event: ieee switzerland section annual general assembly (aga) · pdf filetreasurer's...

IEEE Switzerland Section Minutes of the IEEE AGA, March 9th, 2016

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Event: IEEE Switzerland Section Annual General Assembly (AGA)

Date: March 9th, 2016 14:00 – 20:00

Place: NTB Campus Buchs, Buchs SG

(directions: https://goo.gl/maps/wkWqQj3ciBr)

Meeting

Chair:

Andreas Koschak

Minutes: Dr. Maria-Alexandra Paun

Participants

49 Attendees

5 Excused

Agenda

1. Welcome Address ............................................................................................................ 1

2. Approval of the Agenda .................................................................................................. 1

3. Approval of the Minutes of the last GA .......................................................................... 2

4. Chairman's report ............................................................................................................ 2

5. Chapter foundation: IEEE Geoscience & Remote Sensing Society GRSS ..................... 4

6. Reports from other chapters and affinity groups ............................................................. 4

7. Treasurer's Report (Financial report for 2015 and Budget) ............................................. 6

8. Approval of the financial report ...................................................................................... 6

9. Discharge of the ExCom ................................................................................................. 6

10. Election of new YP AG Chair ......................................................................................... 6

11. Miscellaneous .................................................................................................................. 6

12. Chairman’s Foils ............................................................................................................. 7

1. Welcome Address

The IEEE Switzerland Section's Chairman Andreas Koschak opens the General

Assembly by welcoming the participants.

2. Approval of the Agenda

Andreas Koschak begins his talk and presents the Agenda for the Day, as follows.

https://goo.gl/maps/wkWqQj3ciBr


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Between 15:30-16:30, there will be Talks, demonstrations, and tours, organized by

NTB, including tours of research groups, laboratories and a NTB Cleanroom virtual

tour.

The standing dinner will finish in good time to allow the attendees to catch the trains

to Zürich, between 19:15 and 20:23.

The Motion to approve the Agenda is initiated. The Agenda for the present GA is

accepted with unanimous decision.

3. Approval of the Minutes of the last GA

Andreas Koschak mentions that the Minutes of the last Annual General Assembly are

available at www.ieee.ch. The Motion to approve the minutes is initiated. The Minutes

are unanimously approved.

4. Chairman's report

At the previous GA 2015, Andreas Koschak pointed out three Action points: Awareness

and Visibility Legal Status project, and Communication.

Firstly, Andreas Koschak introduces the main points of his talk. During his discourse,

he will touch upon the following subjects:

He then mentions the new postal address of Switzerland Section:

Moving on, Andreas Koschak passes to briefly mention the IEEE Switzerland Section

membership statistics, in years 2000 and 2007-2015, with a total numbers of members

of 3015 at the end of 2015.

14:00-15:00 Official Part

15:00-15:30 Coffee Break

15:30-16:30 Talks and Demonstrations

16:30-17:30 Round Tour

17:30-18:45 Standing Dinner

IEEE Switzerland Section

3000 BERN

• General Information

• Membership Development (Section, IEEE, Region)

• Senior Member Grade / Elevation

• 2016 Fellows

• Events in 2015

• 2016 Outlook – Events

• Legal Status Project

• Streamlining of Financial Reporting

• Chapters / Affinity Groups

http://www.ieee.ch/


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Andreas Koschak talks about the statistics of the IEEE membership, both at R8 and

IEEE Switzerland section levels. On this subject, he presents some graphs. Regarding

the IEEE membershipdevelopment , there is always the deactivator which happens in

February. After the deactivator in February 2016, the IEEE Switzerland Section has

2483 members. The coat of USD currency may have impacted the figures.

Andreas Koschak talks about the IEEE memebrship, per type of membership. To learn

more about the exact figures, the reader is invited to consult the Chairman’s foils, at

the end of this report.

Andreas Koschak points out the increase of Women in Engineering Affinity Group

membership, with a significant percentage of 12.6 % globally. However, the total

membership of Young Professionals has suffered a 6.2% decrease.

