IEEE Madison Section - Meeting Schedule
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Why Doesn’t My Electricity Come from the Sun? Future Materials for Harnessing Solar Energy

Thursday, March 18, 2010, 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM

Non-member guests are always welcome!

The Earth is continuously bathing in over 10^17 watts of sunlight. This talk will discuss the science, technology, and economics of using photovoltaic solar cells to collect and convert a fraction of this free solar energy into electricity. In particular, this talk will focus on the materials and composition of photovoltaic solar cells and the principles of their operation and will attempt to answer the question of why past and current solar cell technologies have failed to become widespread. The talk will conclude by discussing the future of solar photovoltaics and new materials and technologies (with a focus on those being pursued by my research group such as semiconducting carbon nanotubes) that have the potential to boost the efficiency, decrease cost, and increase the practicality of solar cells.

Michael S. Arnold joined the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor in August 2008. He directs the Advanced Materials for Energy and Electronics Group at UW-Madison and is a leader in the research of novel materials for next generation solar photovoltaic, optoelectronic, and semiconductor logic devices. Prof. Arnold graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 2001. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2006 from Northwestern University in Materials Science and Engineering. Prof. Arnold also conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where he studied carbon-based electronic materials for high-efficiency white lighting and photovoltaics.

Building Accessibility directly into the Global Internet: Making the Internet easier to use for people of all ages and abilities

Thursday, April 15, 2010, 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM

Non-member guests are always welcome!

Talk abstract and presenter bio will be posted when available.

Broadband technologies are rapidly becoming integral to education, commerce, employment, community participation, health and safety Yet there remain multiple barriers to effective and affordable access by people with disabilities, elder, or those with low literacy creating an increasing digital divide. There are assistive technologies that can provide access for some. However it is not available for all disabilities, not affordable by many, and lags mainstream developments and deployments. Even when the latest AT is close to the latest IT, few people have the latest version. The cost of keeping up with mainstream technologies reduces resources available for innovation in assistive technologies and new directions in broadband technologies will require an already strapped AT industry to retool and re-architect their products. We are moving to an ICT environment with a profusion of hardware models (desktop, laptop, netbook, smartphone, tablet, set top box, game systems, players), multiple operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Maemo (Nokia), Bada (Samsung), WebOS, etc.), hundreds of software applications that embed another universe of widgets, plug-ins, and players, and a networked information environment that adheres to no standard and mutates far beyond the initial conception of the Web. Our current access technologies and infrastructure cannot handle this; the assistive technologies that now exist do not address all disabilities well, particularly cognitive, language, and learning disabilities, deaf-blindness and the mixed problems faced by elders; current assistive technologies often add, rather than reduce, complexity; finally, but importantly, people are not aware of what is possible, see it as complicated, and do not have any easy way to determine that there is something that can help them.

A coalition of academic, industry and non-governmental organizations and individuals are coming together to promote the creation of a National Public Inclusive Infrastructure (NPII) to address these problems. The purpose is to ensure that everyone who faces accessibility barriers due to disability, literacy or aging, regardless of economic status, can access and use the Internet and all its information, communities, and services for education, employment, daily living, civic participation, health and safety.

An NPII would provide key software enhancements to the physical infrastructure to allow lower cost accessibility that could be invoked on any computer, anywhere. Its key components would be a cloud based delivery system that would allow anywhere, any computer access, a personal preference system to allow systems to automatically configure themselves to users, a system of wizards to make creation of a preference profile simple even when a professional is not available, a metadata server to allow users to find accessible media or captions or descriptions for inaccessible media, a trusted source for malware free solutions, a rich development environment with common building blocks, and an awareness program to make more people aware of what is possible for them. All of the NPII components are being designed to support both commercial assistive technologies and free, built-in access features (universal design). The NPII will include a delivery system, personalization profiles and a rich development system and common modules. In addition to lowering development costs and increasing the number of solutions for different disabilities, the NPII can also enable new types of assistive technologies and services, including assistance-on-demand services that allow consumers to invoke computer or human assistance whenever and wherever they need it. The goal is a richer set of access options that it is less expensive to create and distribute and that can address the needs of a wider range of disabilities than is possible today. And a model infrastructure that can be replicated internationally and bring this wide variety of access options and the lower cost delivery system for both commercial and free access features to countries world-wide.

Gregg Vanderheiden is a professor of Industrial and Biomedical Engineering, and director of Trace R&D Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has worked in technology and disability for more than 38 years and currently directs the NIDRR Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Information Technology Access, and co-directs the RERC on Telecommunications Access (joint with Gallaudet University).

Dr Vanderheiden was a pioneer in the field of Augmentative Communication (a term taken from his writings in 1979), and worked with people having physical, visual, hearing and cognitive disabilities. His work with the computer industry led to many of the access features that are standard today. For example, access features developed by Dr. Vanderheiden and his team (e.g., StickyKeys, MouseKeys, etc.) have been built into the Macintosh OS since 1987, OS/2 and the UNIX X Window system since 1993, and more than half a dozen were built into Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and now System 7. His work is also found in the built-in access features in ATMs, Point of Sale terminals, and cross-disability accessible USPS Automated Postal Stations, as well as the accessible Amtrak ticket machines, and in airport terminals.

Dr. Vanderheiden has served on numerous professional, industry and government advisory and planning committees including those for the FCC, NSF, NIH, VA, DED, GSA, NCD, Access Board and White House. Dr. Vanderheiden served on the FCC's Technological Advisory Council, was a member of the Telecommunications Access Advisory committee and the Electronic Information Technology Access Advisory Committee (508 and 255 refresh) for the US Access Board, and served on the steering committee for the National Research Council's Planning Group on "Every Citizen Interfaces," and the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine Committee on the Future of Disability in America.

He has received over 30 awards for his work on technology and disability include the ACM Social Impact Award for the Human-Computer Interaction Community, the Ron Mace Award, the Access award from AFB, the Yuri Rubinski Memorial World Wide Web Award (WWW6), and the Isabelle and Leonard H. Goldenson Award for Outstanding Research in Medicine and Technology (UCPA).

Why Materials Degradation Is Different In Nuclear Systems

Thursday, September 16, 2010, 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM

Non-member guests are always welcome!

Even though similar materials are used and the temperatures and applied stresses to which materials are subjected in a nuclear system are similar to those in a fossil fired energy plant, the materials degradation is dramatically different. Degradation happens faster in nuclear systems and unique degradation modes like void swelling and irradiation assisted stress corrosion cracking on occur in nuclear systems. All this can be tied to the displacement of atoms by high-energy neutrons from fission. This talk will explain the degradation that occurs in a nuclear system, why it is unique, and how it is mitigated.

Prof. Allen is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison since 2003. Prof. Allen’s research expertise is in the area of materials related issues in nuclear reactors, specifically radiation damage and corrosion. Dr. Allen has established the Extreme Environment Laboratory equipped with facilities for a wide array of high temperature studies as well as the ion beam laboratory for radiation damage studies. Dr. Allen is also the Scientific Director for the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility at Idaho National Laboratory, a position that he holds in conjunction with his faculty position at the University of Wisconsin.