NPU Professional Seminars Blog

Resume preparation

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:03:01 GMT

Topic: Resume preparation
Speaker: Dr. Yifong Shih
Date: 10/11/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

Abstract:
A resume is the first opportunity a job seeker has to impress upon potential employers. How does a fresh college graduate create a document about himself that describes to human resource professionals and hiring managers his skills and personality in a short time span on their busy working day? We will examine the content and formats of a good resume from three different readers� perspectives, and follow up with several common questions asked during an interview.

Biography:
Ph.D., Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, MI, 1987
M.S., E.E., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, 1978
B.S., E.E., Wayne State University, MI, 1974

Computer architecture, parallel processing and multiprocessors, cryptography and security, high-speed I/O, RAID storage systems, system-on-chip design & verification.

Dr. Yifong Shih has over twenty years of experience working for various companies in the Bay Area. He started his career as a performance architect in IBM's Storage Systems Division in Tucson, Arizona before moving to Hewlett-Packard and participated in the design of a fast memory subsystem for the directory-based Yosemite multiprocessor system. More recently he has worked as a designer for a high-speed Infiniband switch at RedSwitch and systems architect for a storage system-on-chip at Agilent.

Dr. Shih has authored several U.S. patents. He received his Ph.D in Computer Science and Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He also holds a MSEE from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BSEE degree from Wayne State University.

Effective Learning and Communication in 21st Century

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:08:46 GMT

Topic: Effective Learning and Communication in 21st Century
Speaker: Dr. George Hsieh
Date: 10/4/2008, Saturday
Time: 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM

Biography
Dr. George Hsieh, president of Northwestern Polytechnic University (NPU), has been dedicated to the fields of science, technology, and management for more than three decades. His human resource management techniques and effective teaching methodologies, coupled with the object-oriented educational model of student learning, have successfully transformed thousands of individuals into successful professionals. Under the leadership of Dr. Hsieh, NPU has rapidly become one of the outstanding institutions in Silicon Valley. For over 23 years, NPU has been serving the students from over 20 countries as well as local community and helped thousands of people to explore their potentials, help them to take the challenge and achieve their goals.

Dr. Hsieh also has been very active in supporting the advancement of higher education in the international communities, particularly in Asian countries. In the past twenty years, he has visited more than 200 institutions of higher learning and many high tech districts/parks in China, Taiwan, HK, Japan, Korea etc. and more than 100,000 attendees have attended and benefited from hundreds of speeches, presentations and lectures given by him.

In addition, Dr. Hsieh has exerted great efforts and made great contributions in promoting east and west cross cultural understanding as well as in cultivating business cooperation between Asian companies and corporations in Silicon Valley. Dr. Hsieh has been serving as Commissioner, Economic Development Commission, City of Fremont for years, he also is the Director, Board of Director of UNA-USA. In 2005, Dr. Hsieh was awarded the Outstanding Alumni by the Alumni Association of National Cheng Kung University to honor his achievements.

In a great vision of �boundless campus�, Dr. Hsieh initiated Global Education Consortium (GEC) in March 2006 to promote the cooperation and resource sharing among the higher education organizations around the world, and as a result, make the learning opportunity available to more and more students in different countries. Now over 80 member colleges and universities from Taiwan, China, Korea, Philippine, Chile and Vietnam participate in GEC.

DSP, EE, and Medical Device

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:16:09 GMT

Speaker: Dr. Pei-Jie Cao
Date: 8/16/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

-Abstract:
The talk will explain medical device in general from perspective of electrical design, demonstrate the unique aspects of electrical medical device. The students will understand the relation between the electrical design and signal processing which will benefit them in their long-term career, turning them from an EE engineer into a system engineer.

-Speaker:
Pei-Jie Cao, received Ph.D in BME from Xi'an Jiaotong University in China, 3 years of postdoc at the Penn State University, 2 years research faculty at USC, 15 years of experience in electrical medical device industry. Strong background at mixed signal design, signal processing.

OPEC and the high price oil

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:22:01 GMT

Speaker: Dr. John Ku
Date: 8/9/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

-Brief introduction
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), established in September 1960 in Baghdad, Iraq is an intergovernmental cartel. The founder member includes Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Venezuela. Today the membership also includes Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Indonesia, Angola and Ecuador. OPEC conducts formal meetings to discuss oil prices and output for the purpose of increasing their oil revenue and in 1982 started to assign explicit crude oil production quotas to each individual member country.

