IEEE PNEC

WIE PNEC, IEEE PNEC’s sister concern, presents inQuizitive, the quiz competition for only the most hardcore trivia enthusiasts.

The quiz competition comprises three rounds.

• Each team is to be made up of 3 members.
• The first round consists of 5 questions and spans mainly high-school Physics concepts.
• The second round or the buzzer round consists of 10 General Knowledge questions. There will be negative marking during this round. Whichever team hits the buzzer and fails to articulate the correct answer would end up losing one point off their score.
• The final round consists of 7 trivial Problem Solving questions. Whichever team manages to get all the 7 questions right first, wins the round.
• Each question carries one point.
• In case of a tie, a bonus question will be asked to the concerned teams.

The event is scheduled for Friday, 11th April, 2014, at the Jauhur Auditorium. The event is OPEN TO ALL and FREE. Register now! 

Are you a problem solver? Does critical thinking catch your fancy?

Put your problem solving abilities to the test with the IEEE PNEC Case Study Challenge. The event is an IEEE PNEC initiative geared toward promoting critical thinking and is set to take place on 3 pm, Friday, 11th April, 2014 at the Jauhar auditorium.

This event is OPEN TO ALL and is FREE. As an added incentive, the winner gets tickets to a movie of their choice at Atrium Cinema. Register now!

The Maestro of Rapid Advances In Technology

One should always believe that all kinds of marvels, in any field, are done by a simpleton. Most of the times, they are done by such types of people from whom the world does not expect much. Nonetheless, those people go to heights greater than anyone can really achieve. They are the ones who do inspire and tell the world that there is more to them than meets the eye. Can you believe that Daniel Craig, who is better known for his role as the infamous “James Bond”, used to sleep on the park benches in London when he was struggling to make a career? In the list of amazing simpletons who have changed our perspective about technology, Steve Jobs leads the way.

Steve Jobs was born on 24^th February, 1955 in San Francisco. Parented by Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs, a lower middle class couple, Steve Jobs grew up in Santa Clara County which is located in the south of the Bay Area. This place was later named as the well-known “Silicon Valley”. Thus, the origin of a Steve’s mind, which nurtured great love for technology and loads of innovations, can be known about. He was brought up in a neighborhood where engineers built gadgets in their garages on weekends. Paul Jobs, who was a mechanic and a carpenter, taught the basic skills of engineering to his son. In the family garage, Steve learned to assemble and disassemble different electronic instruments such as the radio and the television. This nourished his zeal for electronics.

After graduating from high school in 1972, Steve Jobs wanted to enroll in Reed College, Oregon which is quite an expensive liberal arts college. His parents had to spend most of their savings on his university education. Due to financial problems, Steve had to drop out after the first semester but he remained at the university to take some “drop-in” courses which he found interesting. He audited classes at the Reed College while sleeping on the floor of his friend’s dorm room, having free meals from the local Hare Krishna Temple and returning Coke bottles for free food. If one of us had been subjected to such bad conditions, most of us would have really given up on life but Steve moved on. After returning to California, he started a job at “Atari” video games. Steve was a little disillusioned at that time.

Then he started taking interest in his friend, Steve Wozniak’s activities. Steve Wozniak was a computer whiz and wanted to build his own personal computer board. After he had successfully built one, Steve Jobs was amazed. He came up with the idea of selling these computer boards to software writers who would like an assembled computer kit than the one they would have to build themselves for their work. Thus, on 1^st April, 1976, Apple Computer came into being. Who knew that a computer company, whose computer boards, known as Apple-I, were assembled at the garage of Steve Job’s house, would turn into a well-known phenomenon which would be developing cutting-edge technology? Soon, the two friends started assembling Apple-II, a more powerful system which supported colour graphics. Steve Jobs became successful in making the Intel executive, Mike Markkula invest in Apple Computer. Its product, VisiCalc, was the first commercially successful spreadsheet program. Hundreds of people, who had businesses or worked in the field of business, bought Apple-II so they could work on calculations at home. After just 4 years, Apple Computer became public. By the time, the production of Apple-II was stopped; around 6 million systems had been sold. At just 25 years of age, Steve Job’s net worth jumped over $200 million. It is said that he holds the title of being the lowest-paid CEO when Apple Computer was born.