He also mentions the five new fellows from 2015, namely David Atienza (EPFL),

Sandro Carrara (EPFL), Stefan Ritt (PSI), Juergen Brugger (EPFL), and Adrian

Ionescu (EPFL). We congratulate them on their achievements. To be also noticed that

The President of ETHZ, Lino Guzzella as well as the newly appointed President of EPFL,

Martin Vetterli, are Fellows of IEEE.

The last year’s report is focused on presenting the main events which the IEEE Swiss

Section held in 2015. Between January 1 and December 31 2015, the Section

organized 26 events, excluding the GA and Excom meetings/administrative events

(please check www.ieee.ch for news on events).

Andreas Koschak highlights three events from the last year, namely the IEEE Xtreme

2015 programming competition, the “50 years of Moore’s Law” Seminar in

collaboration with FAEL/Swiss (Zurich, Nov 11, 2015), where the Section was co-

organizer and co-sponsor, and “EMC and Harmonic Mitigation: Forthcoming

Standards and Advances in Filter Technology” Workshop at Schaffner EMV AG, on

Nov 19, 2015. The 24h IEEE Xtreme programming competition was first organized at

EPFL (and in Switzerland) by Maria-Alexandra Paun in October 2011, it was the fifth

edition of the IEEE Extreme in 2015, when a team from EPFL came second and a

team from Politehnica University of Romania came third in global ranking. The latter

event was highlighted because it was organized by one of the new chapters and at a

company site, receiving very positive feedback from both academic institutions and

industry.

Additionally, Andreas Koschak mentions some future events, such as First Meeting of

the IEEE Switzerland Section Geoscience and Remote Sensing Chapter (February 11,

2016, ETHZ), AES Lecture: Modern Passive Radar and Multistatic Tracking (March 01

2016, ETHZ), 2016 International Zurich Seminar on Communications (March 2-4, 2016,

Zürich), UWB Nano-Antenna Arrays (March 4, 2016, EPFL).

In conclusion, there was a high level of activity within the Section, more involvement

of industry is welcome. Also, he encourages the people to visit our website

www.ieee.ch, to learn more about future events.

At this point, Andreas Koschak moves onto presenting the Legal status of our section.

The IEEE HQ forced us to have a legal status. A large law company looks at bylaws,

and these documents are now being finalized. They will be available to vote on at the

GA 2017. We strive for new, simpler bylaws. We are also putting a disclaimer on the

http://www.ieee.ch/

http://www.ieee.ch/


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website and think about the legal protection of volunteers. Being a “Verein”, Swiss

taxes might allow deduction for donation to IEEE foundation.

Regarding the Financial Reporting of Subunits, there is a new financial reporting since

2011, when Section takes over some accounts of society chapters with the goal to have

less work for volunteers.

Andreas Koschak now moves onto the Society Chapters/Affinity Groups Reports. In

2014, we had 2 new Society Chapters and the restart of EDU Society Chapter. In 2015, we

had 1 new Society Chapter and Restart of YP AG. At this point, a highlight on the

activities of some of the most active chapters is presented.

5. Chapter foundation: IEEE Geoscience & Remote Sensing Society GRSS

Othmar Frey, Chair of Geoscience & Remote Sensing Society GRSS, begins his talk.

On Oct 21, 2015, the petition to form the Chapter was approved by the IEEE Member

and Geographic Activities (MGA) board. The Chapter had its successful inaugural

meeting held on Feb 11, 2016, with approximately 35 participants. At this point, they

also had a technical talk by Prof. Devis Tuia, University of Zürich, on “Multitemporal

land classification and change detection with different sensors”.

Othmar Frey also announces 2 upcoming talks (joint events with the “Geomatics

Seminar”, ETHZ), “Correlating Synthetic Aperture Radar (CoSAR): A radar mission

concept for geosynchronous earth observation”, on 17.03.2016, by Dr. Paco Lopez-

Dekker, and “SAR Polarimetry: from Basics to Applications”, by Prof. Dr. Eric Pottier

(IEEE GRSS Distinguished Lecturer), on 21.04.2016.

Further on, Othmar Frey talks about the GRSS flagship Conference, IEEE Int.

