NAECON 09 Keynote, Guest Speakers and Panel Sessions
Keynote
NAECON Speaker:
Dr. Paul McManamon on the topic "Conformal EO Aperture
Array Based Sensing and High Energy Lasers".
Title: Topic 1: Conformal EO Aperture Array Based Lasers Systems Topic 2: Photonic & Electronic Packaging & Prototyping Engineering & Research, PEPPER In the first topic Dr. McManamon will talk about the major benefits of having conformal laser systems based on a sub-aperture architecture. This is true for laser sensing and for laser weapons. He will also address the main issues to accomplish this, including the need to have conformal methods of steering laser beams and the need to phase up multiple sub-apertures. The second topic is a late addition, due to community interest. There is a major opportunity in integrated photonic and electronic monolithic chips for sensing and for communications, and in their associated packaging. Dr. McManamon will briefly address the value proposition that will be presented to the state of Ohio in this area.
Dr. McManamon is widely recognized in the electro-optical community. He was president of SPIE, the International Society for Optics and Photonics, in 2006. He served on the board of SPIE for 7 years, and on the executive committee for 4 years. He served many years on the executive board for the Military Sensing Symposia. Paul McManamon retired in 2008 from his position as chief scientist of the Sensors Directorate at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). During a 40-year career as a civilian employee of the Air Force, he previously held appointments as senior scientist for IR sensors at the AFRL and as chief scientist for avionics at Wright Laboratory. He is a fellow of IEEE, SPIE, OSA, MSS, and AFRL.
Keynote
NAECON Speaker:
Dr. John Frazier on the topic
"Biomolecular Command and Control".
Highlights the concepts:
-
Cells are extremely complex, high-performance systems.
- Biomolecular networks
(biochemical reaction networks) are dominated by feedback/feed- forward loops.
- Perturbations can have catastrophic consequences on systems without robust control
mechanisms.
- The real world is highly chaotic from the perspective of the
cell.
- Therefore, evolution has explored and exploited a wide spectrum of
novel approaches to biochemical control systems.
- Control theory is important
for both engineering and reverse-engineering of biosystems.
Dr. Frazier was a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University's Division of Toxicology in the Department of Health Sciences from 1973 to 1994. He also served for nine years as Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, and on numerous boards and panels in government and academia. He is the author of more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 18 book chapters, has edited six books or monographs, and has organized 20 national and international workshops and conferences. In 1994, Dr. Frazier left Johns Hopkins University and accepted a position as principal scientist for ManTech Environmental Technology Inc. at the Tri-Service Toxicology Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB. Dr. Frazier was an associate professor with the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Wright State University's School of Medicine from 1994 to 2005. He is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Medicine, Wright State University, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Michigan State University. He has served as liaison for the Air Force to the National Research Council Committee on Toxicology, the Federal Interagency Coordinating Committee for the Validation of Alternative Methods, and the NATO Technical Research Organization Workgroup 09 - Operational Toxicology.
Banquet
Keynote Speaker
(Wednesday Evening)
Dr. Milton
Chang
Title of Talk "Crossing the chasm between technology and commercialization".
Dr. Chang is completing a book this month after working on it for eight years, the title is "Towards Entrepreneurship" which covers all aspects of starting businesses, from learning to become broadly knowledgeable to how to manage and exit. It has gotten shorter over the years, to 200 pages of easy reading. He has pulled some aspect of that to put into his Keynote talk.
Dr. Chang is Managing Director of Incubic LLC. He is semi-retired, working with portfolio companies and mentoring entrepreneurs. He was CEO and President of Newport Corporation and New Focus, Inc. and prior to forming Incubic, he participated in funding about a dozen start-up companies as an angel investor, all were successful. He currently sits on the board of Precision Photonics.
Milton Graduated from the University of Illinois with the highest honor and earned his PhD in EE from Caltech. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, LIA, and OSA, and was past president of LIA and LEOS of the IEEE. He is Distinguished Alumni of Caltech and of the University of Illinois, a Caltech Trustee, a member of the Committee of 100, and an Overseer of The Huntington. He shares his experience freely and writes for Laser Focus World and Photonics Spectra.
INVITED SPEAKERS:
Dr.
Hoda Abdel-Aty-Zohdy
and Jacob Allen
Title of talk "Cognitive Processing
Using Spiking Neural Networks Applications: Electronic Nose, Medical, Radar and
Rapid HDL"
This talk (Tuesday afternoon, July 21) introduces a novel spiking neural network methodology, and applies it to an odorant learning, medical and radar detection applications. Rapid HDL is introduced as a 15 minute rapid prototyping approach, where real-time implementations will be demoed on FPGAs. The spike-time dependent plasticity can support coding schemes that are based on spatio-temporal spike patterns. Spiking (or pulsed) neural networks (SNNs) are models which explicitly take into account the timing of inputs. The network input and output are usually represented as series of spikes (delta function or more complex shapes). Plasticity SNNs have an advantage of being able to recurrently process information. Spike-time dependent plasticity can enhance signal transmission by selectively strengthening synaptic connections that transmit precisely timed spikes at the expense of those synapses that transmit poorly timed spikes.
Dr. Abdel-Aty-Zohdy is the Founder and Director of the Microelectronics System Design Laboratory at Oakland University. She is Coordinator of the Engineering Physics Program, and a Professor in the department of Electrical and Systems Engineering. Her current research and teaching activities are in Bio-Technology with Bio-Inspired Intelligent Signal Perception and Processing (ISPP), sub-micro- electronics, embedded neural networks and genetic algorithms for novel systems-on-a-chip, Analog ICs, Electronic Nose and other bio-inspired systems. Dr. Abdel-Aty-Zohdy has authored over 110 refereed publications, 20 reports, and more than 100 technical presentations. Dr. Abdel-Aty-Zohdy has been an AFOSR/IF Visiting Faculty Research Fellow (2003 and 2002), a National Academy of Science/National Research Council fellow at the WPAFB 2000 and 2001, a Faculty Intern at the Chrysler Technology Center, Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, 1998 and 1997, Consultant to FANUC-BERKELEY MEMS Lab, 1996, DARPA supported Visiting Associate Professor at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Center for Integrated Sensors and Circuits, 1995; Consultant to General Motors Research Labs, ITT, and a summer visiting professor at the Institute for Computer Research, The University of Waterloo. She is the elected Chair for the IEEE/SEM Section Chapter-I on Circuits and Systems, Signal Processing, Information Theory, and Control since 2000.
Mr. Jacob Allen, is a PhD student at Oakland University, who will be graduating in the Fall of 2009, with his research in the area of spiking neural networks. Mr. Allen worked as a graduate student at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate for several years in the area of reconfigurable FPGAs and video compression and ATR techniques used on UAVs.
TWO PANEL DISCUSSIONS:
Layered Sensing and Innovative Team Technology
On July 21, we have an afternoon session on Layered Sensing Panel Discussion, Chaired by Dr. David Jerome, SES, Director, Sensors Directorate.
On July 22, we have a luncheon panel discussion on Innovative Team Technology Collaborations among Government, Industry and Academia, Organized and hosted by Mr. Lester McFawn, Director, Wright Brothers Institute.
