The award was presented at the Summer Simulation Multi-Conference organized by SCS, held in Toronto.  It recognizes a variety of Wainer’s technical contributions to the modeling and simulation discipline which have been widely disseminated in technical literature.

Wainer has had more than 280 papers published and four books, two of which are in Spanish. In 2011, he was awarded the Outstanding Professional Contribution Award by the SCS. His current work focuses on methodologies and techniques for improving models and simulations by making them faster, easier to use and more useful.

Established in 1952, the SCS works to advance the use of modelling and simulation to solve real-world problems and facilitate communication among industry professionals.

It all started at Startup Weekend Ottawa, an event that brings together entrepreneurs and their ideas. In the weeks leading up to the event, Tannahill fused the two things he likes most into a workable idea, he says.

“I like tattoos and I like doing tech, so the combination sort of came together,” he says. “It wasn’t my life’s goal to start a website about tattooing, but it worked out that there’s a real need for it.”

This need was demonstrated by his first place finish at Startup Weekend. After the event, Tannahill joined forces with two other entrepreneurs, including Carleton alumnus and designer Minh Dao.

After months of work, Tattoo Hero recently launched at the International Startup Festival in Montreal. The team hoped the reveal would generate some buzz around the website, Tannahill says.

Instead, Tattoo Hero was covered by TechCrunch, a popular website within the IT community. This exposure has brought thousands of unique visitors to the site every day, Tannahill says.

“(Tech Crunch) is something that we wanted down the road,” says Minh Dao, the website’s designer.  “To have that on the first day that we launched – it couldn’t have gone any better.”

As of now, Tattoo Hero makes finding an artist easier for people who aren’t linked into the tattoo community, Tannahill says. Because some great artists can work solely on referrals, they simply don’t have a need to build a good website to attract new clients, he says.

Tattoo Hero is working towards bringing these artists to the forefront and “doing the work for them,” he says. In the future, this will develop into bringing in a scheduling system operated through the website to allow people to book appointments with artists online, Tannahill says.

Carleton has prepared both Tannahill and Dao for the challenges of running a business.

“Being a software engineer, it’s given me good insight into the theories around software structure,” Tannahill says.

“My other two partners aren’t very tech savvy, and I’ll try to explain some things to them, and they just don’t get it. So I definitely learned something in school,” he laughed.

As the person in charge of branding and design, Dao also feels as though Carleton has prepared him for some of the challenges associated with running a website. He says one of the strengths of Carleton’s Industrial Design program is that it’s well known for producing well-rounded students.

“What Carleton Industrial Design does is give you a good broad spectrum of skills and knowledge – not just on design, but on marketing, on engineering, on psychology,” he says.

Even though Tattoo Hero only launched recently, the team is already proud of what they’ve done.

“We’ve created something that we all believe in,” Dao says.

Visit the Tattoo Hero website at tattoohero.com

Craig, a PhD student in software defined networking, developed a set of modules that form a mobile architecture for spectrum sensing that, because of its customizability and affordability, fills a fundamental requirement in society.

Carleton Systems and Computer Engineering professor Dr. Ioannis Lambadaris believes we need equipment of this caliber – equipment that is portable, easy-to-configure, and can do this kind of sensing.

“[The] application ranges from law enforcement to security applications and military applications in the battlefield…it’s a very broad area.”

Doing what can usually only be done in FPGA (field-programmable gate array) circuits, Craig’s mobile architecture splits aggregate digital signals into sub-bands to allow for quick processing; all in an off-the-shelf, easy-to-use package.

“The main benefit is that systems that would have previously been custom-designed expensive hardware are now just a software module that you can run on an off-the-shelf Linux server,” he explains. This makes the systems much faster to develop, more flexible, cheaper, and easier to extend.