The product, developed afterwards, by the name of Apple-III, was not a huge success. A trip to the research lab, Xerox PARC, inspired Steve Jobs to develop and use the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the mouse in the new business computer project named Lisa. Due to being hot-tempered and having less experience in technology and management, he was eliminated from the team, working on the Lisa. Later, he started to work on “Macintosh” which was supposed to be an inexpensive personal computer. The Lisa did not achieve success but Macintosh brought laurels to the company. However, some problems concerning relationship with colleagues occurred and Steve Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985. He founded a computer company named NeXT immediately. Its products like the OS NeXTSTEP permitted object oriented programming which made software writing much easier but these machines were not very successful. While this company just survived merely, Steve Jobs bought the Pixar, which was a computer graphics division of the Lucasfilm Empire, lead by George Lucas. He started out with the idea of producing hardware but later on, went with working on computer animated films after its production; “Tin Toy” won an Oscar in 1989. Steve became more attached with this company as it made more profit than Apple. The colossal success of Pixar can be judged by the fame of “Toy Story” trilogy and many other great movies. During the 90’s, the sales of Apple were falling. When Microsoft churned out Windows 1995, the competition just hit the roof. In 1996, the CEO, Gil Amelio signed a deal with Steve in order to use NeXTSTEP as the OS for the products of Apple. Steve Jobs was back in the company which was his brainchild.

Then, Apple was transformed in every way. The introduction of the iMac in 1998 marked the height of innovation. A full transition of MAC OS took place which was a big feat achieved by Apple. Steve Jobs worked tirelessly to retain the lost honour of the company. He revolutionized the idea of downloading and sharing music by introducing iTunes. Then the beloved iPod came to life in 2001 which changed the face of digital music players. The cellphone industry was shook by the introduction of iPhone in 2007. With the introduction of the tablet iPad in 2010, the level of portability, achieved by Apple, was remarkable. In 2003, Steve was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had a surgery in 2004. Even though the operation was successful, he became really ill and had to get a liver transplant in 2009. He did not remain very well and passed away on 5^th October, 2011. Indeed, a legend left this world on that day. We know that his have changed our lives. It all happened when one man strived hard to change what he saw around him. Indeed, Steve Jobs is a “man with a vision”. His brilliance can be known about by his quote, given below.

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them. It’s not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I’m still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.”

A lot went into the preparation for the first event of the year being done by the new executive committee. All the new members of the executive committee worked quite hard to make sure that an appropriate first impression was made. The annual general meeting 2013 took place on 26^th February , 2013 and started at 4:30pm. The ceremony was hosted by Subaata, a student of electrical engineering. The ceremony kicked off with a fine introductory speech which elaborated the general perspective of the IEEE-PNEC student branch.

Then Zohaib Shahid, the current editor of IEEE-PNEC, was called upon the stage to recite a few verses from the Holy Quran. Then Mr. Umer Amir, the new mentor of the IEEE-PNEC student branch was invited to share his views about the position he had achieved. He praised the efforts of the former executive committee in making IEEE-PNEC a renowned society at the university. He dignified the role of IEEE-PNEC throughout its time at PNEC and emphasized that the new executive committee should focus more on practical events.

Afterwards, a video, depicting the events organized by IEEE in 2012 and the diligent efforts of the former executive committee, was shown. The video was indeed an encompassing illustration of the undertakings of IEEE-PNEC. The former chairperson of the executive committee of 2012, Onib Nasir, the chairperson of IEEE for the year 2012, elaborated the shown pictorials in an interesting manner. In his speech, he highlighted all the technical and non-technical events arranged by IEEE, the publications and the awards won by the IEEE-PNEC student branch in 2012. The awarding ceremony for the former executive committee went underway after a short address given by Commander Dr. Atta Ullah Memon who is a former mentor of the IEEE-PNEC student branch. He told about the brilliance of IEEE in a number of respects and lauded all the supporting members for their hard work and dedication. The list of the recipients who were given the awards, along with their positions is given below.

