NEWSLETTER Summer 2015 Edition Alberta youth take top prizes at international engineering and science competitions Loads of summer fun to be had in this edition of the CPGCE newsletter. Read on for updates of how our Alberta youth are representing us on the international stage with their research in Engineering and Sciences. The new CPGCE website is just a glimpse of the exciting things that the organization has in store for 2015 The new CPGCE website gives a stunning look on Calgary Engineering, Energy, and Innovation. Not to mention all the great information and links that can be found within. Look inside for the full story. Just for fun, have a look at the last page for some fascinating scientific breakthroughs of 2014. You might even Robert Mayall receiving first place at the Americas PATW Final get to read a joke. Chairman‘s Notes Summer 2015 New Website Hello everyone. Through the amazing efforts of our I hope all of are having a good summer. Yes indefatigable Secretary, Rick Marshall, we we did get the odd shower or two here – okay have a new website www.cpgce.org. He downpours but that was good for the garden worked tremendously hard with our contractor and the forest fires. Thankfully the smoke is and successfully launched the website earlier clearing though it did give us amazing sights of this year. He will continue to upload documents the sun and the moon. I digress. Well there to the website e.g. the Newsletters. has been a lot of activity since our last Newsletter and here are some of the If anyone has any documents that you feel highlights: may be useful to be archived or copies of old Newsletters which are missing from our list, 2016 AGM th please contact Rick through the website. Saturday January 30 New Committee members required Membership Lists Please make a note of the date in whatever We now have an updated membership list device you operate with, paper or otherwise, to thanks to Rick Marshall and Niamh Ní be held again at Fort Calgary. The Committee Chróinín, who worked with our institution is working to have a keynote speaker but if you representatives. Our CPGCE membership is have any suggestions, please e-mail any one as follows: of the Committee members. Number of Institution Now there are three Committee members who members have stated that they intend to step down then. In addition to that, we have had two ICE 154 resignations in the summer, namely Peter Gibby, the Vice Chair, who has moved to IET 223 “greener” pastures south of the border and Gobind Khiani who stepped down because of IMechE 31 work commitments. We thank both Peter and Gobind for their contributions to the IStructE 28 Committee. Total 480 So if you can spare just one Wednesday a month and are willing to actively participate in Technical Presentations the 2016 Executive Committee, then you are most welcome to contact any one of the Our Technical Presentations continue to attract Committee Members. increased attendance with excellent speakers. Rick Marshall will continue to post the pdf versions of their presentations on our website. Visit CPGCE on LinkedIn, Facebook and IET My Community All those who have LinkedIn and/or Facebook accounts, you will be pleased to know that Niamh Ní Chróinín has created our very own Attendees at the 2015 AGM Facebook page, Rick Marshall has set up our LinkedIn account, and David Dean has Page 2 highlighted CPGCE activities in the IET “My fairly well attended with 58 members and Community” page. Here are the links: guests. Facebook: The AGM commenced with reports from the https://www.facebook.com/pages/Canadian- Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary. Then on Prairies-Group-of-Chartered- behalf of the Scholarship Committee, Dr. Nigel Engineers/925615957459192 Shrive, announced the results of the two 2014 CPGCE Scholarship Winners, namely Nicole LinkedIn: Barber from the University of Regina studying https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=50129 Civil Engineering and Waheed Zaman from 24 the University of Calgary studying Chemical Engineering. IET “MyCommunity”: Available to members Only For Nicole, the mycommunity.theIET.org/communities/home/3 judges (Dr. Nigel 92 Shrive, Tom Martin and Mario Western Canadian Group of Chartered Micallef) were Engineers (WCGCE) particularly impressed with I had a very good telephone conversation with her initiative in Mathew Walton-Knight, the current Chair of the introducing Vancouver based WCGCE, the group from engineering to which we evolved more than 20 years ago. We young people agreed to continue to maintain the link and Mr and Mrs Micallef enjoying the especially with exchange information of mutual interest. AGM her presentations to Newsletter high school students. Her enthusiasm for engineering shone through her writing. Nicole This wonderful Newsletter is the work of Mia should have a very