Ekta ShahDirector, ECE Pulse 2012

Purpose

• Ignite students' interests in various fields of ECE• Expose them to upcoming technologies• Engage in technical fun activities• Offer a platform for networking• Initiate a new ECE tradition!

Rewinding…

• IEEE S-PAC 2011– Professional

conference– Dr. Gordon Day

(IEEE President)– ~130 students

What’s next? A technical conference!

Step 0ECESAC Appreciation Luncheon•IEEE + WECE + HKN + ECESAC “ECE” event•Response: “Ambitious” •Got their blessings and support to start off!

Student leaders started talking about it passionately, as our event!

Brainstorming & Planning• First joint event durable structure +

responsibilities• Lots of meetings, lots of emails, lots of ideas!

– Keynote speaker– Companies + topics– Budget + sponsorship– Technical competition

Had < 2 months, practically…

Website & Publicity• Website: Oliver Cai (IEEE)

http://pulse.ece.illinois.edu

• Designer: Emelyn Baker• Mass mail was super- effective• Newsletters• 400 registrations!• Facebook, Twitter, in-class publicity, word-of-mouth

Black-box Competition• Saturday, Feb 18th • Analog, Digital,

Software• 6 types of challenges• > 30 participants• Prizes: NVIDIA• Dinner: One-World

Pizza

Participating Companies

Networking Dinner• Friday, Feb 24th • NCSA Auditorium• Innauguration speech by Prof. Cangellaris• Keynote speaker: Michael Callahan (Inventor of

the Audeo, winner of the first Lemelson-Illinois Student Prize)

• Catering: Noodles & Company and Insomnia Cookies

Networking Dinner

Tech Talks

• Saturday, Feb 25th • DCL, Everitt Lab• 8 talks• 11 am to 5 pm• Catering: Subway

Tech Talks

• ARM: David Williamson – ARM Fellow, Chief Architect– “Exploring the Design of the Cortex A15 processor”

• Caterpillar: Brett Nee – Engineering Specialist R&D– “Real-time Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation”

• IBM: Rich Salz – WebSphere Appliance Architect– “Smarter Planet, workload optimized systems”

• Infinera: Jon Rossi – Sr. Principal, Hardware Dev. Engineer– “Infinera Photonic Integration & Networking System”

Tech Talks• NCSA: William Krammer – Deputy Dir. of Blue Waters

– “Blue Waters – A Super System for Super Hard Problems”

• NVIDIA: Chris Lamb – GPU Computing Sys. Software Dir.– “GPU Revolution: Simplifying the Future of Heterogeneous

Computing”

• Qualcomm: Brian Redding – Engineer, Sr. Staff– “The Power of Connections: How to get the Internet of Things”

• Schlumberger: Jason Gardner – Sr. Electrical Engineer– “Electrical Engineering in Oilfield Technology”

Tech Talks

Social Mixer

• Saturday, Feb 25th • Legend’s• Informal Mixer with

company reps

Student Turnout

• ~35 – Technical Competition• ~180 – Networking Dinner• ~200 – Tech talks (throughout the day) • ~50 – Social Mixer

Next Pulse

• Start early!• Well-balanced team with clear roles• Equal participation from all 4 organizations• Schedule talks with no conflicts• Research Park companies• Alumni involvement

Thank you!!

• ECE Student Orgs: IEEE, WECE, HKN, ECESAC• ECE Staff: Brad, Sarah, Nikki, Tom• Prof. Cangellaris

Thank you for supporting our venture!

Questions & Feedback