Category: NEWS

Asei Michigan Chapter Hosting 2022 Golf Outing

ASEI Michigan Chapter Hosting 2022 Golf Outing

What does one have to do with GOLF and Engineering?

Do you know an engineer can swing the golf club and convert it into speed…because they know pendulum theory and concept. The faster a golfer can make a golf ball go, the farther it will travel. How does a golfer get a ball to go faster? It’s science and engineering.

Check out different engineering and scientific theory on September 18th at HillTop Golf course.

Register ASAP at http://www.aseiusa.org/EventPage?eventId=1137

Happy 75th Independence Day

Happy 75th Independence Day #azadikaamritmahotsav

Celebrating an important milestone today…. 75 years ago on 15th August 1947 India became independent from the British colonial rule.

Since then, the vision, enterprising spirit and innovative ideas along with hard work of over a billion Indians have propelled us to hold our head high in the world as the largest functioning running democracy and significant progress in technology, innovation and self sufficiency.

ASEI (American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin) has stood for not only a safe space for diaspora scientists, engineers and technologists to grow, share knowledge and help develop the next generation, but also strengthening Indo-US technological relations and collaborations since inception.

We greet all our members and well wishers and proud to celebrate the #azadikaamritmahotsav2022 with our Motherland! #jaihind

Originally from south India, after graduating from IIT Delhi, she came to the US for her masters at Cornell. Padma has been a member of Microsoft’s board of directors since December 2015. She is also a board member at Spotify .She was a member of the Gap Inc. board from 2013 to 2016[23] and the Box board from 2014 to 2016.

Apart from numerous commercial accolades and those from ASEI, she was recognized by National Association of Asian American Professionals NAAAP with a Lifetime achievement award NAAAP100 in 2021

 

In our Engineering Tales Episode 7 last week, Padma spoke with ASEI members and complemented us on continuing to inspire the next generation of technologists amongst the indo-american diaspora. She thanked ASEI for her 2013 Engineer of the Year award. Then she shared pertinent learnings from her career especially embracing change:

“Throughout my career, I have journeyed as an engineer to a technology executive to a CEO, not only changing roles along the way, but also industries—from Motorola to Cisco to Nio, and now Fable.”

As she has embraced change herself along the way, she also observed an evolution of how people learn and interact with one another, which inspired her to think about how we 1) apply technology to bring humanity back to each of us, and 2) make mental wellness through reading a priority.

She further shared the inspiration behind her current venture, as the founder and CEO of Fable – a social reading app platform. She also added that Indian-American Titans of Industry—like Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, and Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo—curating book recommendations which you can find on Fable.

She invites all ASEI members to read along with her in her own club, or join one of the many other free clubs you can find in the Fable app.

Additionally, she mentioned that they have amazing Career Development Book Clubs, which are designed to help you get to the next professional level, and are reimbursable through your company. In these clubs, you’ll study must-read books, get coaching from world-renowned leaders and authors, and connect with like-minded professionals, all on your schedule. You can learn more about these clubs at fable.co/career-development

In closing, Padma left us with her top 3 pieces of advice to young students or budding engineers and the importance of building networks through organizations like ASEI:

Invest in upskilling and reskilling yourself – (eg making career coaching available through our Career Dev clubs)

  • Seek new opportunities – don’t wait for the perfect job to land in your lap
  • Growth mindset – be curious and expand your areas of expertise

We are thankful for Padmasree Warrior in continuing to be a friend of ASEI as much as being a role model for not only all women of color but all Asian American Professionals.

Join Padma in your reading journey with her featured club on Fable for free to learn about her career journey as well as leadership tips.

 

 

 

Data

Data Data Everywhere: Question Is Where To Store?

From magnetic tapes to floppy disks to the cloud – The world of Storage has come a long way. Here’s a capsule size overview of the past, present and future of storage by Surbhi Paul,
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Our ability to receive, store, and recall data has changed tremendously over the last hundred years. Let’s take a walk through time and trace the past, present, and future of data storage.  From 1930s-1990s, there has been an evolution of storage devices from magnetic tapes and drums, an early form of computer memory wherein the electromagnetic pulse was stored by changing the magnetic orientation of ferromagnetic particles, to floppy disks, hard drives and flash drives. Hard drives continued to reduce in size and evolved into flash storage drives.