successful future in her Jovic who has taken over the role of the Editor. chosen field of Civil Engineering and is a role It is through her efforts that we have been able model for the younger students. to resume our past practice of semi-annual Newsletters. Finally the Executive Committee hopes to see you not only during the excellent Technical Presentations, but also at the AGM on Saturday January 30th 2016 at Fort Calgary. The Executive Committee hopes that you will all have a safe, healthy and enjoyable remainder of 2015. Mr Salt and Mr Enever. Our wonderful doormen, good cop, bad cop? Annual General Meeting 2015 Nicole, in her acceptance of the Charles The AGM was held on the 24th of January 2015 Dempsey medal and the Scholarship Award, at our usual venue Fort Calgary, which has talked about her work with the high school now been extensively renovated. The AGM students. The award would enable her devote more time to her presentations. Page 3 For Waheed, the judges were particularly lived up to the culinary reputation of Fort impressed with his eloquence in describing his Calgary. interests and ideas, especially his belief that engineers should be visible in society to Following the dinner, our keynote speaker, the counteract the general perception of the public renowned Dr. Tom Keenan, educator, author of engineers being anti-environment rather and broadcaster, was introduced. His than pro-development. His active participation presentation was “Technocreep: The in youth programs was noteworthy as he Surrender of Privacy and the Capitalization of strived to be a role model for them. Intimacy”. Since Waheed was unable to attend the AGM, he was presented with the medal and Scholarship Award at the March Technical Presentation. In his acceptance speech, Waheed reiterated his commitment to increase the awareness of engineers in the general public as well as encouraging the younger engineers to participate more actively in the Attendees at the AGM Connor Scheu, Emily Hicks, and society as a whole. Aymn Ali Judg Technocreep: the surrender of Privacy and the Capitalization of Intimacy Dr. Thomas P. Keenan FCIPS, I.S.P., ITCP Educator, Author and Public Speaker Waheed receiving the 2015 scholarship from the CPGCE Thomas P. Keenan gave a thought provoking if Executive Committee not disturbing presentation on everyday technology that many of us take for granted and how it may have a more sinister The pictures of Nicole and Waheed receiving application. their awards are posted on our website. Information was presented on the topics Subsequently the elections for the 2015 detailed below with the following question Executive Committee were held. One of our continually asked throughout the presentation longest serving members, Tom Martin retired to the audience, ‘what is the creepiest use of after serving for 10 years in the Committee, 6 technology?’ of which were as Deputy Treasurer. His extensive contributions were duly x Intelligence creep acknowledged. The rest of the 2014 Committee members were re-elected to the x Camera creep 2015 Committee together with 3 new x Deception creep members: Emily Hicks, Niamh Ní Chróinín and x Child creep Gobind Khiani. x Robot creep After the AGM, members and their guests were Those who attended the presentation will have served with a sumptuous buffet dinner, which noted that many of the topics discussed seemed to centre around or have some connection to pornography. The first topic on Page 4 intelligence creep was the advancement in pictures of ourselves and others either tagged technology called the Kurzweil Reading with names, places and captions. This has Machine which was the world’s first functional changed Facebook from being a site where text to speech synthesizer (as shown below). one can share photos with others (such as dropbox) to ‘the world’s largest, self-validated, This contraption was built as an aid to the photo database on the planet’. Mr. Keenan blind, however as Mr. Keenan explained after previously asked, ‘did the CIA create discussion with the librarian this machine was Facebook?’ to someone within the agency and mostly used to read pornography! He learned the response was ‘no’ but that it is utilized that there are many volunteers willing to read everyday by the CIA and had it not been books on the civil war or historic events but created they may have launched something very few who are willing to read Lady similar. Chatterley’s Lover or The Story of O. On April 19, 2013 technology was used to locate the whereabouts of fugitive Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the aftermath of the Boston bombings (see below). Thermal imaging is not by any means new and its applications range from use by the fire department to identify trapped humans in a fire or by the police to identify if someone is growing marijauna on their premises.