC: Spatial Reuse Protocols for Ad-Hoc Underwater Acoustic Communication Network

The oceans, covering two thirds of the Earth’s surface, represent one of the last frontiers for exploration and science. Wireless information transmission through the ocean is one of the enabling technologies for the development of future ocean-observation systems, whose applications include gathering of scientific data, pollution control, climate monitoring, detection of objects, and transmission of images from remote places. Wireless communication underwater is usually established using acoustic transducers since radio frequency communication is only possible for very short distances underwater. In this talk we will discuss the challenges of underwater acoustic communication network design and research possibilities in this area.

BIOGRAPHY
Roee Diamant obtained his M.Sc and B.Sc from Israel Institute of Technology, Technion. He has a wide-range of industry experience as well, working for a year in the biomedical industry as a researcher and 7 years at Rafael as a group leader, project manager and system engineer. As such, he was awarded first place in the annual Israel excellent worker distinction for 2009. Today, Roee is working on his PhD on “Underwater Acoustic Communication Networks” in the communication lab here at UBC.

The IEEE student branch is kickstarting a new series of events at Thursday noon each week. It will be a relaxed environment where people can drop-in to see whatever is going on. The show can range from anything interesting, inspirational or educational.

If you would like to come to present anything or have an idea/feedback for us, feel free to email us at lunch dot and dot learn at ieeeubc dot org

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