The transition from magnetic, mechanical rotating disk to semiconductor flash storage is not a minor transition. After a long stagnant period, storage over the last decade has experienced a technological turning point with the development of semiconductor-based flash memory for both consumer and enterprise applications. The advent of flash memory is not simply a change in media, where one can obtain its benefits entirely just by replacing a disk with an SSD. The advantages of flash will only be fully realized with entirely new storage software and entirely new computing stacks. Legacy vendors cannot afford to abandon their existing code to take full advantage of flash – they have simply thrown SSDs into their existing arrays. With no rotating media baggage, data storage leaders are focused entirely on maximizing the advantages of flash for new and existing computing architectures, and on leveraging the faster price declines of flash to penetrate deeper into storage tiers.

The world is experiencing additional technological revolutions, driven by technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual and augmented reality, quantum computing, and self-driving cars.  All of these developments create and require large amounts of very fast data. The present and future lies in modern and dynamic data experience. Customers are facing multiple challenges, including executing ambitious plans for digital transformation. Technology leaders are rejecting excessive system complexity and technical debt that hinder infrastructure modernization efforts. The approach to Ops is changing: DevOps and AIOps are enabling companies to focus on managing their business rather than managing infrastructure. And they’re hiring more developers. CIOs have a mandate to develop cloud initiatives that drive corporate value while addressing application performance bottlenecks. And every business wants to extract more intelligence from their data.

A modern and dynamic data experience starts with a storage-as-a-service approach to enable organizations to leverage more of their data while reducing the complexity and expense of managing infrastructure. Customers want their requirement for data to be agile, dynamic, and delivered in the cloud-like as-a-service model. Digital businesses of tomorrow are building on the cloud-native stack. The combination of best-in-class, enterprise-grade storage infrastructure and Kubernetes data platform will provide the most complete data-services platform for building, automating, protecting, and securing all applications—both traditional and now, cloud-native. The focus needs to be on meeting the needs of cloud-native developers and DevOps teams, how and where they run – on any cloud, any infrastructure, any storage – and supporting them at every stage of the cloud-native journey.
Data storage – physical, virtual, containers are all viable deployment models. Customers are at the point where they are making the decision and looking to stand-up the environments, automate the deployment and consume them as a service. In the near future, they no longer want to worry about setting up anything or even deciding where to deploy their apps/data, they just want it delivered as a service.
What else does the future hold for data storage? The current hard drives consist of rapidly spinning platters that rotate at a given speed. However, the air they’re filled with adds a fair amount of drag on those platters, due to which a fair amount of additional energy is required to rotate them. Using helium instead of air, helium-filled drives use less power to spin the disks, running cooler and in turn, allowing you to pack more data onto each disk.
Quantum memory is another promising area, though it’s too expensive to be a viable data storage method for consumers today. Cost, however, isn’t the only limitation. The quantum information is fragile and ephemeral. Scientists have been working on quantum storage in order to provide instant data syncing between two points anywhere. Right now this technology can only store tiny amounts of data for a very short amount of time, but if it works and takes off, we could see instant data syncing between two points anywhere.

Surbhi Paul serves on the ASEI Silicon Valley Board. She  is a technologist with 15+ years of experience in business and technology roles. She has been involved in engineering, product management, product marketing roles at large global companies with multi-billion dollar revenues and multi-stage startups scaling from pre-revenue to $1B+. Currently, as a product marketer, she is leading the GTM of the flagship product at Portworx (Pure Storage). Surbhi has led and helped with community-based projects such as Project Udaan (Art of Living organization – rescuing and uplifting children of sex traffickers in India), teaching Science to under-privileged elementary school kids (Science is Elementary organization). She is also a passionate educator – served as a lecturer in an engineering college in Delhi, India and as a Python programming teacher at The Harker School. Surbhi has earned her Bachelor degree in Computer Sc. Engineering from Punjab Technical University, India and Masters in Computer Sc. and Engineering from San Jose State University.

