Casey Fontana 19PhD is currently the Technical Manager of Offshore Siting and Energy Assessment at Invenergy in Chicago, IL. She has been involved in offshore wind for 10 years, with experience in both academic research and industry project development. Fontana holds a BS in Civil Engineering from The College of New Jersey and a PhD in Structural Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Fontana performed the majority of her graduate research under the NSF IGERT fellowship and was able to collaborate with a number of different disciplines involved in offshore wind topics during this time. Her specific doctoral research with Sanjay Arwade and Don DeGroot was focused on multiline anchor systems for floating turbines, and she was able to perform some of this work under the guidance of Vryhof Anchors in Rotterdam, Netherlands. She still happily engages with UMass Amherst through her participation in the Offshore Wind Industry Advisory Board.

In her current role with Invenergy, she is responsible for turbine siting and layout design, wind resource assessment, and energy yield analysis, primarily for the Leading Light Wind and Even Keel Wind projects. She was thrilled to help Invenergy secure its first offshore wind offtake contract for the Leading Light Wind project in her home state of New Jersey. Her favorite offshore wind topics are super-sized turbine models and layout optimization, and she leverages her graduate school experience to conduct small research projects whenever possible. She also takes advantage of peer mentoring and looks to share career lessons learned with her younger colleagues.

She has been actively involved the American Clean Power Association, serving as conference chair for the Resource and Technology conference, and judge of the DOE collegiate wind competition at the annual CLEANPOWER conference.

Fontana met her other half, Philip, while studying at UMass Amherst, and traveled back to western Massachusetts to tie the knot with him last summer. In her spare time, Fontana and her husband enjoy cuddling with their English bulldog Freddie, watching horror movies, and taking advantage of all the live music Chicago has to offer.

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Casey Fontana 19PhD : College of Engineering - UMass News and Media Relations

Strategic Partnership Establishes Consistent Digital Thread Across Complex Projects, Improving Collaboration and Efficiency in the Defense Industry

Aras, a leader in product lifecycle management and digital thread solutions, announced a strategic partnership with leading technology integrator SAIC (Science Applications International Corp.) that includes integration of Aras Innovatoras the digital thread backbone for its digital engineering solution,ReadyOne.

Organizations in critical industries such as defense and intelligence need access to modern, powerful solutions to solve their information age problems. Expensive, cumbersome industrial age solutions should be left behind

ReadyOne is SAICs rapidly deployable digital engineering ecosystem, which offers customers an end-to-end digital thread for consistent, traceable, and complete engineering solutions. By using Aras product lifecycle management (PLM) technology as its foundation, the solution creates a single-source-of-truth for users, letting them access any and all needed information, at any point in the engineering process, all from a common platform. With ReadyOne, collaboration and transparency are increased, while risks and costs are decreased.

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Organizations in critical industries such as defense and intelligence need access to modern, powerful solutions to solve their information age problems. Expensive, cumbersome industrial age solutions should be left behind, said Roque Martin, CEO, Aras. The combination of our digital thread backbone with SAICs digital engineering know-how and years of experience make it easy for customers to meet even the most stringent requirements of the defense sector while still improving efficiency and cost.

ReadyOne creates a new level of responsiveness, impact, and quality for engineers and Aras Innovator is the PLM platform that provides the foundation. By bringing an organizations technical data, engineering tools, and management processes together into one common environment, collaboration increases without there being any worries that critical information is being lost along the way. The ReadyOne environment is independent of infrastructure, enabling it to support all types of customers, and either cloud-to-cloud or on-premise delivery.

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Data is the common thread connecting all of todays most important innovations, added Chris Finlay, Vice President of Innovation at SAIC. As organizations at all levels continue to grapple with digital transformation initiatives, the availability of real-time, accurate data throughout the engineering process will enable better informed decision making and result in faster, more effective results. Tools may come and go, but data is the key to success.

For more information on how Aras can help your organization establish a consistent digital thread throughout its product design and digital engineering initiatives allowing you to track a product and its digital assets all the way from concept through design, manufacturing, quality, and service.

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[To share your insights with us as part of editorial or sponsored content, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]

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SAIC Powers Its ReadyOne Digital Engineering Ecosystem Solution with Aras - AiThority

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy set in motion one of humanity's greatest technological achievements when heextended a historic challengeto NASA, newly created in 1958 from the formerNational Advisory Committee for Aeronautics(NACA).

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

When Kennedy made his proclamation during a joint session of Congress, none of the mechanical hardware, electronics hardware, software, or infrastructure existed to achieve such a goal. At the time, only two human beings had ever been to space and returned safely. Yuri Gagarin, from the then Soviet Union, had completed one planetary orbit on April 12, 1961, and Alan Shepard, from the U.S., had taken a suborbital space flight on May 5 of the same year.

Kennedys speech may have brought the goal into the public consciousness, but institutions and companies like MIT, IBM, and Fairchild Semiconductor were already inventing and improving the electronics technology that would make the mission happen. One of the key innovations necessarythe integrated circuitwas quietly being readied to leave the lab at Fairchild, and the MIT Instrumentation Lab (MIT/IL) was preparing a proposal that would use those chips to develop and build the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC).

