• The use of light features, roof plantings and loggia to aid in reduced energy costs and decreased water use
• Open work spaces to foster collaboration
• Interior Gardens & Art
• Platinum rating, awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

ASME Boston Section member Nagi Elabbasi will be speaking to the Boston University (BU) Student Section on Monday, October 19th at 6:30pm on the BU campus (exact location TBA).  His presentation will highlight the benefits of being an ASME member as well as give some insights as to what it's like to be a practicing engineer in industry.  This event is open to all and members are encouraged to attend.

• Our section has applied for an ASME Grant in the amount of 30K to establish with Tufts University the James P O’Leary memorial endowment. Grant winners are notified Nov 5.
• Wentworth Institute is requesting someone from senior section to speak with a group of students about their experiences in industry.  Wentworth Associate Professor Richard Roberts would like to hear from you if you are interested (robertsr@wit.edu).
• Boston RE_SEED requests volunteer’s from ASME to assist in local student classroom training. Please contact call Paul Conroy at 617-373-8388 or go to www.bostonreseedcenter.org
• We have an offer to open for our members a private Auto Museum in Stow MA. One of the buildings is not heated. Members present expressed a great deal of interest. This will be pursued.
• A student section visit from senior section will be coordinated by our College Relations Chair Lindsay Dahlben. 
• Our National E-Week contact this year will be Sara Freed.
• Numerous programs and meeting ideas for our section were brought forth in the meeting on September 22. Please watch for notices by our traditional email and postings on our website for information about them.
• Our Boston Section Membership has officially passed the 2000 member mark! We received official congratulations from ASME International.
• On Tuesday October 13th at 6:30pm the IEEE Boston Robotics Chapter is holding a meeting at Olin College in Needham on "The Deka Arm System". Chris Evans the Lead Mechanical Engineer at Deka Research is giving the talk. ASME members are invited to attend.

Please join your fellow members for our 2009-2010 section planning session on Tuesday September 22nd from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. This meeting will occur in the meeting room of Panera Bread at # 34 Cambridge Street in Burlington MA, 01803

Parking, free of charge is available on site. The evening will begin at 6:00 PM with dinner and networking.  Please note we will individually order dinners from the restaurant and gather in the meeting room to eat. This provides more flexibility in ordering in both variety and timing as members arrive at various times.

Please RSVP for attendance by Friday September 18th to our section general reservations email account at   bostonsection@asme.org.

We are requesting input and ideas on meeting/tours and events for the upcoming year. Do you have some interesting technology to share, some hardware to see? Then let this be the opportunity to get some of your fellow engineers in to see it as well.

Consider serving on the executive committee this year. A small time commitment each month can really help your section. We need assistance in several areas, just let our Section Chairman, Michael Smith, know that you are willing.

Our June ASME Boston Section meeting will feature Azure Dynamics (AZD), a hybrid vehicle power train company.  Attendance at this meeting is limited.  Respondents will be taken on a first come first serve basis. (As of this update all spaces have been filled)

AZD designs and manufactures hybrid and electric vehicle power trains.

Azure dynamics produces power trains for vehicles ranging in size from taxi cabs to delivery trucks (with power outputs as high as 300 HP).  AZD power train equipped fleets have experienced improvements in fuel efficiency of 40% and decreases in maintenance costs of 30%.  More information about AZD can be found here: http://www.azuredynamics.com/ 

Our meeting will take place on June 28th at the Boston-area Azure Dynamics office:

 9 Forbes Road
Woburn, MA 

The meeting will begin at 6:00 PM with a light dinner. At 7:00 a presentation on AZD and their electric and hybrid power trains will begin.

A facilities tour will follow the presentation.

ASME Boston Section Members are invited to attend tomorrow nights meeting (May 20^th) in Lexington of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Boston Section. The night will feature two talks on Business Networking. The cost is $ 10 for the seminar, $17 for the buffet. Anyone interested please see me for more details.

Approximately 20 of your fellow section members filled out a voluntary contact information sheet last month. Anyone interested in obtaining a copy of it please send me a note, I have it scanned in and will send you a copy.

Next months meeting/plant tour will take place at Azure Dynamics. Out Program Chair Jamie Nichol is handling the planning of that meeting. Jamie will bring us up to speed on the meeting details.