• Chair IEEE: Onib Nasir
• Special Projects Officer: Mohammed Usman Yousuf
• Program Officer: Shayan Ahmed
• Outreach Officer: Ahmed Hassan
• Web and Media Officer: Adil Faqah-Ur-Rehman
• Membership Development Officer: Faraz Iqbal
• Communications Officer: Hamza Zahid Sultan
• Junior Officer: Asim Ahmed
• Editor: Syeda Rabia Jamal
• Secretary WIE: Summayya Abbas
• Vice Chair WIE: Iqra Sajid
• Chair WIE: Kanza Basit
• General Secretary: Rehma Javed
• Vice Chair IEEE: Zain Gill

A few members were awarded for their exemplary efforts in making IEEE-PNEC student branch stand out among other societies at PNEC and other IEEE student branches. Asim Ahmed, the current general secretary of IEEE-PNEC, was awarded a shield for his matchless volunteer services. Zohaib Shahid achieved the award named “Going the Extra Mile” for his prodigious volunteer services to the IEEE. Adil Faqah-Ur-Rehman was given the award named “Dare to Dream” for his extraordinary efforts in making IEEE a successful society in many ways. Rabia Khalid was awarded for her illustrious role in making IEEE-PNEC student branch a well-known society abroad.

Then Iqra Sajid, the new chairperson of IEEE-PNEC, and Onib Nasir came up to the stage to sign the legal documents for transfer of the office and the financial accounts to the new executive committee. This procedure took place in the presence of the director of the Student Representative Council, Commander Dr. Faisal Amir. After that, all the members of the new executive committee lined up on the stage to take the oath to serve IEEE-PNEC student branch loyally and make its level of achievements higher than the last time. The members of the new executive committee are listed below.

• Chair IEEE-PNEC: Iqra Sajid
• Vice-Chair IEEE-PNEC: Ahmed Hassan
• General Secretary: Asim Ahmed
• Treasurer: Shayan Ahmed
• Editor: Zohaib Shahid
• Communications Officer: Salar Bin Javaid
• Program Officer: Mohammed Saadi Aziz
• Membership Development Officer: Abdullah Khalid
• Outreach Officer: Hammad Saleem
• Special Projects Officer: Maheen Mumtaz
• Web and Media Officer: Muneeb Abid
• Junior Officer: Maryum Waris
• Chair WIE: Syeda Rabia Jamal
• Vice Chair WIE: Ramsha Asim
• Secretary WIE: Mubashira Afzal
• Treasurer WIE: Hajra Khan

Commander Dr. Faisal Amir conducted the oath-taking ceremony. This was followed by a triumphant speech by Iqra Sajid who told about her memorable journey from being a junior officer to her contemporary designation. Humbled by her designation, Iqra stated that she would struggle to take the IEEE-PNEC student branch to greater heights during her tenure. Afterwards, the commanding officer Rear Admiral Imdad Jafferi was invited upon the stage to present a memento to Commander Dr. Atta Ullah Memon. The remarkable event ended with the motivating and inspiring remarks from the commandant.

The event was followed up by Hi Tea for the guests.

Following is a video showing all the best moments of the ex-comm of 2012.

IEEE PNEC Year in Review 2012 from IEEE PNEC on Vimeo.

Alex Fleming: “I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young…

Maxwell produced colossal advances in science which is nothing short of a revolution. We owe him a lot for the advances in technology we see today.

IEEE PNEC heartily congratulates one of her outstanding stalwart volunteers, Rabia Khalid, former chairperson IEEE PNEC on winning the 2nd award for 2012 IEEE R10 WIE Volunteer Award.

Election results to be announced Tuesday, 11th December, 2012

MARIE SKLODOWSKA CURIE is known to the world as the scientist who discovered radioactive metals i.e. Radium & Polonium and as the first person to win two Nobel prizes.

Student Elevation & Transition Program or STEP is a program created for local GOLD affinity groups to be of particular help to those individuals who are making the seemingly difficult transition from student to young professionals. Usually, a move to professional life is often coupled with apprehension due to the changes in environment and changes in independence! It is this nervousness that the network of IEEE GOLD and young professional members strive to ease away to make the transition a successful one.

