Anatomy of an Accident:How Sloppy work and a Lack of Documentation Caused Massive Payouts!On Thursday morning, January 7, 1999, a woman walking to work died on the sidewalk in front of UTSA downtown. The cause was ruled as electrocution from an energized metal lid in the sidewalk. The resultant investigation revealed a lack of final inspection on the original work and many problems with subsequent work. Enough that San Antonio’s Central Power Supply (CPS) and others paid out a combined $6.4M. James Mercier, who was at that time an engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation, will present and discuss the various errors discovered from his investigation for TxDOT and in the court records. Long after the court case was settled, James may have figured out what really happened that day!Speaker(s): James, Agenda: - Introduction- Presentation by Mr. James MercierVirtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/482904

Abstract:Vulnerabilities in OS and application software, although hard to eliminate, are well known. This talk will look a couple layers down in the stack to securing the lowest-level software in a device, often referred to as firmware, with the intent of blocking hard-to-find and hard-to-eradicate attacks classified as Advanced Persistent <a href="http://Threats.The" target="_blank" title="Threats.The">Threats.The talk covers why firmware is uniquely-difficult to protect, introduces the Root of Trust concept, and goes on to describe technology such as the Trusted Computing Group’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM), as a component to enhance a device’s ability to defend itself against APTs. Although low-level security issues can exist in any computing environment, this talk focuses on IoT and Industrial IoT <a href="http://applications.Speaker's" target="_blank" title="applications.Speaker's">applications.Speaker's Bio:Guy C. Fedorkow is a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks. He received the BASc in Engineering Science and MASc in Electrical Engineering at University of Toronto, and went on to develop both packet-switching technology and high-throughput parallel computer architectures at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, MA. At Cisco Systems, he did hardware design and system architecture for cell-switching and high-scale internet service provider routers. Continuing at Juniper Networks, he has served as system architect for high-throughput Internet service provider products. Guy is currently working on trusted computing technologies to protect underlying computational infrastructure in router, switch and firewall products at Juniper Networks, and is a Fellow in the MIT Connection Sciences group. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-fedorkow-3b65151/Room:" target="_blank" title="https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-fedorkow-3b65151/Room:">https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-fedorkow-3b65151/Room: SF B560, Bldg: Sanford Fleming Building, University of Toronto, 10 King's College Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G4

This is a joint meeting of Canadian Society of Senior Engineers and IEEE Life Members Affinity <a href="http://Groups.This" target="_blank" title="Groups.This">Groups.This series of presentations has been occurring for more than 20 years and is now being also advertised to the IEEE Northern Canada Section (NCS) Life Members Affinity Group (LMAG) through vTools and other IEEE LMAG's and IEEE members depending upon the topic. At the same time the Canadian Society of Senior Engineers (CSSE) is using their national organization to provide information, the subject and speaker to members across <a href="http://Canada.The" target="_blank" title="Canada.The">Canada.The next meeting will be held on Thursday, June 19, 2025. The meeting will open at 12:30 pm MDT (2:30pm Eastern), with the presentation starting at 12:45 (2:45 pm EDT). The meeting will be held via the Zoom platform with the actual invitations sent the afternoon of Wednesday, June 18 If you plan to attend and be included on the Zoom invite for this meeting please respond to Tom Madsen, [email protected], before noon on Wednesday, June 18.Please note the meeting originates in Alberta which is in the Mountain Time Zone, so if you are in another province you must account any necessary time <a href="http://shift.Title:" target="_blank" title="shift.Title:">shift.Title: From Geothermal to Vertical Farming: An Engineer’s Journey into Food Security and AgTech InnovationPresenter: Shlok Srivastava, P.<a href="http://Eng.Summary:" target="_blank" title="Eng.Summary:">Eng.Summary: With rising climate volatility, energy constraints, and supply chain disruptions, Canada faces an urgent need to develop resilient, locally grown food systems. In this talk, Shlok Srivastava, P.Eng., shares a compelling journey that began with a geothermal feasibility study at the Canadian Energy Centre and evolved into a bold venture in year-round strawberry production within a total controlled environment facility in Edmonton, <a href="http://Alberta.This" target="_blank" title="Alberta.This">Alberta.This transformation gave rise to GroHERE Harvest Ltd., an agri-tech company at the intersection of engineering, sustainability, and food innovation. The team recently repurposed an ex-cannabis facility into Alberta’s first commercial-scale vertical strawberry farm, marking a breakthrough for the <a href="http://Prairies.Attendees" target="_blank" title="Prairies.Attendees">Prairies.Attendees will get a behind-the-scenes look at the engineering challenges and breakthroughs of shifting from the energy sector to advanced food production — offering a fresh perspective on how Canada can reimagine its agricultural future and emerge as a net producer of premium fresh <a href="http://produce.Bio:" target="_blank" title="produce.Bio:">produce.Bio: Shlok Srivastava, P.Eng. is the Director of Operations at GroHERE Harvest Ltd., an agri-tech company advancing vertical farming for year-round strawberry production in Alberta. With over eight years of experience across the energy and agricultural sectors, Shlok has led innovative projects at the intersection of engineering, sustainability, and food security. His technical expertise spans O&G reservoir analysis, HVAC design, industrial energy audits, and data analytics. At GroHERE, he oversees engineering, QA/QC, and crop analytics, enabling high-efficiency cultivation within a fully controlled environment. Shlok is deeply committed to applying engineering innovation to strengthen local food systems and foster collaboration among industry, government, and regulatory <a href="http://partners.Virtual:" target="_blank" title="partners.Virtual:">partners.Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/487614