A key reason for high oil prices in the artificial scarcity imposed on the market by the OPEC cartel, which controls 70 percent of world�s known oil reserves but produces only 40 percent of world oil production and restricts how much oil reaches consumers. Increases in world oil consumption have been driven principally by developing countries in Asia. Asian crude oil consumption has more than double since 1985 but OPEC today barely produces more crude oil it did in 1977. The high oil prices will remain high for the foreseeable future; this is due to the increasing weakness of the US dollar, rapid increases in demand from the rapidly growing economics of India and China. Major oil exporting countries are using more oil domestically. Particularly significant are Indonesia, which no longer exports oil, Mexico and Iran, where projected demand will exceed production about 5 years. High oil prices have a large negative impact on the global growth; OPEC�s role in the price escalation should be exposed and not be obscured by misconceptions about oil resource depletion.

-Speakers
John Y. K. Ku graduated from National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan with B.S. E. degree in Mining Engineering and received his M.S. & Ph.D., in Mineral Economics from Colorado School of Mines. His interests include economic evaluation and investment decision methods, advertising management, marketing and financial planning. He has extensive research in Economics Impact of Alternative Energy Policies and Strategies. He was the Chief Engineering Geologist for � North Lantau Expressway, Site Investigation-Phase 1� Hong Kong. He was a professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Chu Hai College, Hong Kong and a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver.

The New Trends of Medical Tourism

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 18:13:12 GMT

Speaker: Dr. Wu-Der Tsay & Dr. Mei-Chiao Lai
Date: 8/2/2008, Saturday
Time: 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM

-Brief introduction
The pursuit of integrity and full development of body-mind-spirit, the international medical tourism industry has been promoted in recent
years and become one of the world�s fast-growing and important industries. The current production value of Medical Tourism has reached US $20 billion and will increase to US $40 billion by 2010. 150,000 Americans seek medical treatment abroad in 2006. The number is expected to increase to 300,000 in 2007. Many Americans seek medical treatment in India, Thailand, Mexico, Costa Rica and Singapore. If you are interested in finding out the trend in medical tourism, this is definitely a seminar you don't want to miss.

-Speakers
Dr. Wu-Der Tsay, Ph.D from UK, professor in Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences.
Dr. Mei Chiao Lai, professor in Diwan University.

The Growing Microfinance Industry

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:32:45 GMT

Speaker: Ms. Liana Mortazavi
Date: 8/5/2008, Tuesday
Time: 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Brief introduction
It is estimated that 4 billion people in the world today live on less than $2 a day. This group, and those slightly more fortunate, have traditionally been unable to gain access to financial services due to a combination of issues--geographic isolation, illiteracy, lack of collateral, and social prejudice. The microfinance industry, however, wants to slowly change this pattern by providing banking services, such as small loans and savings products, to the very poor in order to help them grow small business and improve their standard of living. We will examine various microfinance institutional models being used today, including that of Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which along with its founder, Muhammad Yunus, jointly won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Biography
Liana Mortazavi has a varied background in teaching, nonprofit development, writing, and community service. Her experience includes working as a foreign scholar at Daqing Petroleum Institute in China's Heilongjiang Province, producing marketing and communications materials for the Northern California Community Loan Fund based in San Francisco, writing on-line articles for Consumer Health Interactive, and volunteering at Stanford Hospital's Emergency Department.

Liana graduated cum laude with a BA in East Asian Studies and a minor Mandarin from UC Davis and holds an MBA from San Jose State University.

Are healthier patients more satisfied with their care than sicker patients? It depends

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:27:13 GMT

Speaker: Dr. Janelle Y. Lee
Date: 7/12/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

Brief introduction:
Are healthier patients more satisfied with their care than sicker patients? To understand how post-visit patient satisfaction is associated with different aspects of patient health, as measured by self-reported health status, a global diagnosis-based health measure, and the visit diagnoses.