The project came about as part of Craig’s graduate studies, where he was working one day a week at D-TA Systems, a company chaired by Carleton alumnus Dr. Dipak Roy that offers reconfigurable box level radio, radar, signals intelligence, and sonar products that can be reconfigured for any application. Roy is committed to supporting the university and the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, and promoting the area of DSP. Recently, Roy sponsored the development of an advanced sonar processing laboratory housed in Carleton’s Canal Building.

Established in November 2011 through a generous donation by Roy and his wife, also a Carleton alumna, the Dipak and Tara Roy Advanced Sensor Processing Laboratory enables students and researchers to collect and study sensor data to help focus research and develop the next generation of radio frequency and acoustic multichannel applications.

“The Advanced Sensor Processing Lab was set up to do graduate research and develop expertise and skills in the complex field of sonar, radar, communication, and test and measurements systems. The goal is to create a centre of excellence in an area of national interest with broad industry and academic participation. The lab is off to a good start, in a short time of less than three years, five students have already received their Master’s degree working on various research topics of significant relevance to the defence and security communities. There is a lot more to come as the interest in this sector of the economy is growing steadily and the Carleton lab is the only one of its kind in the country,” says Roy.

Craig worked closely with Roy on this project, and credits him for bringing him up to speed on the operations and theory of DSP.

Moving forward, this incredibly promising post-graduate student says the modules can be integrated to build a complete spectrum analyzer product. As for how this development will impact the community, Lambadaris points to cybersecurity.

“This area is so advanced…we should have equipment that will be able to immediately capture traffic and analyze it in real time in order to locate criminals and terrorists. This is a fundamental requirement in any society to have a peaceful and reliable existence.”

When asked why he contributes to his community, the fourth-year computer systems engineering student has a hard time answering the question.

“Normally we are asked how we contribute as opposed to why,” he says. “After much reflection I can only come up with what feels like a simplistic answer – I like to help people.”

Hennessy’s desire to help others is now being recognized. He has been named the second recipient of the Adrian D.C. Chan Award for Volunteer and Community Service.

The award was created by Chan, an associate professor in the the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, to recognize community contributions by Carleton engineering students. Besides maintaining high marks, recipients must display excellent volunteerism outside the classroom.

Hennessy displays these characteristics through an extensive list of community involvement. On campus, he has volunteered more than 2,300 hours to the Carleton University Student Emergency Response Team (CUSERT). He received the 2011 Andrew Dunbar Beyond the Call of Duty award and the 2012 CUSERT Directors Achievement award.

He has also served as a tour guide, summer orientation leader, TA, lab assistant, residence fellow, and research assistant during his time at Carleton.

“I feel that (I should help people) because I am fortunate enough to have the training and the time,” he says.

Hennessy doesn’t only make an impact through his role as a campus leader. He has also done search and rescue response for the Canadian Coast Guard for a number of years.

“There is an immense satisfaction in being able to provide assistance to people in distress,” he says. “I want to be for others what I hope others would be for me if the situation was reversed.”

After he leaves Carleton, Hennessy says he hopes to continue making positive impacts in his community.

Etemad is working onhis doctorate in electrical and computer engineering under the supervision of Ali Arya.

“Our research is intended for character control in animated movies and video games as well as extraction of information from motion patterns,” says Etemad. “So in addition to multimedia applications, it could also have an impact on surveillance systems to help recognize and track suspects.”

Etemad says he enjoys the freedom of his program: “The Department of Systems and Computer Engineering and the School of Information Technology aren’t confined to classical definitions of computer engineering. The school is very multidisciplinary and is involved with different fields such as human-computer interaction, networks, photonics and laser.”

The Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award was given to six individuals from across the university who excelled in their duties as teaching assistants during the 2012-2013 academic year. Awards were presented to Akram Bin Sediq in the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Genevieve Ferguson and Andrew Mikhail in the Department of Biology, Don Myles in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies, Vincent Paquet in the Department of Economics and Ann Timmermans in the Department of Earth Sciences.

This was a record year for the Outstanding TA Award nominations, which were up 33 per cent from previous years. The nominations came from faculty, fellow teaching assistants and students.