QinetiQ North America’s Rich Wiesman provides ASME Boston Section Members with a company overview before the plant tour

David Allen of Allen Consulting talks about energy efficient building environmental systems at Boston Section’s Energy Night

David Grogan of Grogan Associates discusses the environmental, commercial and national security aspects of modern coal gasification techniques with the Boston Section Membership.

On behalf of ASME and the two thousand members of ASME's Boston Section I would like to present this years ASME Industry plaque to Mr. Michael Leschiner, representing Nuvera Fuel Cells of Billerica MA with a special thanks and a deep appreciation to Kara Gilhooly, Jonathan Hamel, Myles Moore, William Mitchell, and Brian Bowers.

Section Chair Michael Smith addresses award luncheon

ASME’s Industry Plaque for 2009 is presented to Nuvera Fuel Cell’s Michael Leschiner

Please join your fellow members on Wednesday, April 29 for "Energy Night", a section meeting with speakers on two very timely and informative energy related subjects. Our fist speaker of the evening will be Professional Engineer David Allen of Allen Consulting, LLC. He will bring us up to date on his firm’s life-cycle building performance management techniques. This initiative helps companies improve productivity and profits by making sure their building environment match their business needs and, that their facility systems produce those environments without wasting energy.

Our second speaker of the evening will be Mr. David Grogan of D.B. Grogan Associates, LLC. He will present a talk entitled Gasification- A Real Solution to U.S. Energy Needs. He will detail modern coal based technology as a realistic solution to several major political, environmental and financial problems currently faced by the USA. His presentation will cover, introduction to gasification technology, commercial status, co-production vs. IGCC, a specific design case, carbon footprint, contrast with other concepts and conclusion.

“Energy Night” will take place in the 3rd floor conference room M-340 at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics located at # 160 Concord Ave, Cambridge MA 02138 (map). Limited parking, free of charge is available in the building main lot located on Manassas Ave; use your favorite mapping software to generate directions. Additional Street parking is available (meters) on both Huron Ave and Concord Ave. The evening will begin at 6:00 PM with a light dinner (sandwiches) and networking. Our first speaker will begin at 6:45. We are asking for $15.00 at the door per member to help cover the cost of food.  This represents an increase from recent meetings as we have been operating in a deficit in meal catering. We ask for $10.00 from students and $20.00 for non members. Please RSVP for attendance with your name and business affiliation (for facilitation of networking) to our
section general reservations email account at bostonsection@asme.org.

An opportunity exists for one or two ASME members to step forward in community service. In the Boston area a Dorchester 8th grade engineering class is preparing to build a solar car. They have some experience with building robots and bridges but the solar car area is all new. They need an engineer to volunteer a couple of hours per week. The class meets weekdays from 11:20 to 12:00. This project goes from the beginning of April until the end of May. Please contact me for specific contact information for this opportunity and help bring along the next generation of area engineers.

Volunteers are also needed to host an Engineer Your Life table at an upcoming career fair.  EYL is the movement to interest college-bound high school girls in engineering. We are seeking volunteers to host our EYL table at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on Tues, April 7 from 9am-12pm OR Wed, April 8 from 9am-12pm.  The fair will feature college admissions and resource experts for high school students, counselors and parents. All materials and exhibit fees are sponsored by EYL. Our staff will set up the table too. We just need volunteers to help us talk to high school girls about engineering as a career choice. Please contact Reed Brockman at Reed.Brockman@aecom.com.

Acentech’s Ben Markham describes “Auralizations”

Acentech’s Jeffrey Zapfe describes the remote monitoring effort.

Boston Section Members examine Acentech’s remote monitoring equipment.

1. At the beginning of this month Program Chair Jamie Nichol and I represented our section at the ASME International Leadership training Conference.  We concentrated on networking with other sections for interesting meeting topics, potential program ideas and focused on techniques to build section membership, activity and  how to keep ASME a valuable asset to all of its members.

2. I am delighted to announce Michael Carolan has agreed to take the position of Membership Development Chair . Mike along with Laura Sullivan and Philip Mallon have been compiling meeting attendee information and producing the new name/affiliation tags we had at our latest meeting. This is an effort to facilitate networking among the membership and especially to facilitate student and senior member networking. Michael will also be working in other areas of outreach to members, especially the new ones.