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), and presents some figures

from this 2015 conference in Milan. Also, he points out some Geoscience and Remote

Sensing Society Publications such as TGRS, GRSL, JSTARS and GRSM.

6. Reports from other chapters and affinity groups

AESS Heinz Wipf, the Chair of Aerospace & Electronic Systems Society (AESS) Chapter

begins his talk. Since its creation in 2014, the AESS Chapter has organized 7 lectures,

whereby 3 were AESS-Distinguished Lecturers. Within AESS, there was exchange

with Germany's AES and the VP AESS on education. The Chair wishes a more active

exchange in Region 8.

As past events organized by AESS, Heinz Wipf mentioned the Joint Lecture with ION-

CH “Automatic Design of Navigation Systems - A Dream or Near-term Future” by Dr.

Zeev Berman Berman Consultant Israel (25.07.2015), the Joint Lecture with ION-CH

“GNSS Signal-in-Space under Threat - A Quality-of-Service Issue for Aviation” by

Dr. M. Scaramuzza and H. Wipf El Ing HTL (06.10.2015), and the Joint Lecture IEEE

with AOC and the Institute of Geodesy Photogrammetry, ETH Zürich "Modern

Passive Radar and Multistatic Tracking" by Dr. Wolfgang Koch, Fellow IEEE and

Distinguished Lecturer of the AESS Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (01.03.2016).

Attendance is mostly between 20 to 30 persons for joint lectures, which allow for

some social interactions among and between members of related associations.


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Regarding future events, Heinz Wipf speaks about the Distinguished Lecturer Program

event at ETHZ, on March 14th

, by Dr. Alfonso Farina. He then speaks about the

European Navigation Conference (ENC), to be held on May 30-June 02, 2016 in

Helsinki, Finland, with IEEE AESS co-sponsorship.

CPMT The Chair of CPMT Chapter, Daniel Thommen, will present their activities in

2015, and focus on three events. The first entitled “Packaging for Active Implantable

Medical Devices”, was held at ETH Zurich, on 28th January 2015. The talks were:

“Fabrication Process for Hermetic Biocompatible Miniature Implant Enclosures”, by

Niklaus Schneeberger, “Experiences with a Non-Hermetic Active Implant” by Thomas

Degen, and “Wireless Brain Interfaces & Challenges for Hermetic Sealing in Chronic

Use” by Prof. Arto Nurmikko. This event attracted 45 participants.

The second event entitled “Packaging and Components for Medical and

Pharmaceutical Devices”, was held at Roche Diagnostics Rotkreuz, on 18th June

2015. The talks were: “Stretchable electronics for spinal cord stimulation activities”,

by Prof. Janos Vörös, “Sweat sensors on flexible substrates for healthcare

applications” by Dr. Hoël Guerin, and “Bloodgas Analytics at Roche - Present and

future challenges”, by Dr. Rainer Jaeggi. This event attracted 25 participants.

The third event highlighted is the CPMT General Assembly, held at ABB Corporate

Research, Baden-Dättwil on Nov. 5 2015. At this moment, the ABB presented

packaging R&D activities (Franziska Brem / Slavo Kicin). Other talks were “Transient

liquid phase bonding – assembly technology of the future?” by Adrian Lis. This was

followed by IEEE Overview & General Assembly by Daniel Thommen) and a visit of

Pearl-lab (semiconductor cleanroom, packaging cleanroom and converter lab). This

event attracted 21 participants.

The CPMT Chapter has 42 active members, with the board meeting by-monthly via

telco. For more Chapter information, please visit: www.ieee.ch/chapters/cpmt/.

SP/C/COM Further on, the SP/C/COM Joint Chapter, established in 1973, will talk

about its activities, through his new Chair, Prof. Thomas Mittelholzer. Within their

Chapter, they have organized the 2016 International Zurich Seminar on

Communications, held on March 2-4, 2016. The 2016 IZS benefited from 91

registered attendees from, 5 invited sessions with totally 23 talks, 5 normal sessions

with totally 27 talks and 3 keynote lectures.