Would you like to learn more about Storage ? Visit https://www.purestorage.com
July NEWS Letter

Did You Not Receive Our July Newsletter On The 1st?

The latest edition of the ASEI newsletter has been sent to all members  on July 1st  and  the online edition is available here. Happy reading and catching up on all that happened in the last month and what lies ahead with your society including the partnerships and internships being offered for students.

ASEI is a volunteer run professional organization and we welcome your involvement. We request feedback and especially welcome any articles, blogs or ideas you would like to contribute. Please be in touch with anyone from the content/editorial team.

NEWS JULY 2022

In case you are  not receiving our emails, please check your spam/junk or promotions folder and change the settings in your mailbox to deliver ASEI emails in your in-box. If you still did not find our newsletter please send an email to [email protected] for us to investigate.

cyber Security

Cybersecurity Is No Longer Optional! – Musings On Protecting The Homeland

Cybersecurity is No Longer Optional! – Musings on ASEI’s Cybersecurity Summit by Syna Sharma

Cybersecurity is a growing problem around the world. Many of our nation’s most important ports and elections are becoming compromised due to a lack of understanding of the importance of cybersecurity. Recently, ASEI held a Cybersecurity Summit, hearing from many different speakers and covering a wide range of topics, including overview of the threat landscape, building a secure future, and software supply chain security. One of the topics discussed that intrigued me the most was protecting the homeland from cyber risk.
Aastha Verma, the chief of vulnerability management at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), used many unique analogies to compare the different components of cybersecurity to the Wild West. Everything one can envision in the Wild West applies to the cyber world as well. Ethical hackers are cowboys; malicious actors of all types are outlaws and bandits; defenseless IT staff with primitive tools are sheriffs; and our most critical data assets are gold mines.
After laying the basic foundation for cybersecurity components, Aastha talks about the different opportunities everywhere for us to respond better and faster, such as the 2020 water disaster in Flint, Michigan, which was an epic monitoring fail. Similarly, airports, shipping ports, and spaceports are all at risk. An eye-opening point made by Aastha was the lack of anonymity and privacy we have in our day-to-day lives due to our devices. Self-service and automation are now an expectation. Using your WiFi connection, those same devices self-report back to home base whenever you leave the house. There is less ability to be anonymous.

A shocking statistic shown by the ransomware task force was that ransoms in 2020 increased by 171% compared to 2019, due to COVID exposure and the ransomware epidemic. 560 healthcare facilities were hit by ransomware. That is an appalling number, which led to Aastha’s final piece of advice, “Know where your software comes from and participate and learn about these topics,” because cybersecurity is not a choice.

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Syna Sharma is a San Jose, CA based rising high school freshman spending her summer time productively by interning and getting involved with ASEI activities. She participates in volleyball, tennis, and different forms of dances.

Nidhi Mathihali Wins NCWIT Award For Aspirations In Computing

Nidhi Mathihali Wins NCWIT Award For Aspirations In Computing

ASEI Student member from Silicon valley Nidhi Mathihali is no stranger to ASEI Newsletter readers. She has been featured previously as she won prizes in local Science fairs and ASEI events such as Silicon Valley BETS 2020, National YTE 2020 and also first prize during YTE at our recent 34th National Convention in January 2022. In addition to that, she volunteers her time with several non profits including ASEI. Nidhi has continued to win accolades at multiple avenues including second year in a row at NCWIT 2022 Award for Aspirations in Computing (AiC)
The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) is the farthest-reaching network of change leaders focused on advancing innovation by correcting underrepresentation in computingEach year, U.S. high school students in grades 9 through 12 who are women, genderqueer, or non-binary are eligible to receive recognition for their aptitude and aspirations in technology and computing, as demonstrated by their computing experience, computing-related activities, leadership experience, tenacity in the face of barriers to access, and plans for post-secondary education. This year, 40 winners and 360 honorable mentions were selected from more than 3,500 amazing, talented young applicants. from all around the USA
Sustainability Leadership Through Technology And Innovation

Sustainability Leadership Through Technology And Innovation

In the universe are billions of galaxies,

In our galaxy are billions of planets,

But there is #OnlyOneEarth.

