
W. Eric Wong	Lon Chase
University of Texas at Dallas	Raytheon Company
Chair, Dallas Chapter	Vice Chair, Dallas Chapter
Secretary, IEEE Reliability Society	Member of AdCom, IEEE Reliability Society

Starting in 2014, the Dallas Chapter has launched a dedicated website (http://paris.utdallas.edu/rsdallas) for its members, posting all the coming events as well as those sponsored by the chapter during the last two years. This provides a very convenient resource to help Dallas members better understand the chapter’s ongoing activities and plan their schedule in advance for more involvement in events that interest them. Figure 1 shows the banner of the home page of our website. Click on a year to see all the events in that particular year.

Figure 1. Dallas Chapter Website Home Page

On January 11, five members of the Dallas Chapter attended the 2014 IEEE Dallas Section Annual Banquet, where Dr. Ron Knerr (Texas Instruments) and Professor W. Eric Wong (UT-Dallas) received the Outstanding Service Award for their contribution to the RS Dallas Chapter (see Figure 2).

Award Recipient: Ron Knerr

Award Recipient: W. Eric Wong

Figure 2. IEEE Dallas Annual Banquet (January 11, 2014)

A four-hour instructor-led training on software safety with an in-class exercise was organized by the Dallas Chapter on February 21. This is a very important topic, which unfortunately is not covered in the undergraduate curriculum. It has become even more critical, considering that regardless of age, gender, occupation, nationality, etc., each one of us depends on software either directly or indirectly in our everyday life. The instructor, Dr. Mike Siok, has more than 25 years of experience in embedded avionic computer systems and software development with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Fort Worth, Texas. He has led the in-house effort to put into place the standard engineering practice for software safety at Lockheed. In addition, Dr. Siok has consulted with the various aircraft program engineering staff at the Fort Worth plant and with Lockheed Martin corporate engineering staff on matters of software safety. He has also delivered software safety courseware for practicing software engineers. This training was well received with more than 60 attendees, who not only listened to the lecture and participated in the discussion, but also participated in an exercise and presented their solutions on how potential hazards could be avoided. Figure 3 are pictures from Dr. Siok’s lecture and the students’ presentation.

Figure 3. Lecture by Dr. Mike Siok, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics

The RS Dallas Chapter has established a strategic collaboration with the Computer Society Dallas Chapter for better reach out to an even wider community, including not only members of these two chapters, but also faculty and students of neighboring universities like UT-Arlington, University of North Texas (UNT), Southern Methodist University (SMU), etc., as well as engineers from companies in the Dallas metropolitan area such as Texas Instruments, Raytheon, Boeing, HP, Rockwell, and IBM. Already during the first two months in 2014, both chapters have worked together to co-sponsor two technical seminars: one on January 24 by Cong Liu, an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at UT-Dallas, focusing on “Exploring Adaptive Reconfiguration to Optimize Energy Efficiency in Battery-Powered Cyber-Physical Systems,” and the other on February 21 by Charlie Bess (Figure 4), an HP Fellow, with an emphasis on “Planning for a World of IT Abundance.” Both events were held on UT-Dallas campus and attracted a good number of attendees. This partnership will continuously grow to provide more and better services for our members.

Figure 4: Seminar by Charlie Bess, HP Fellow

The RS Dallas Chapter has also planned many other events for the rest of the year. Of these the most important ones are:

The 2014 UT-Dallas Spring Student Outreach on April 11 with Professor Christian Hansen, Present of the IEEE Reliability Society, as the speaker.

QSIC 2014 − the 14th International Conference on Quality Software. The conference has been technically sponsored by the IEEE Reliability Society since 2009. This year it will be held in Dallas from October 2 to 3. The RS Dallas Chapter and UT-Dallas will be the local sponsors. Professor W. Eric Wong (Society’s Secretary) is the General Chair and Dr. Jeff Voas (Senior Past President) will give a keynote address. Visit the web http://paris.utdallas.edu/qsic14/ for more details.

Visit the Dallas Chapter website(http://paris.utdallas.edu/rsdallas) for more details.