[UCLA IEEE] Winter Quarter Wrap Up
We did it!
President
Dear reader,
Welcome back! If you’re here, I know you’re looking for some insight into what we’ve been up to this quarter, and that’s exactly what we’ve got prepared for you. Whether we caught you at project meetings, workshops, general board, or other socials, we love having you there and can’t wait to see you again soon! Especially if you came to fight for our glory at the newly revived ESUC frisbee social ;)
Since your favorite officers will recount our main events anyway, let me shed some light on our lesser known activities. Here’s a look at some of our favorite happenings from this Winter:
If you’d like to join in, make sure to run for board in Spring!
Speaking of Spring, look out for elections, beach trips, the return of IM frisbee and all kinds of more fun coming your way. It’s truly been a pleasure being your President for the past year, and I wish you all a wonderful quarter to come.
Thank you all,
Achinthya
External Vice Presidents
Thank you to all 240 of you who came to IDEA Hacks 2023! We, and all the judges, are incredibly impressed by all of the 41 submitted projects made with the 856 total parts checked out, and our judges wish they could’ve given every team a prize. Feel free to check out our devpost (https://idea-hacks-2023.devpost.com/project-gallery) for all the final projects. We are also very proud that we hosted 26 community college students and pioneered initiatives in environmental sustainability initiatives that we have presented to multiple UCLA executive committees! Lastly, if you are interested in helping organize IDEA Hacks next year, keep your eye out for an email about joining our planning committees sometime over spring
— Bradley and Jason
Internal Vice President
Hey friends- what a quarter! Whether it’s been sliding down the Tongva steps at Iceblocking, scaling rock walls in the dark at Cliffs of ID, grilling it up in KTown, or sniping free boba at the ECE Professor Picnic, we’ve had a pretty exciting time together. In addition, I’d like to highlight the General Board program and all of the wonderful events the various GBs have put on- there have been some great vibes, and in the downtime, fighting for glory in the Inter-GB Olympics! Shoutout to all of our incredible members who show up and show out every time; we’re eternally grateful to you all for making this club the incredible place that it is. And stay strapped in because we’ve got plenty to look forward to after break!
—Esha
Secretary
This quarter, we had 66 past and current IEEE members join the Alumni Mentorship Program! It was wonderful to meet with all 16 groups of alumni and current students. We had two meetings and one social, and next quarter we will be doing the same!
The newsletter got 1300 views this quarter with many amazing meme and poll submissions! The last IEEE Wrap Up was a hit, so we put together another one. I appreciate all the readership and awesome AMP participants! Submit meme and poll ideas through this form!
Elections are coming up soon, so if you have any questions about the Secretary, contact me on Discord at firefoxmozilla#4824!
See you soon,
Theo
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Chair
As the first EDI Chair for IEEE at UCLA, I’m proud that the EDI Committee and I have created our Code of Conduct and the anonymous EDI Reporting, Suggestions, Questions Form. In addition, we are hosting an Engineering Arts and Hobby Night during Week 1 of Spring quarter in collaboration with SWE and ASME (FREE BOBA!)! I hope to see you all there!
Feel free to reach out to me on Discord (firefoxmozilla#4824) at any time for EDI concerns/suggestions, or even just to talk!
See you in the spring,
Theo
Events Coordinators
It’s been a wild quarter of boba, boba, and more boba! We’ve had a blast help planning the coolest events of the season for y’all–from Winter GM to Professor Picnic–and trying our best to fill your stomachs and hearts with happiness at all of the IEEE events. If you’re interested in event planning, booking rooms, and most importantly, food ;) don’t hesitate to reach out to Vidhya and Jackie and see what its actually like! We would love to speak to our successors and get them hyped for planning events for the next year!
—Vidhya and Jackie
Corporate Relations
This quarter started off with a bang with IDEA Hacks finally happening and we finally got to see all the hackers compete! A huge thank you to all our corporate sponsors for making the event possible, and shoutout to my corporate committee for helping me secure multiple huge sponsorships! We also had multiple corporate events this quarter, notably a Marvell Technologies info session and our massively successful Liquid Instruments workshop, where we hosted a hands-on power electronics workshop together with corporate representatives! Next quarter, look out for some final corporate events I have planned before your next corporate relations officer is elected and takes the reins…
—Taylor K.
