IEEE Region 6 Southern Area Meeting Gathers IEEE Student Branch Leaders, Directors, and Section Leaders on the UCLA Campus for Planning and Competitions

Los Angeles, CA, May 03, 2014 --(PR.com)-- “The profession of engineering reinvents itself every 5 years,” explains Doug Askegard, Chair of the Southern Area of Region 6 of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (IEEE). “In Southern California, we have 21 college-based IEEE engineering Student Branches empowered with promoting the cool factor of being part of a rapidly advancing profession,” continues Askegard. Today, the student leaders will meet with their professional counter parts who lead IEEE local Sections and the Western U.S. Region, to develop recommendations to be considered and voted on at the triennial Sections Congress being held later this summer in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Jingtao Xia, Justin Young, Dan Li, and Hannah Chou, UCLA engineering students, illustrate perfectly the enthusiastic and energy-packed spirit of the new engineering generation. Officers of the UCLA IEEE Student Branch volunteered their time to host the Spring 2014 IEEE Region 6 Southern Area meeting in the Samueli Engineering School on the UCLA campus. “Working with them makes organizing the event a dream,” comments Askegard. This event not only focuses on IEEE engineering leadership, but also promotes a MicroMouse competition with teams from several universities in the area. Young innovators also have their own design presentation competition to show off their creativity.

Mike Andrews, Region 6 Director, will welcome the two 2015-16 Direct-Elect candidates, Kathleen Kramer, Professor of Electrical Engineering at USD, and S.K. Ramesh, Dean of the College of Engineering & Computer Science at CSUN, to present their visions and goals when one of them is elected to lead Region 6 of IEEE.

These events are a time of celebration with awards presented to top trail blazers in the IEEE community. The luncheon keynote speaker, Nathalie Gosset, Sr. Director of Technology Assessment at the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC and futurist speaker, will push the minds to new horizons of technical possibilities that will excite novices and seasoned engineers alike.

The day will conclude with the announcement of the competitions’ winners. The top three best performing teams in MicroMouse and Design Presentation competitions will receive cash prizes.

The IEEE is the world’s largest technical organization with over 400,000 members. The Region 6 Southern Area organization represents the approximately 11,000 members of the IEEE engineering community in eight Sections located in the Southern California. The mission of the Southern Area is to support and promote the engineering profession, encourage students to consider this career path, and to create venues to facilitate education and networking among engineers.