IEEE Standards Education Grants

| David Law, David Law

IEEE Standards Education Grants

The IEEE Standards Education Committee (SEC) will continue in 2016 to offer grants of US $500 for students (per project) and US $300 for faculty mentors to help complete senior, undergraduate or graduate projects. Projects may be for design, capstone, development or research in which an industry technical standard(s) was applied to complete the project.

For students participating in the grant program, it is an excellent way to receive extra funding for student projects, to learn about technical standards necessary for their career development, and to have their final papers peer-reviewed by an IEEE committee.

The purpose of the grants is to facilitate students studying, analyzing, and/or implementing standards in projects. This can be achieved by implementing an existing standard in hardware and/or software, analyzing the performance of a standard in a particular situation, testing compliance with, or alternatively adapting or extending a standard to fit a new scenario. Projects are expected to include a significant component working on the standard: projects that simply make use of standards through modules or libraries without significant design input will not be eligible for an award.

Standards Education Grant Instructions

The IEEE Standards Education Committee has included criteria in the grant application in order to students become successful grant recipients. Many times students have difficulty in completing Section 2 of the application where they are asked about the standards they plan to analyze or use in their projects.

Instructions in this section include the following language:

  • Provide a list of technical industry standards being analyzed and how they will be implemented to achieve your project goal. If you will be comparing two or more standards, please illustrate.
  • Description or plan of how the project will proceed from beginning to end, including:
    • where in the project you will be choosing/considering the standards;
    • an explanation of how and when you will apply the standard(s) in the project.

As always, the following NOTE is included, which contains the key provision for receiving an IEEE Standards Education Grant:

***NOTE that using off-the-shelf modules, products or components built to industry standards does not satisfy this requirement. SEE FAQ’s for more details and examples.

So what does this mean, “off-the-shelf” modules? If you propose to use a router with an integrated IEEE Std 802.11TM (WiFi®) access point to connect a laptop using WiFi to the internet as part of the project, this does not meet the criteria for receiving a grant. The router and the laptop have already implemented the requirements of IEEE 802.11 standard necessary to support the connection, so there really is nothing to do except connect the laptop to the access point. Hence while the IEEE 802.11 standard is being used, it has not been implemented, analyzed, tested, adapted or extended by the project. The goal of gaining an understanding of the standard as part of the project would therefore not have been achieved. If on the other hand as part of the project, you propose to design and build part of an IEEE Std 802.11 (WiFi) access point, for example the Radio Frequency (RF) front end, this is an implementation of the standard and therefore would eligible for consideration for a grant.

Final Student Application Papers

Students who receive the IEEE Standards Education Grants must submit a final paper called a Student Application Paper. The final papers detail which industry technical standard(s) were applied (analyzed and implemented). Each paper highlights specific design choices in the application of various technical standards and describes the resulting product, process, or service.

Criteria for the final student application papers includes a mandatory section called, “Standards Applied.” In this section, students must clearly state which standards were used, how they were applied, and explain what they learned. The paper must also include a Reference section that includes all of the standards applied in the project.

More Information

The IEEE Standards Education Grants will continue to be available through 2016. Applications may be submitted at any time during the year.

For more information about the IEEE Standards Education Grants and how to apply, please visit the IEEE Standards University, and be sure to read all of the application instructions and FAQ section.

All successfully accepted final papers are posted to the IEEE Student Application Papers website.


David LawDavid Law

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

dlaw@hpe.com

David Law is a Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and has worked on the specification and development of Ethernet products since 1989. Throughout that time Mr. Law has been a member of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group, where he has held a number of leadership positions, including Chair of IEEE 802.3 since 2008 and Vice-Chair between 1996 and 2008. In 2000, Mr. Law received the IEEE-SA Standards Medallion. In 2009 he received the IEEE-SA Standards Board Distinguished Service award and in 2012 he received the IEEE-SA International Award. Mr. Law has a BEng (hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland. He is a senior member of the IEEE.