Topic I: Ubiquitous Sensing in 6G Cellular NetworksRecently, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has identified integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) as a primary usage scenario for the sixth-generation (6G) cellular networks in IMT-2030 Framework. As a result, future cellular networks will provide not only communication services, but also sensing services such as localization and tracking. However, how to exploit the existing communication infrastructure to effectively achieve sensing functions remains an open problem for 6G. In this talk, we will introduce the methodologies to leverage various types of communication nodes in cellular networks as anchors, including base stations, user equipments, and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, to perform ubiquitous sensing. Specifically, the advantages and disadvantages of each type of anchors will be listed, and the efficient solutions to overcome these disadvantages will be outlined. Apart from theoretical works, this talk will also present our latest achievements in building a 6G ISAC platform that operates at the millimeter-wave band. We will conclude this talk by discussing some promising future directions that will be beneficial to the transformation of the world’s largest communication network into the world’s largest sensing <a href="http://network.Topic" target="_blank" title="network.Topic">network.Topic II: ISAC Exploiting Prior Distribution Information: Optimized Beamforming and How Many Sensing Beams are Needed?In wireless sensing or integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems, the exact values of the parameters to be sensed are generally unknown before sensing is performed. This leads to unknown channels associated with the sensing targets, which pose new challenges for the beamforming design. On the other hand, the distribution of the parameters to be sensed can be practically acquired a priori based on target properties or statistical analysis. This talk will present a new beamforming optimization framework for wireless sensing or ISAC systems based only on the prior distribution information about the parameters to be sensed. Specifically, we are going to discuss a series of interesting questions as follows. Firstly, for a sensing-only system, with various possible values for each parameter to be sensed, each with a potentially different probability, how to design transmit beamforming and how many sensing beams are needed? We will unveil a novel “probability-dependent power focusing” effect in the optimized beamforming design. Secondly, for an ISAC system with dual-functional beams for sensing and communication, how many dual-functional beams are needed for achieving an optimal trade-off between sensing and communication? Thirdly, for an ISAC system with potentially dedicated sensing beams, when are sensing beams needed and how many sensing beams are needed? Finally, we will reveal the role of such prior distribution information in various other practical problems such as the placement design of sensing anchors as well as the beamforming designs in systems with limited radio frequency (RF) chains, reconfigurable surface, physical-layer security consideration, or networked <a href="http://sensing.Speaker(s):" target="_blank" title="sensing.Speaker(s):">sensing.Speaker(s): Dr. Liang LIU, Dr. Shuowen ZHANGRoom: ACEB 1415, Bldg: Amit Chakma Engineering Building, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada

ExCom Meeting of the Northern Canada SectionRoom: Elm room, Bldg: Holiday Inn Hotel, 4485 Gateway Blvd NW, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6H 5H5, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/488634

AR/VR devices promise a new era of immersive computing, where our everyday experience is augmented with helpful information (Augmented Reality), or where we are immersed in fully virtual worlds (Virtual Reality). These systems fuse the physical world, and the virtual world, through computing resources to provide these immersive experiences rendered on the user's headset. As a result, it allows new opportunities for attackers to compromise the security and privacy of users that are not well understood. Towards understanding the security and privacy challenges in these systems, this talk presents a number of recent attacks we developed on AR/VR systems. One threat model exploits the shared computing resources used by multiple applications on a headset to extract information through side channels; we show attacks that spy on user activity or compromise privacy. Another threat model exploits the shared state among multiple users in a multi-user application, allowing malicious users to inject compromised information or to recover information they are not allowed to access. Other threat models include those that interfere with applications and cause the virtual model to become out of sync with the physical world, causing user motion sickness or bypassing safety guardrails. I will conclude with discussion of potential defenses and ways to build more security AR/VR <a href="http://experiences.Co-sponsored" target="_blank" title="experiences.Co-sponsored">experiences.Co-sponsored by: IEEE Montreal SectionSpeaker(s): Dr. Nael Abu-GhazalehAgenda: 20:00 Hours - START of Distinguished Lecture21:00 Hours - END of Distinguished Lecture21:00 Hours - Start of Q&A, Discussions, Thoughts, etcALL times are in EDT/EST formatVirtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/485331