Outreach
Winter quarter went off to a great start with IDEA Hacks in person for the first time in 3 years! And this year, for the first time ever, we hosted 30 community college students representing El Camino College, Santa Monica College, and East LA College, with all teams finishing their projects and pitching to judges! We are so proud to have them compete, and look forward to having even more students from the LA area participate in the future. This quarter we also took part in SWE’s Wow That’s Engineering Day, where we showcased some of our projects to local girl scouts in hopes of inspiring them to pursue STEM. Next quarter we plan to participate in a bunch of elementary school science fairs, as well as an extremely exciting sustainability fair hosted by the Metropolitan Water District. We also hope to collaborate with the Renewable Energy Association for their Waste Awareness Week, where we will be holding an E-waste social! But until then, enjoy your spring break, and get ready for an awesome spring quarter :))
—Ryan
Project and Lab Managers
It’s been a great winter quarter of working on projects, grinding homework, and making friends in the IEEE lab. Thanks for keeping the lab clean, welcoming, and fun! This quarter we have resumed soldering operations, restocked lab components, and improved the lab experience with the addition of officer name tags. Whether you are a lab regular, have only been a few times, or anywhere in between, we hope to see you this spring!
—Dominic and Andrew
OPS
Fall ✅, Winter ✅, and now Spring. Over the course of 4 lectures and 3 great projects you guys have made your way into our hearts as we have made our way into your schedule. We are proud of the growth we have seen amongst all of you and eager to see what is to come. For next quarter prepare for a wild ride of competitions, industry standards, and resume building as our beloved OPS program comes to its annual grand finale. A feedback form will be sent out soon regarding this quarter so if you have any ails (or don’t) please fill it out, it makes us better leads and it makes you happier students.
As always, from your OPSurdly amazing leads,
Eli & Miriam.
Micromouse
Two-thirds of the way through the year and we have come so far! After racing your rats at the start of the quarter, you guys have now designed your own mouse, and learned about how to make your mouse solve the maze smarter, faster, and better 😎during the Floodfill lecture. For next quarter, look forward to putting your mice together and preparing for competition, to claim fame and glory at AAMC at the end of Spring! We can’t wait to see your mice navigate through the big maze, and seeing everyone’s designs come together.
Until next quarter,
Megan & Nathan.
Pocket Racers
Another quarter comes and goes, and what a ride it’s been! This time, you got a crash course in machine learning and neural networks. You learned how different models work, why they’re efficient at accomplishing the tasks they do, and how we can leverage different advancements in machine learning to make our models even better. Next quarter, it’s time to put it all together. We’ll be revisiting the car hardware and everything that we’ve learned this year to finally get our cars schmoovin’ around the track 🏃💨 so get hyped as we approach the home stretch of the Pocket Racers project :)
~ Cameron and Prem
DAV
We may be awkward engineers but we’ve made some progress! This quarter, we saw many teams finish the hardest lab in DAV history: implementing a hardware I2C driver to use a Wii Nunchuk with the FPGA. We finally learned how to backup cool buzzwords on our resume like “DSP”, “FFT” , “I2C” , but are still painfully working on “Intel Questasim.” Zooming out a little bit, we received a very cool set of project proposals and look forward to supporting everyone in making their project a reality through technical track-specific workshops next year. We really look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with and having a blast at our annual celebration of DAV: DAVAOKE in Week 9! Music and refreshments will be provided but bring your arcade games and VGAs :)
—Siddhant and Tim
WRAP
Winter was a busy quarter. Our hardware team designed, assembled, and tested many circuit boards which allowed us to upconvert 1MHz frequency to 27MHz. The next step is amplifying this signal. On the DSP side, students learned about various topics from quadrature modulation to filtering and costas loops. Once the software and hardware are integrated in spring, we will be able to communicate wirelessly across the lab!
—Ramtin and Nathan
Workshops
Thanks to everyone who came out to explore this quarter’s workshops! Deviating a bit from Fall’s fundamental EE topics, we got to explore digital electronics with a two-part Verilog and FPGA workshop, hosted a workshop to help y’all prep for creating some awesome IDEA Hacks projects, and learned about scripting with MATLAB for easily creating cool software. Find all of our recorded workshops at the UCLA IEEE YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UCLAIEEE/featured! Next quarter we’ve got a selection of variety workshops, fresh from our brainz 🧠. It’s time to look at some cool EE subfields and get hands on with Wireless Communications, Medical Devices, Circuit Simulation, and more!
Stay on the lookout 😎,
Caden & Jessica
Webmaster
IDEA Hacks was a blast, thanks to y’all who came and made it an incredible experience! Keep an eye out for applications for next year’s webdev committee. :D
We have a new workshops page at ieeebruins.com/workshops! You can find the video and presentation links for all our snazzy content.
It’s been an amazing quarter! As always, please send website feedback/bugs/anything to webmaster@ieeebruins.com. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
—Paul Zhang
Thanks for reading!
And that’s the end! Thank you everyone for an amazing winter quarter, and we look forward to seeing you all soon!
—IEEE at UCLA Board
this is hype