The six award recipients demonstrated a dedicated commitment to improving student learning and the tradition of teaching excellence at Carleton. The award includes a framed certificate and $250.

Photos: Chris Roussakis

Congratulations to Rengaraju Perumalraja (Systems and Computer Engineering) on receiving a GRIT award.

Perumalraja will present in Sardinia for the 9th IEEE International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference.

His topic: in multi-hop Fourth Generation (4G) wireless networks, the intermediate relay nodes may fail unexpectedly. If the relay node fails, the network will be not able to transmit packets to the receiving nodes and the network Quality of Service (QoS) will be significantly affected. The focus of his research is to protect the communications during relay node failure(s) using the network coding and wireless redundancy techniques. Hence, the network will still be able to deliver the messages correctly in case of relay failure(s) and maintain the network QoS requirements.

To start, Tannahill took advantage of the local startup ecosystem. He entered the local iteration of Startup Weekend, a grassroots event that empowers entrepreneurs by teaching them the basics of launching successful startups. It was there that the idea for Tattoo Hero came together as an online forum for local tattoo artists to connect with customers.

“I want to provide a place where people can get together to speak to leading artists in our community,” said Tannahill. “It’s a place where people who are new to tattoos can learn more about it from those who are more experienced.”

During Startup Weekend, teams were formed organically around the top entrepreneurial ideas, as determined by an online vote. Once the teams were in place, participants created their business models, coded and designed their apps, and pitched them to seasoned entrepreneurs.

When the event wrapped up, the Tattoo Hero team had come out on top. As part of his winnings, Tannahill had the opportunity to bring his idea to the online global competition. He has used the experience to build the Tattoo Hero website, which will officially launch with full functionality in February 2013.

The site promises helpful resources for people who are new to the world of tattoos. Visitors to the site will eventually find a forum where they can show off their current tattoos and connect with local artists for their next project.

“A lot of artists are driven by the people who walk through the front door,” said Tannahill. “But sometimes they want to be able to work on projects that they care about. We want to be able to provide artists a place where they can go online and find these projects.”

The centre, located in Carleton’s new engineering building, is a venue for cutting-edge research in cloud computing. Students, faculty and industry partners research real-world problems associated with enterprise clouds, including management of computing, on-demand storage and network resources, data-centre networking, scalability, business continuity and security.

“Working with such innovative partners as Huawei and TELUS helps ensure Carleton continues to collaborate with important industry locally and nationally,” said Rafik Goubran, dean of Carleton’s Faculty of Engineering and Design. “Our students get the hands-on, real-world training they need to be competitive in the job market.”

“This initiative will enable Carleton to work with a growing number of innovators in the field of cloud computing research,” says Ibrahim Gedeon, MEng/90, TELUS Chief Technology Officer. “The centre, supported by TELUS and Huawei, will be a vital element of not only academia in Canada but with our industry in helping to develop the most advanced cloud technology and services, ultimately benefitting the consumer and business alike.”

“We’re very pleased to be partnering with TELUS and the dynamic researchers in Carleton’s Faculty of Engineering and Design in developing the cloud computing lab,” says Sean Yang, president of Huawei Canada.  “With Carleton students driving research in leading-edge technologies, this will have significant benefits in the local information and communications technology community as these students graduate and enter the workforce.”

Carleton’s Shikharesh Majumdar, professor of systems and computer engineering, worka with two graduate students on resource management in clouds that give rise to high system performance while conserving power; Professor Changcheng Huang leads a project on traffic control for data-centre networks; Professor Yvan Labiche and students research intrusion detection for clouds;  Professor Samuel Ajila leads a team working on virtual machine migration within the cloud; Professor Winnie Ye leads a project exploring how photonic cross connections can be used to optimize clouds; and a team of four professors and graduate students led by Professor Ioannis Lambadaris is investigating effective techniques for service level agreement based resource allocation.