Let’s take care of it.

Led by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and held annually on 5 June since 1973, World Environment Day is the largest global platform for environmental public outreach and is celebrated by millions of people across the world.

ASEI  Celebrated #worldenvironmentday2022 with a recommitment to  #sustainable #technology #innovations . Many of you may recall our earth day events, sustainability and energy talks in Michigan and So cal as well as   STI2022 – the theme for our 34th National Convention that was hosted by Silicon Valley chapter on Jan 15/16, 2022 .

Below is a first person impression of what transpired during the Sustainability panel discussion at the ASEI CXO summit as part of the recent National Convention, written by ASEI student intern Syna Sharma.
The climate is changing constantly and rapidly. Due to the constantly changing climate, all universities and organizations around the world need to be prepared for the unexpected. During ASEI’s 34th National Convention, the theme of the convention was STI – sustainable technology innovations. While a number of topics of importance to CXOs were discussed during the convention, one of the panel discussions focused entirely on Sustainability. Moderated by Kunal Sood, Founder and CXO of WeThePlanet and Global Ambassador of Singularity University, this panel featured voices from across 3 different continents, including tech executive Bhawna Singh, Award winning Civil engineer and UK based academic Dr. Priti Parikh, and Social entrepreneur and former head of innovation at Rolls Royce, Rajashree Rao.
CXO Summit
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Achieving Sustainability Through Technology and Innovation

This panel presented many new ideas ranging from the pandemic’s impact on the climate and technology to how various technologies can be used to improve the overall wellbeing of the world. During the presentation, Bhawna Singh talked about the increased usage of cloud over the years, specifically during the pandemic. Impacting work habits, the pandemic has caused cloud usage to be higher than initially planned, according to 90% of the people sampled during research. Due to a shortage of hardware, many organizations accelerated their migration plans from energy guzzling data centers to the cloud. Going cloud-native is a major technology trend that is picking up pace,and embraces SDGs too as most public cloud vendors are either compliant or working towards SDGs by 2030 and reducing carbon footprint. This is why we need to embrace cloud technology and allow competitiveness in the digitized world.
Dr. Priti Parikh at the Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management took an interesting take on technology’s impact on global sanitization and poverty. COVID has proven that if there is a lack of infrastructure and equity, those who are underprivileged suffer the most. 2 billion people on earth do not have access to basic sanitation. Dr. Parikh’s suggestion is to invest in sanitation as it will hit all of the sustainable development goals we are looking to meet. An eye-opening point she made was that lower-class citizens make up the majority of the population, yet they are only responsible for around 10% of the world’s climate change. They still bear the burden of that poor infrastructure and feel pressured to reduce emissions. In the panel discussion on helping the climate using technology, Rajashree Rao, a technology leader & social entrepreneur who has previously worked in innovation ecosystems as well as cloud computing and data analytics, brought up an inspiring point on how you don’t have to be an engineer to understand and know about technology, and if you are passionate, you can do anything. Concluding the panel, Bhawna Singh adeptly summarized the discussions into a single sentence that resonated with me-“Technology is an equitable means to get the solution or power of what we are trying to solve for everybody.”
Hearing from all these influential speakers during this panel changed my views on technology and its relation to climate change and sustainability, and showed me that by using technology, we can change the world for the better.

Syna Sharma is a San Jose, CA based rising high school junior spending her summer time productively by interning and getting involved with ASEI activities.

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING INNOVATIONS 2021

Science, Technology And Engineering Innovations – 2021 In Review

As we ring in 2022, there are a number of remarkable innovations that have happened across all engineering fields that we would like to share. 2021 was an unprecedented year. We broke new grounds and boundaries of science engineering and innovation were stretched. So the choices are plenty.

Our pick of top 5 advances this year to highlight for our readers :

1. AI/ML : Artificial Intelligence solves problems using neural networks which are based on partial differential equations that are hard to solve. Two new neural networks – DeepONet and Fourier neural operators make this easier.

