Innovation: Work and Life of the Engineer in Japan and Silicon Valley

This event will be a panel discussion about the differences between Japanese and American culture from the perspective of electrical engineers. The panel of five will be moderated by CNSV member and independent consultant Sean Murphy. The panel members will be:

• Takashi Yoshimori, Toshiba Semiconductor
• Laura Smoliar, Independent Consultant, Signal Lake Venture Capital
• Tom Coughlin, IEEE Region Six Director-Elect, CNSV member and Independent Consultant
• Kim Parnell, Past Chair, IEEE Santa Clara Valley Section, CNSV member and Independent Consultant
• Jan Rabaey, Donald O. Pederson Distinguished Professor, EECS Department, UC Berkeley

The following topics will be discussed:

• the findings of a select committee of the Japanese Ministry for Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), which is co-chaired by panel organizer Takahide Inoue, and which has been trying many different and fairly drastic changes in an attempt to revive the Japanese semiconductor industry
• the differences in the awareness and common sense of engineers in Silicon Valley and Japan
• how the relationship between employers and workers differs between the two environments
• the interest of Japanese engineers in the role of IEEE chapters, especially in Silicon Valley
• the role of personal networks, how these networks are created, and their benefits

 

About the speaker,  Takahide Inoue, CITRIS-UC Berkeley

Organization of this event was led by Takahide Inoue, the Global Outreach Director of CITRIS (the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) at UC Berkeley. He was a Special Advisor to CITRIS from its founding in 2001 to 2010, and he is also a Founder and Principal of BA Consulting Group Company.

Takahide-san has been Senior Consultant for the Japanese Semiconductor Technology Research Corporation (STARC) since 1998. He was at Sony Corp. from 1965-98, including serving as Sr. VP of Sony Engineering and Manufacturing of America in San Jose from 1991-98. His BS in EE is from Keio-Gijyuku Univ., and his MBA is from Northeastern Univ.

CNSV Pre-meeting: BigDataSIG (6-7 pm)

Chairs: Shashidhar Sathyanarayana and Brian Berg

Location: Aristotle Room

Agriculture: The Next Machine-Learning Frontier

Speaker: Dr. Sivan Aldor-Noiman, The Climate Corp.

In the past decade, the high-tech industry has been revolutionized by machine learning algorithms applied to everything from market segmentation and recommendation systems to commodity price forecasting of high-frequency trading.

Agriculture and climatology are less familiar research domains among the machine learning community. Nevertheless, these domains offer unique and challenging research opportunities related to the spatio-temporal nature of the data, the multi-resolution data sources and the interaction between climatological and physical models.

In this talk, Dr. Sivan Aldor-Noiman will describe several current research projects underway at The Climate Corporation in the fields of agronomy, climatology and remote sensing. She will also discuss future research directions.

Sivan Aldor-Noiman, Ph.D., is a science lead in The Climate Corporation, a high-tech company which harnesses data to provide decision-supporting tools and insurance to help growers across the U.S. adapt to climate change. She is a statistician who grew up in Israel, and who served in the IDF as an artillery instructor where she found her passion for teaching.

Sivan went on to study in the Technion, where she received a BSc in Industrial Engineering & Management and an MSc in Statistics. She later moved to the US to pursue doctoral studies at The Wharton School, Univ. of Penn.

Sivan is an expert in Bayesian spatio-temporal forecasting methodologies, and she currently leads the Climatology and Geo-Spatial science teams in The Climate Corporation where she uses her skills and passion to tackle real-world challenges.

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Location: Agilent Technologies, Bldg. 5

5301 Stevens Creek Blvd., Santa Clara, CA 95051
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