For the moon landing mission to succeed, NASA needed flight computers for the command module and lunar landing system. Nothing at the time was small, lightweight, or performant enough to take on the role of the flight computer. IBM created a design for the Saturn V rocket autopilot computer called the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC). The LVDC used transistors and diodes fabricated in what IBM called a Unit Logic Device (ULD). The ULDs looked like ICs, but were much closer in design to a hybrid module; it included a transistor, two diodes, and two thick-film resistors mounted directly on a ceramic substrate.

MIL/IL did not believe a ULD-based design could meet the specifications for the command and lunar modules. They were convinced that an AGC built with the newly invented integrated circuits would be faster and more reliable than if built with discrete transistors or ULDs.

The first real integrated circuit came from Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. In 1969, he demonstrated an oscillator circuit made from a single piece of transistor material. While hardly recognizable by todays standards, it was the first complete functional integrated circuit. Its major drawback was that the individual components in the silicona transistor, a capacitor, and two resistorshad to be manually connected with microscopic gold wires.

The IC didn't resemble what they typically look like today until Fairchild cofounder,Jean Hoerni, developed the planar process, in which a layer of silicon dioxide is deposited on the surface of the chip to act as an insulator. By using an insulating layer, conductive traces can then be chemically deposited to connect the components in the chip.

Fairchild's Bob Norman visited MIT/IL in 1961 to demonstrate the new integrated circuits to the AGC team. Suitably impressed, Eldon C. Hall, the assistant director for the Apollo program, directed engineer David Hanley to order 100 of the chips. Hanley demonstrated a 2.5xincrease in speed over discrete transistors. Hall then asked for and received approval from NASA to make the switch from transistors to ICs for the AGC design.

In the end, MIT/IL was given the task of designing and building the AGC while IBM supplied mainframes to be used on the groundin Houston, Texas. These mainframes were usedas the primary navigation system, with the in-flight AGC taking a secondary role. By the time MIT/IL was ready to start building, Fairchild had developed a complete family line of different digital logic ICs. To limit the number of items to prove out,Hall elected to use a single type of component, a three-input NOR gate. Philco then took on the task of manufacturing the chip at volume production.

MIT/IL developed the AGCas a general-purpose computer rather than as a mission-specific instrument. It was primarily built with the dual three-input NOR gate chips designed by Fairchild and is consideredthe first computer built using integrated circuits.

In 1965, the Block II AGC used about 4,100 updated Fairchild chips with dual three-input NOR gates in a flat-pack chip. The dual gate design yieldeda unit that used less power, offered more processing power, and cost less than the original Block I design. The Block II AGC was used successfully on all crewed Apollo missions.

As a multipurpose computer, AGC needed more advanced programmingthan was typical of the time. Software engineer Margaret Hamilton joined the team at MIT/IL to develop the mission software for the AGC. As director of the software engineering division, she oversaw a team designing and testing AGC's software.

Prior to the AGC project, software development was not considered a science or a branch of engineering. Hamilton coined the term software engineering and, in addition to the task at hand, developed core processes that would later define the field as a discipline.

Hamilton and her team developed a simple interrupt-driven, real-time operating system with batch job scheduling, cooperative multitasking, and error handling for the AGC. The error handling was given a trial by fireminutes before Apollo 11 touched down on the moon when events were being triggered faster than the computer could deal with them. Due to the error handling feature, astronaut Buzz Aldrin was able to recover the computer, and the landing went on successfully.

Integrated circuit technology advanced so fast that by the time the first humans boardedan Apollo flight, ICs containing hundreds of devices per chip were on the market. Meanwhile, the AGC was still using the original Fairchild design. It was during this time that Gordon Moore predicted Moores law,stating that the density of transistors in computer chips would double about every two years.

With the success of the lunar landings and the demonstrated reliability of integrated circuits in space, the technologys viability was well established. Key figures from Fairchild and other major semiconductor companies involved in the AGC project went on to create the foundation of what is now known as Silicon Valley.

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One Giant Leap for Engineering Kind: How the Moon Landing Gave Rise to the IC - News - All About Circuits

This years conference is heading to Birmingham. Running 17-18 April (Wednesday & Thursday) it will be located in the citys Eastside Rooms (B7 4BL).

This year the event and exhibition, which aims to showcase exceptional engineering stories, takes the theme of Enhanced By Engineering #EnhancedByEngineering

From pioneering developments in transportation to innovations in healthcare and technology, women engineers in the United Kingdom have significantly enhanced peoples lives and we celebrate those achievements at our 2 day events, write the organisers.

You can find out more information and register here.

Speakers at the conference will include:

The society will also be joined by STEMReturners and there will be sessions on Allyship and networking. They will also be joined by event sponsors including CNH Industrial, Ingersoll Rand, Amazon, and Leonardo.

Ticket prices, for both days, start from 149 for members of the society, For non-members, both days cost 175.

See also: Womens Engineering Society Annual Conference heads to Birmingham

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Enhanced By Engineering - WES Annual Conference 2024 - Electronics Weekly