This is a biennial IEEE conference since 1970, which has been organized by IEEE

Switzerland Chapter on Digital Communications since 1974. The main focus is on

Coding theory and its applications, Information theory, Multi-user and network

information theory, Detection and estimation,Wireless communications, Cryptography

and Data Security.

The Keynote Lectures at IZS 2016 were “On Decoding Reed-Solomon Codes Beyond

Half the Minimum Distance”, by Martin Bossert (Univ. Ulm), “An Information

Theoretic View of Fronthaul-Constrained Cloud Radio Access Networks”, by Shlomo

Shamai (Technion Haifa), and “Common Randomness, Querying and Large

Probability Sets” by Prakash Narayan (Univ. Maryland).

At this point, Andreas Koschak thanks the Chapters and Affinity Groups Chairs for

their great work. He offers a Micro-Award for the most active chapters (Society Chapters

http://www.ieee.ch/chapters/cpmt/


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with the most reported technical events in 2015): AESS (Heinz Wipf), EMB (Volker

Koch), R (Mauro Ciappa), CPMT (Daniel Thommen).

7. Treasurer's Report (Financial report for 2015 and Budget)

Danilo Zanatta points out that IEEE Switzerland Section received highest possible

Rebate in 2015 and that many events were sponsored in 2015. He will talk about the

legal issues also present the budget for 2016.

Danilo Zanatta presents the last year’s budget, as well as gain/loss and balance sheets

for 2014-15. The Financial Report is done using Netsuite tool. He mentions that the

lawyer expenses are paid by IEEE Head Quarters. Also, he briefly points out the

Reserve Allocation Expense, which is reserved money for some events. If we spend

more on events, the reserve allocation expense will become lower. The Reserve

Allocation Expense is added to the balance (liability: the reserve is not transferred to

IEEE HQ, but cannot be spent).

Danilo Zanatta also presents the Budget for 2016 (more details on the slides at the end

of these Minutes). This budget includes travel costs to the IEEE Region 8 Student &

Young Professional congress in Regensburg (DE) and Reserve (other costs), regarding

ongoing effort to clarify the legal status of IEEE-CH as a “Verein”.

8. Approval of the financial report

Since we do not have auditors, Andreas Koschak ask if anybody wants to put forward

a motion to discharge the ExCom for their handling of the affairs of the Association in

2015. The motion is initiated and the approval of the financial report is unanimous

(approved by acclamation).

9. Discharge of the ExCom

The motion to discharge the ExCom is put forward and the motion is approved

unanimously (approved by acclamation).

10. Election of new YP AG Chair

Now we proceed to the election of new YP Chair, Jaison Sabu. Jaison Sabu, new proposed

Chair of Young Professionals Affinity Group, introduces himself, his current position

at GE (former Alstom) and his research interests. He also briefly talks about future

plans within YP CH. His position will now be validated through vote at the General

Assembly. There is unanimous approval of the new YP chair.

Andreas Koschak also mentions that there will be elections at the GA 2017.

11. Miscellaneous

Andreas Koschak warmly thanks the audience for their presence at the IEEE

Switzerland Annual General Assembly 2016 at NTB Buchs. Andreas Koschak also

thanks again the whole ExCom (Vice-Chair & Secretary: Maria-Alexandra Paun,

Treasurer: Danilo Zanatta) plus all the Chapters and Affinity Groups Chairs, for their

great work in 2015.


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The official part of the General Assembly is now finished. There is now the time for

the coffee break, until 15:30, followed by presentations from NTB.

The institutes/laboratories to present their activities will be: “Institute for Electronics,

Sensors and Actuators” (ESA), “Institute for Production Metrology, Materials and Optics”

(PWO), “Institute for Micro & Nanotechnology” (MNT) and “Institute for Development

of Mechatronic Systems” (EMS).

The floor will be open for the Talks, demonstrations, and tours, organized by NTB

until 17:30 and later (after 17:30) for the Standing dinner at NTB Buchs. There will

also be a virtual tour of the brand new Clean room facilities, of 620 m2, with the

possibility to produce wafer of 4-8 inchs.

***The meeting/official part adjourns around 15:10 ***

12. Chairman’s Foils

Please find below the Chairman’s slides.


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