IEEE Region 5

Trinity IEEE is hosting a movie night social April 4th at 7pm. We will be watching I, Robot and snacks will be provided! Room: 437, Bldg: CSI, San Antonio, Texas, United States

A reception for Texas State Legislators in the Lone Star Section. Come and visit with your Texas State Senator or Representative at lunchtime on April 16 2025. Our event will be held at the Education Center of the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology (SAMSAT), and will be devoted to discussing such items as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) issues, as well as those for technology infrastructure in the greater San Antonio area. Speaker(s): David Monroe, Walt Downing Agenda: 11:00 am Legislators arrive and welcomed 11:10 am Welcome by SAMSAT CEO (David Monroe) and Lone Star Section leadership 11:30 am Introductions and comments by legislators 12:00 pm Lunch is served 12:15 pm Breakout for discussions with appropriate legislators 12:45 pm Brief tour of SAMSAT Education Center 1:00 pm Adjourn Bldg: Education Center, San Antonio Museum of Science & Technology, 5035 SW 36th St, San Antonio, Texas, United States, 78226

The Intelligent Systems Division at SwRI has worked on a wide variety of uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) projects varying from autonomy in confined GPS denied spaces to installing sensors on transmission power lines. This talk will give an overview of the UAS projects the Robotics Department has worked on in the last few years. A major focus has been autonomous navigation and exploration with UAS in GPS denied environments. SwRI has developed a software stack that enables exploration in indoor environments without reliance on GPS for localization. The stack has been used to explore and map the interior of a nuclear power plant, natural limestone caves in San Antonio, and a variety of warehouse buildings. The system can operate fully autonomously without any user input except a takeoff and explore command. Beyond mapping the environment, the vehicles can carry other sensors such as radiation sensors as demonstrated during the EnRicH 2021 European Robotics Hackathon. This technology also has potential applications to explore off planet caves to search for signs of past life on Mars and the Moon. SwRI has worked with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to develop an installation system for high voltage power transmission monitors using UAS. The system mounted on a UAS can install an EPRI RF monitor onto power transmission lines without requiring linemen or bucket trucks. The system increases the safety of the installation and significantly reduces the amount of time required to install the monitors. Talk is limited to US citizens. Registration is required. Cookies and drinks will be provided. Speaker(s): Anthony Bldg: Building 51, 6220 Culebra Rd, San Antonio, Texas, United States, 78245

There will be an informative and interactive panel discussion where licensed professionals will guide you through the fundamentals of the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam and the Professional Engineering (PE) licensure process. Hear from experienced engineers about how licensure can impact your career and open doors to professional opportunities. There will be an open Q&A. Edwardsville, Illinois, United States

THIS EVENT IS PLANNED FOR KICKING OFF THE PRE-CONFERENCE ACTIVITIES OF UPCOMING IEEE MILCOM CONFERENCES. CONFERENCES CURRENTLY SCHEDULED: 2025 IN LOS ANGELES https://milcom2025.ieee-milcom.org/ The Agenda of this Kick Off Meeting will include speakers discussing 5G, AI & Cybersecurity. We have an Invited Speaker: Jon Pelson is the Author of Wireless Wars and a leading voice in the local conversation on wireless technology, national security, and the strategic importance of 5G. Jon will deliver a keynote on the geopolitical dimensions of wireless innovation and how Ieee members can contribute to securing our technological future. Eric Burger, General Chair for IEEE MILCOM 2025 in Los Angeles, from Virginia Tech will speak remotely as well to promote the upcoming 2025 MILCOM in Los Angeles. Other speakers include: Dr. Brian Kelley, Gerardo "Gerry" Trevino, Neel Pandeya, Jose Navarro and others. See the Agenda for the full list of events. The meeting will be held at 3:00 pm (to 6:30 pm) at the University of Texas San Antonio, downtown campus San Pedro | Building at 506 Dolorosa St. This building houses the new School of Data Science with programs in artificial intelligence, computer science, data analysis and statistics and is also the home of the National Security Collaboration Center. Co-sponsored by: IEEE LONE STAR SECTION Speaker(s): Eric, Jon, Brian Agenda: Time Event Speaker(s) Notes 3:00 PM CST Introductions, Social 3:15 PM CST Event Start Gerry Trevino, Jose Navarro Background 3:20 PM CST UTSA NSCC Presentation John Huggins, NSCC 3:45 PM CST 2025 IEEE MILCOM Los Angeles Invited Speaker: Eric Burger General Co-Chair IEEE MILCOM. Joining remotely 4:00 PM CST Wireless Wars and National Security: What the 5G Race Means for the DoD Invited Speaker: Jon Pelson Author: Wireless Wars 5:00 PM CST IEEE Local Group Organization Discussion Local Group Name: 5G, AI & Cybersecurity 6:30 PM CST Meeting Adjourns MEETING COORDINATOR Gerardo "Gerry" Trevino - Organizer Technology Insertion Action Officer - DOD CIO 5G CFT Vice Chair, Senior IEEE Member - IEEE Communications/Signal Processing Society Joint Chapter, IEEE Lone Star Section Technology Engagement Chair - 2025 IEEE MILCOM Organizing Committee gtrevino@ieee.org m. 1-210-416-9579 Room: Yotta Room No. 430, Bldg: UTSA San Pedro I Building, 506 Dolorosa St., San antonio, Texas, United States, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/479349