IEEE PNEC Student Branch and Karachi Section planned the IEEE STEP (Student Transition & Elevation Program) that was to take place at the Karachi Section Student/GOLD/WIE Congress 2012 on October 4, 2012. The vision for this STEP event was to promote the GOLD membership of IEEE and also for the career development of the ongoing members. The IEEE STEP event specifically was aimed to:

• Introduce graduating student members to the GOLD community
• Recognize student members as they graduate and become part of the local GOLD community,
• Retain student members as they are elevated to higher grade IEEE members by demonstrating to them the value of IEEE membership during the onset of new careers and how membership can help them excel in their professional lives.

The STEP event features the following details:

1. A lively dialogue session on ‘Maximizing your IEEE membership’
2. Session on “Self Assessing your Skills”
3. A panel discussion on ‘The importance of entrepreneurship and the Pakistani student’
4. Networking session followed by Dinner

More than 140 student Members and 12 GSM and GOLD members participated in the event. The details of the event proceedings are as follows.

Maximizing your IEEE Membership

Speakers’ Profile:

Hassaan Idrees
Former GINI Lead Pakistan
Larry K. Wilson Award Nominee 2010
Karachi Section Student Representative 2010
Outreach Officer IEEE PNEC Student Branch 2011
Previously Graduate Trainee Engineer at Engro Fertilisers
Karachi Section Ambassador in R10SC 2011 at University of Auckland

Rabia Khalid
Chairperson IEEE Pakistan WIE Forum
Consultant IEEE PNEC Student Branch
Student Representative South Asia GOLD Committee
Student Lead Region 10 SPMP – Student Professional Mentorship Program
Larry K. Wilson Award Nominee 2011
Chairperson IEEE PNEC Student Branch 2011

Time Duration
30 minutes

Session Details:
Rabia Khalid and Hassaan Idrees, both very well-known and recent graduates of PNEC and highly active members of the Karachi Section who have brought much acclaim to the section and the student branch with their efforts of volunteerism. They held the audiences’ interest by having a lively dialogue based session on the importance of IEEE membership and the benefits that it can provide. One of the major hurdles in the South Asia block has always been the membership dues of IEEE for people becoming a new member and also retaining their membership. This problem has been deterring members not to retain their membership and become GOLD members.

Rabia Khalid and Hassaan Idrees having served IEEE in various different capacities have had the experience and also enjoyed the perks of being a member were selected as appropriate speakers to shed light on the matter and also encourage the students to become members and also retain their membership. In the session the speakers discussed about their PNEC days and the role IEEE played in it. Being the forerunners and very active members of the society, they were able to bring a very bright image of IEEE in front of the audience.

Very beautifully, the two of them, during their conversation with each other, encompassed all the issues that a student faces during his/her transition from a student to a professional and also highlighted how their IEEE membership helped them throughout and made them stand out of the line at each stage. Their dialogue at certain times was molded in the form of a debate and each of them threw questions during their questions. This proved to be a very effective mean of making the students understand the worth of IEEE membership and how it turns out to be an important tool for you when you step into your professional life.

Hassaan and Rabia kept their conversation very interactive with the audience and had them engaged throughout. During the discussion that followed about their journey through IEEE, they also got other notable IEEE members present at the event to talk about their experience with it. While conversing about the importance of research papers and publications in a student’s bachelors’ degree, Hassaan asked Ms Eram Abbasi, Founder Solutology, and a very notable IEEE Pakistan member, to tell the students how important these platforms, like The IEEE, are for a student’s research work and publications and how they can help you with your research.

Their conversation also engaged other notable students of the IEEE Karachi Section including Mr. Ahsan Saeed, Chair IEEE NED, Mr. Zain Gill, Vice Chair IEEE PNEC, Miss Wahaba Hussain, Chair IEEE WIE NED, Mr. Moiz Memon, Former Chair IEEE MUET and a few others too. They talked about the various benefits that the members are entitled to receive. They talked about the various student awards and competitions and created awareness regarding it for e.g. The Larry K Wilson Award, IEEE Student Enterprise Award, IEEE Darrel Chong Student Activity Award, Exemplary Student Branch Award, Branch Counselor Award, IEEE Website Contest, IEEE Xtreme, Humanitarian Technology Competition and a few other programs and awards too. They also entertained questions from the audience and answered them in detail, with the aim of clarifying any misconceptions regarding IEEE memberships. At the end of this session they were able to increase awareness and eliminate the misconceptions regarding IEEE and being an active participant in it.

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