The first Montreal Chapter's Meeting was held on November 5th 2014, at the EV Building of Concordia University with about 75 graduates and affiliates of Sharif University of Technology. The event started at 7:00 PM and finished at about 9:00 PM. Following is a summary of the meeting:

1) Mr. Amin Fazili, the director of events, opened the ceremony and welcomed the guests by a short warm greeting speech.

2) Mr. Hamzehlouia, the chapter president, warmly welcomed the attendees and then presented SUTA, SUTA goals, SUTA membership, Montreal chapter board members and election process. He invited and encouraged all Sharif University graduates in Montreal to support SUTA by attending SUTA events, participating in election process and sharing their ideas, suggestions and expectations to improve SUTA's performance.

3) Professor Amir G. Aghdam, the president of IEEE Canada, was invited to give a speech for guests. He started his speech by talking about Sharif University's history, previous SUTA gathering events. He shared his experience with attendees about studying and working abroad and gave them priceless hints to move towards success in their future career in Canada.

4)  At the end of the meeting, attendees found an opportunity to have a short chat and get introduced with each other.  

5) The attendees were treated with coffee and cake.

6) Moreover, Mr. Hamidreza Eslami, the director of services, supported the event by taking photos.

This meeting was held in a very warm and friendly atmosphere. Thanks to all Montreal Chapter board members and all who helped us make this event a memorable and great one.

به یاد استاد فقید دکتر محمد حسین پرتوی

بدینوسیله از طرف کلیه اعضای انجمن دانشگاه صنعتی شریف در گذشت استاد فقید و گرانمایه دکتر محمد حسین پرتوی را به خانواده محترم ایشان و کلیه اعضای خانواده دانشگاه شریف، بخصوص دانش آموختگان و اساتید دانشکده فیزیک که با ایشان همکاری نزدیک داشته و در طول سالها از دانش و تجربیات ایشان بهره برده اند، صمیمانه تسلیت گفته و یاد ایشان را گرامی میداریم.

هیات مدیره انجمن دانشگاه صنعتی شریف (سوتا) 

In an effort to clarify some of the definitions and processes in SUTA Bylaws, the 7th SUTA Board of directors has drafted a new amendment (called the 2nd amendment) to the Bylaws. 

The new amendment includes clarifying the definition of some member categories, the composition of SUTA Board of directors, and chapter relations. These modifications have been discussed in SUTA Reunion 2014 meeting in Milan Italy. 

Hereby, we are presenting this amendment for comments and reviews by all members:

• draft_2nd Amendments UTA Bylaws_Amendment Only
  
• draft_Bylaws_2nd amendment included
  

To this end, we appreciate if you send your comments or proposed modifications to members@suta.org no later than 15th of November 2014 (11/15/2014). SUTA Board will compile and discuss the comments, and creates the final draft to be voted by all members in December 2014, along with the election for 8th SUTA Board of directors.

SUTA Board of Directors appreciates any involvement by SUTA members, and looks for your comments on the Bylaws.

Best Regards

Dr. Masoud Olfat, on behalf of Bylaws Committee

As of today, there has been some changes in the SUTA annual membership fees, as follows:

  1) for full-time students, the fee was dropped from $20 to $10.

  2) for associate members, the fee was raised from $20 to $50 (the same fee as for regular non-student members).

For more details on the membership fees, please refer to this link.

SUTA Board of Directors

We would like to announce that Dr. Mehdi Keyvan-Ekbatani has received the prestigious Best IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society PhD Dissertations Award in 2014. The award was presented to him on 9 October 2014 in the framework of the 17^th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Qingdao, China.

This prestigious award is given annually to the best PhD dissertations in the world in the field of Intelligent Transportation systems (ITS) by IEEE at the IEEE ITS conference (which was this year in China).

http://sites.ieee.org/itss/itss-awards/ieee-itss-best-dissertation-award/

In 2010, Dr. Keyvan-Ekbatani finished his graduate studies in the field of Highway and Transportation Engineering at Sharif University of Technology. Right after, he received a PhD scholarship from NEARCTIS (Network of Excellence for Advanced Road Cooperative Traffic management in the Information Society), funded by the European Commission. He finalized his PhD dissertation “Real-Time Urban Traffic Control under Saturated Traffic Conditions” at Dynamic Systems and Simulation Laboratory (DSSL), Tech. University of Crete, Greece and Urban Transport Systems Laboratory (LUTS), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Both groups are among the leading institutions in the area of ITS. DSSL was awarded with the IEEE ITS Institutional Lead Award in 2011 (http://sites.ieee.org/itss/itss-awards/ieee-its-institute-lead-award/).

Currently, he is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Transport and Planning, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands (http://www.citg.tudelft.nl/en/about-faculty/departments/transport-and-planning/staff-information/dr-mehdi-keyvan-ekbatani/).

We wish Dr. Keyvan-Ekbatani all the bests.

Board of directors

Dr. Mahmood Fotoohi has been named as the new chancellor of the university.

SUTA congratulates Dr. Fotoohi, and wishes him success in his new position.

With sadness, we just learned that Dr. Ali Tabesh, a SUT graduate (EE) passed away today at the age of 46 from cancer. Dr. Tabesh was an Assistant Professor of Radiology at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina. He received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, and his M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.  He then went on to earn his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. We wish all his family and friends patience at these tragic moments.