2. Spacetech : As we watch James Webb Space Telescope launched in space it is rewriting cosmic history. 

3. QuantumComputing : Google, using a quantum computer, created a time crystal that would flip back and forth between two distinct states forever, with no energy lost or gained. This violates the second law of thermodynamics

4. Neuroengineering : Rethinking how the brain works: there is not a right brain/left brain distinction anymore. It seems both halves are actually connected.

5. Cleantech : Green Steel plants that emit less than 2% of carbon dioxide emissions as compared to 7-9%.

Additionally, please enjoy our curated list of more interesting links to explore advances in science and engineering further and deeper:

Article by Amrish Chopra – Life member from  ASEI SiliconValley . Amrish is a Senior R&D manager with VMWARE and has over 25 years of experience in high tech industry

He has been a founding member of the ASEI News and Editorial team that brings out regular blogs and publications

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

To Infinity And Beyond

It is dubbed as the single most complicated project that has perhaps been attempted till date and it took over 25 years and $10B in the making! Yes, we are talking about James Webb Space Telescope (JWST ).
This year, every woman and man on this planet received a Christmas gift. And probably the greatest gift in the history of mankind. The gift came from NASA (along with European and Canadian Space Agencies). While the world was celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ on Dec 25, 2021, NASA launched an Ariane 5 rocket to carry JWST so that we may see the birth of the Universe- the Big Bang and the aftermath for millions of years.
The human-made engineering, technological and scientific marvel launched into space -JWST is the most powerful modern space telescope created and it is just beginning its month-long journey to give us the most intricate images of our universe, galaxy and solar system.

Over 25 years in the making through a joint effort lead by NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration along with contributions from the European Space Agency – ESA and the Canadian Space Agency | Agence spatiale canadienne, this new telescope is designed to see farther in space and, therefore, further back in time than any other telescope including the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST primary light gathering mirror is 21 feet across, about three times bigger than Hubble, and seven times more sensitive.

This telescope will peer to see the longer infrared wavelength light from infant stars and galaxies from as early as 13.7 billion years ago soon after the “Big Bang” formation of our known universe about 13.8 billion years ago as well as make observations much closer to home for infrared signatures of oxygen and water on exoplanets in our own Milky Way galaxy. By this coming summer, if all goes well with the various steps needed for a successful orbit, deployment and activation of the various systems, astronomers and cosmologists will start receiving data on the initial observations. As Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator said: “This is one-of-a-kind. It is the most advanced technology that is going to, if successful, open up secrets of the universe that will be just stupendous, if not almost overwhelming, providing a quantum leap of understanding of who we are, how we got here, what we are and how it all evolve.”

In a sense, the JWST is a time-traveling machine that can see what happened in the universe in the distant past. Dr. Kevin Hainline, an astronomer on the JWST NIRCam science team has given a number of lectures on the project including kid friendly version here that many of you may enjoy as well. On the NASA website, we can track the JWST as it makes its way to be deployed in space near the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 mi) from Earth – about 3.9 times further from us than the moon. As we wait to be “wowed” by what we learn and even more so by what we can accomplish when we put our best minds to tackle what seems impossible.

At ASEI, we celebrate the role of women in STEM and encourage DEI in workplace so  it is quite heartening to note that two out of four lead researches of the four most complex instruments (MIRI, NIRCAM, NIRSpec and NRISS) on JWST are women; Marcia Rieke, astronomy professor at the University of Arizona who worked on designing the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Gillian Wright, Director of the UK Astronomy Technology Center in Edinburgh, who worked on the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

As the world is captivated with recent advances in Aeropace – be it improving life on earth through exponentially efficient and economical space travel and  exploration  technologies or  space tourism or the possibility of colonizing Moon and Mars, ASEI is bringing some of our Aerospace experts together to conduct a one of kind event – the Aerospace Symposium for everyone. This will be the first event as part of our 34th National Convention on Jan 15th&16th , 2022 . Register now and mark your calendar. Don’t miss it! 

Post by Piyush Malik, President ASEI 

If you are looking to know more about the Aerospace symposium and opportunities to sponsor, feel free to reach out to Piyush or either of the Aerospace  Symposium Chairs Dr Shreekant Agrawal and Dr Ajay Kothari