What is upcoming

1. We will be joining with the Society of Women Engineers and the IEEE in the DOME symposium this Friday March 27. This is the Foundation for Diversity and Outreach in Mathematics and Engineering. We will be discussing “best practices in out of school programs for the grade 6-12 school children.
   

2. Our annual District A Leadership meeting occurs on May 1^st and 2^nd in Easton PA. Please see me if you are interested in representing Boston Section there. There is financial support from international for a couple of delegates from each section.

The ASME Student Section at Tufts University will be hosting one of the annual Student Professional Development Conferences for District A in Medford, MA, on April 18. Please volunteer to serve as a judge for one of the four competitions to be held at the conference: 1) OLD GUARD ORAL PRESENTATION COMPETITION emphasizes the ability to deliver oral presentations, 2) OLD GUARD TECHNICAL POSTER COMPETITION emphasizes the ability to deliver visual presentations, 3) OLD GUARD TECHNICAL WEB PAGE COMPETITION – a design competition encourages the delivery of visual presentations via the web and 4) STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION “MARS ROCKS”

http://www.asme.org/Events/Contests/DesignContest/2009_Student_Design_2.cfm

Please join your fellow section members for what looks to be a very interesting and informative section meeting/ presentation. On Wednesday March 25th 2009 we will begin with a light dinner and networking at 6:00 PM followed by an introduction and demonstrations given by our host company Acentech at 7:00 PM. The cost is $10.00 per person at the door to assist with the cost of food (light sandwiches). This event will take place at the east coast office of Acentech 33 Moulton Street Cambridge, MA 02138. Please rsvp for attendance by March 20th by replying to this email or send to smithm5@asme.org. Please include your business affiliation in your reply so we can produce name/affiliation tags to promote networking opportunities for our students and early career engineers.

Highlights of the presentation are:

Auralizations -- Audio simulations of sound fields based on modeled sound sources, modeled spaces, and modeled listeners –may be used to show how a space will sound before it is built or renovated.  Acentech will describe the process of creating an auralization and demonstrate several examples (music in a performance space, speech and other activity in a large atrium) in its multi-channel listening room.

Remote Monitoring of Vibrations in Sensitive Facilities -- In order to facilitate continuing operation of vibration-sensitive equipment, for example during nearby construction, long-term monitoring of vibrations relative to the equipments’ stringent criteria is often desirable. In order to facilitate the desired monitoring at reasonable cost a monitoring system has been devised that can be accessed in real time from anywhere via the internet.  Acentech will describe the system and demonstrate monitoring currently in progress on five NMR installations in New York City.

Driving directions are provided on their website at http://www.acentech.com/company/contact-us.html. I would like to extend a special thanks to ASME Boston Section Program Chair Jamie Nichol, Acentech Chief Engineering Scientist and ASME Fellow Eric Ungar and Acentech Inc. for making this event possible.

•     February was a busy time for Boston section volunteers with National Engineers Week events in Boston. Thursday February 12th approximately 200 seniors from area colleges attended the career fair with informational booths from dozens of area businesses and organizations including ASME Boston Section. On Friday, February 13th, hundreds of representatives from dozens of local engineering firms and organizations gathered at the Boston Hyatt for a luncheon and awards ceremony. ASME Boston Section was joined by IEEE, MSPE, Society of Women Engineers and representatives from FIRST at the conference room entrance with display booths for outreach, information and membership recruitment.

•     Please take a moment to visit our new upgraded website at http://sections.asme.org/boston/ (remember to refresh the page in the event an old page is stored in your cache). The new look and easy to navigate format is courtesy of our new website editor, ASME Boston Section’s Jonathan Hamel.

•     The RE-SEED Program at Northeastern University recruits retired scientists and engineers to assist K-12 science teachers in the classroom. There are over 80 volunteers currently serving in the greater Boston area.  Free training is provided for volunteers and the next training program begins March 30, 2009.The best way to become acquainted with the program is by visiting their website www.reseed.neu.edu and reading the brochure.

If any retired members would like to talk with a representative about the program call Paul G. Conroy at 508-878-9013 or email to:
pa.conroy@neu.edu.

 •     Call for papers, do you have an interesting professional paper that you might like to present to section members? In April Boston Section will offer the opportunity to present a brief paper to members for professional interest and as a forum for feedback. Please send your abstract to smithm5@asme.org by March 23rd, 2009.

Thank You,
Your ASME Boston Section Chair
Michael J Smith