Ladies learning code, a Canadian team of volunteers, are working to close the technology gender gap. They instruct the ladies, who range from early 20s to late 50s, who are interested in honing their skill set, learning some technical skills, learning how to communicate with developers and broaden their horizons. Heather Payne who founded the group — with a tweet — these women (and a few men) are learning Ruby, the programming language on which Twitter is built. The first hands-on workshop in August taught JavaScript; an HTML class followed in September. The Ruby session sold out in nine minutes, proving there’s a market for a female centric learning environment. Payne’s goal and hope is to organize a group to connect with high school girls. Read more.
Jim West, mentor to many and inventor of the electret microphone is being honored today on his 80th birthday. The event taking place on the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore Md., celebrates his contributions to science and diversity. The CACT and Vibes and Waves group is attending this event and I’m posting here as I listen to talks by Gary Elko and others on the design of the pervasive electret and the evolution of microphone array design in recent years.
Attending the meeting: Undergraduates Katie Aho, Jenny Au and Chrisna Nguon, Vibes and Waves Graduate Fellows Taoufik Nabat, Pratik Gandhi, Megha Sunny, Ayse Kalkan-Savoy, Max Denis, Elaine Vejar, Graduate Students Ambika Bhatta, Raji Remany and Profs Charles Thompson and Kavitha Chandra.
Students in Dr. Bill Jumper’s high school physics class are pretty excited about the prospect of working with Matlab and Simulink to design and implement their class projects. MathWorks Inc. has supported this pre-university curriculum with student licenses that will allow students to work with Matlab using notebook computers at their desks and also at home. The partnership between Dr. Jumper and the NSF GK-12 Vibes and Waves in Action project at University of Massachusetts Lowell began in 2009 with GK-12 fellow Tim Ficarra (Computer Engineering) and continued in 2010 with GK-12 fellow Molly Clay (Chemical Engineering). The fellows in partnership with Dr. Jumper have developed computation and simulation modules that have been introduced to the students to show them the process of program logic, modeling systems and visualizing results. With this experience, this year, a stronger integration into the curriculum is being built with the flexibility afforded by student licenses. Dr. Jumper, GK-12 fellow Molly Clay in collaboration with Profs. Chandra and Thompson at UMASS Lowell will design modules that may allow students to experiment and innovate. 
As Molly begins to install the student licenses for the classroom use, we will keep this blog thread active and look forward to discussion and comments on how best to engage students in a full cycle of theory, analysis, design and computation and role of computational platforms in this process.
Introducing a new group of GK-12 fellows starting the Vibes and Waves in Action fellowships at UMASS Lowell. This year the group includes new fellows: Megha Sunny (ECE), Taoufik Nabat (ECE), Pratik Gandhi (ECE), Anthony Vardaro (ECE), Blake Currier (Radiology/Biomedical Engineering), Zachary Howard (Civil Engineering), Ibrahim Aishawabkeh (ECE) and continuing onto their second fellowship year: Molly Clay (Chemical Engineering) and Nicholas Misiunas (ECE). Their profiles are on the homepage.
GK-12 fellows Nick Misiunas and Pratik Gandhi recently completed a preliminary set of experiments for sensing RF spectrum using two software radio transceivers, Model 7741 from Pentek Corp.. With application to cognitive radio networks, this work examines the problem of spectrum sensing in indoor wireless environments, with the objective of applying spatial diversity in cooperative spectrum sensing algorithms. The experiments generate wide-band transmission waveforms that embed a group of narrow-band channels with different center frequencies and adaptable bandwidths. The effects of multi-path, frequency selective fading and other forms of interference created by indoor channels on the individual subbands are analyzed at the receiver. This work will be presented at the 23rd International Teletraffic Congress (ITC, 2011) in San Francisco, CA., Sept. 6-9, 2011. The research will generate some interesting modules for our high school partners. Both Nick and Pratik will be working in the Physics and Math classrooms at Lawrence High School this Fall. Keep tuned for their blog posts on how they map their research to modules for the classroom.
Barbara Deschamp and Elaine Vejar, GK-12 VIbes & Waves fellows presented their research this week at the Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Seattle, WA., USA. Elaine’s presentation entitled, “Experimental measurements of ultrasonic scattering for characterization of porous media,” discussed her results on through transmission of ultrasonic pulses through samples of trabecular bone tissue obtained from bovine femur. Barbara’s talk on “Transduction in Carbon Nanotube Structures,” addressed the modeling of carbon nanotube mechanical vibrations in response to an incident electric field and resulting influence on current transport in the nanotube. Meeting attended by B. Deschamp, E. Vejar and Prof. Chandra.
Megha Sunny, undergraduate research assistant at the Center for Advanced Computation and Telecommunications and a senior in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship for 2011. Megha is one among fifty-one awardees nationwide in the field of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Congratulations Megha!
March 8, 2011 is the 100th anniversary of International Womens Day. To celebrate this event and promote messages for empowerment of women, Vibes and Waves group along with other UMASS Lowell students, faculty and staff are meeting on University Avenue bridge from 1 – 2 pm.
Hundreds of thousands of women are meeting on bridges around to world for solidarity on women’s issues. Check out our event. We will be on University Avenue bridge (zip code: 01854, Lowell, MA) from 1 – 2 pm. Please join us.
Abstract Due: December 15, 2010: Boston will be hosting the Nanotech Conference & Expo June 13-16, 2011 at the Hynes Convention Center. The abstract deadline is December 15, 2010. In addition the TechConnect Venture Forum will be there, looking to fund startups with product ideas in NanoTech and you can submit your venture concepts online by January 21st, 2011. http://www.techconnectworld.com/Summit2011/program/ventures.htmlSubmit or your abstracts at http://www.techconnectworld.com/Nanotech2011/sym/bio_nano_materials.html
–Naveenas
This three (1/2) day workshop is being held at UMASS Lowell. Attended by GK-12 fellows and conducted by three educators from Billerica and Lawrence MA., school districts: Tim Piwowar, Paula Bransfield and Pat Nastasi. Follow day to day blogs of this event.
Vibes and Waves | rajiremany | 
November 2, 2011 2:01 am | 
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