6 pm Prompt Engineering: Making the most out of LLMs Synopsis: Speakers are the authors of https://www.manning.com/books/prompt-engineering-in-action. (There will be a raffle for five free books to be given away to the selected in-person attendees. All attendees will get a special discount code to purchase the book. Other than that, the speakers assure that the presentation will not discuss the book in any way or form.) LLMs are in every part of our lives. They play a vital role in increasing productivity, improving creativity, and bridging the technology gap between different industries. Hard-to-optimize problems have today become when to optimize because the technology is readily available. In this talk, we will look at different aspects of Prompt Engineering, including templates, techniques, and patterns that you can use while interacting with models. We will also walk through advanced techniques such as RAG and show how implementing these can solve some limitations and real-world problems that we face today. LLMs are transforming industries by enhancing productivity, fostering creativity, and bridging technological gaps. As AI capabilities expand, the challenge is no longer whether problems can be optimized but how to optimize effectively. This talk explores the principles of Prompt Engineering, covering key templates, techniques, and patterns to enhance model interactions. We will dive into advanced strategies like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and show their real-world applications in overcoming LLM limitations. Attendees will walk away with actionable insights to harness the full potential of LLMs in their workflows. --------------------------------------------------------------- 7 pm Hands-on Workshop: Building Advanced AI Applications and Agents in One Hour This workshop offers a comprehensive and hands-on experience in building advanced AI applications and AI agents. We will use the state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) and Vision Language Models(VLMs) to explain the process. Participants will explore practical techniques to leverage these powerful models for tasks such as Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Natural Language Processing (NLP), decision-making, text/image generation, and task automation. This workshop enables attendees to understand the essential topics, including open-source package requirements in Python, model selection, fine-tuning, and integrating external data sources. The session covers the design and implementation of AI agents by utilizing open-source models like Llama for tuning parameters and deploying real-world AI solutions. Emphasis will be placed on architecture design, training optimization, scalability, efficiency, and ethical considerations. The workshop will adapt its use case and model selection (e.g., language agent vs. vision agent) based on the audience's background to ensure the relevance and effectiveness of the session. By the end of the session, participants will have the foundational knowledge and skills to effectively create and deploy full-stack AI applications and agents tailored to their fields of interest. Notes: - $3 registration is mainly to prevent food wastage because of casual registrations and no-shows. - We are unable to accommodate food preferences. Attendees with dietary restrictions can bring their own food. - Virtual attendees NEED NOT pay the $3 or register here. They can directly register on Zoom (account required) or watch directly on the YouTube Channel at 6 pm (California time) - Virtual attendees require a Zoom account (free to obtain). This requirement is to avoid Zoom bombing. Please sign in using the email address tied to your Zoom account — not necessarily the one you used to register for the event. - By registering for this event, you agree that IEEE and the organizers are not liable to you for any loss, damage, injury, or any incidental, indirect, special, consequential, or economic loss or damage (including loss of opportunity, exemplary or punitive damages). The event will be recorded and will be made available for public viewing. Speaker(s): Dr. Vishnu S. Pendyala, Shivendra Srivastava , Naresh Vurukonda , Dr. Mehdi Bahrami Agenda: 5:30 pm - 6 pm networking and pizza 6 pm - 7 pm Prompt Engineering 7 pm - 8 pm A Hands-On Workshop: Building Advanced AI Applications and Agents 8 pm - 8:30 pm Networking and photos Room: A1 All Hands 1, Bldg: A, ServiceNow, 2225 Lawson Lane, Santa Clara, California, United States, 95054, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/476534

Abstract- The massive data deluge from mobile, IoT, and edge devices, together with powerful innovations in data science and hardware processing, have established artificial intelligence (AI) as the cornerstone of modern medical, automotive, industrial automation, and consumer electronics domains. Domain-specific AI accelerators now dominate CPUs and GPUs for energy-efficient AI and machine learning processing. However, the evolution of these electronic accelerators is facing fundamental limits due to the slowdown of Moore’s law and the reliance on metal wires, which severely bottleneck computational performance today. In this talk, I will present my vision of how silicon photonics can drive an entirely new class of light-driven AI hardware accelerators that can provide orders of magnitude energy improvements over today’s accelerators. I will discuss the evolution of silicon photonics, from integrated optics to photonic devices that can now be fabricated with low-cost CMOS-compatible manufacturing techniques. I will cover new directions in the design of robust and secure photonic substrates for communication, computation, and storage to support emerging AI applications based on LLMs, graph processing, and generative modeling. I will share experiences from my journey over the past two decades towards realizing viable silicon photonic architectures. I will end the talk with a discussion of the open challenges to achieve unparalleled energy-efficiency and performance gains in future computing platforms with silicon photonics. Sudeep Pasricha Sudeep Pasricha is a Aram and Helga Budak Endowed Professor in the (http://www.engr.colostate.edu/ece/)the (http://www.cs.colostate.edu/), and the (https://www.engr.colostate.edu/se/) at (http://www.colostate.edu/). He is currently Director of the Embedded, High Performance, and Intelligent Computing ((https://www.engr.colostate.edu/~sudeep/wp-content/uploads/epic_lab_poster.pdf)) Laboratory and the Chair of Computer Engineering. He is a former University Distinguished Monfort Professor and College of Engineering Rockwell-Anderson Endowed Professor. --------------------------------------------------------------- Coming up In May- Speaker(s): Sudeep, Agenda: 6:00 pm Doors Open 6:30 pm Welcome-Kris Waage 6:45 pm Did'ja Hear? Scott Evans 7:00 pm Main Presentation 8:30 pm End Room: E105, Bldg: Engineering Building, Colorado State University, Isotope Drive, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States, 80525, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/474065