Surveys were mailed to randomly selected patients following office visits during years 1998-2006 at Kaiser Permanente, Northern California. Patients were asked to rate the provider�s �skills and ability�, whether they received the �care and services your medical condition required�, and whether the provider �listened to you and explained what was being done and why�; and these 3 items were averaged to obtain a summary score, which ranged from poor (1) to excellent (5). Diagnoses at the visit were obtained from department-specific diagnosis check lists and grouped via the Clinical Classifications tool. A co-morbidity risk score was computed by Diagnostic Cost Group (DxCG) which is based on inpatient and outpatient diagnoses, age, sex, and Medicare status. The primary analysis was cross-sectional: satisfaction was examined in relation to health, the global measure of risk, and the visit diagnosis, adjustment for additional covariates. A secondary analysis was longitudinal: change in patient satisfaction was examined in relation to change in health, in the subset of patients surveyed more than once after visits to the same provider separated by more than 1 year.

4.7 million surveys were received. The response rate was 43%. The average satisfaction score was 4.23 on the 5 point scale. After adjustment for age, gender, race/ethnicity, date of visit, facility, type of provider, higher levels of satisfaction were associated with more favorable self-reported health status (p<.0001), and with less favorable DxCG co-morbidity score (p <.0001). Examples of diagnoses with higher satisfaction levels were cancers, HIV infection, health/emotional counseling or post-operative exam (score range from 4.5- 4.7). Diagnoses with lower satisfaction scores included motor vehicle accidents, tinnitus, otitis media or pain/strain (with mean levels of post-visit satisfaction ranging from 3.8 � 4.0). Among the 254,000 patients who were surveyed more than once, we found that increased satisfaction was strongly associated with an improvement in self-reported health status (P<0.0001), but was also weakly associated with decline in the diagnosis-based measure of health (P<0.0418).

Like previous studies, our study also found that higher self-reported health status was associated with greater satisfaction. Interestingly, however, patients who were healthier according to the diagnosis-based health measure tended to report lower satisfaction. Thus, the most dissatisfied patients tended to be healthier patients who perceived themselves to be sick. Similarly, the most satisfied patients were sicker patients who perceived themselves to be healthy. This might be explained by a tendency for providers to treat sicker patients with more attentiveness than patients with conditions that are bothersome but not serious, especially if�like tinnitus�they are not treatable. Past research on the relationship between health and patient satisfaction has only examined self-reported health status. This may misrepresent how patient satisfaction and health are related. Overall, patient�s perceived health status, their providers� assessment of their health, and the reason for specific visits, combine to influence post-visit satisfaction in ways that are important to understand in order to learn how to improve care.

Biography:
Dr. Lee has been a data consultant in the Division of Research at Kaiser Permanente of Northern California since 1999. She has currently involved in a five-year project in Cardiovascular Disease Research Network (CVRN), which facilitate and perform collaborative cardiovascular disease (CVD) research among healthcare organizations located in geographically diverse areas. Her current research interests focus on quality improvement and current research projects include early detection and recognition of incident hypertension, pay for performance in relation to variations in quality of care, patient satisfaction, and eCare (Web Care) for Diabetes and hypertension in a randomized clinic trail.

Janelle Y. Lee, MHA, Dr.PH, obtained her BA on business administration at Fu-Jen Catholic University and master degree in Hospital and Healthcare Administration from China Medical College in Taiwan. Her master thesis was focused on strategic choices in response to payment systems. After graduation, she worked as a hospital administrator in the Research and Design (R&D) Department in Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH). CGMH is the largest medical center in Asian and well-known in the health care management in Taiwan. Her major duties at CGMH included establishing standard procedures for payment system, planning and setting up Hospital Information System (e.g. computerized medical records and X-ray), and improving the hospital operating procedures. This position allowed her to have empirical experience in healthcare administration, health information, and quality of care. After working in the healthcare industry, she decided to pursue her doctoral degree in the United States. In 1998, she received her Doctor of Public Health (Dr. PH) degree in health system management from Tulane University, New Orleans. Her doctoral dissertation was in the area of productivity and efficiency in managed care settings.

Dr. Lee has published more than 10 peer-reviewed articles in the prestigious health and medical journals such as Journal of American Medical Association, Pediatric Infection Disease Journal, and American Journal of Managed Care. The topic includes the use of antidepressants and medication adherence in relation to treatment outcomes and adverse effect, efficacy of different vaccines, as well as comparison of risk adjustment models.

In coming fall semester 2008, Dr. Lee will bring her experience in health care management and research training to the MBA program at NPU. She will offer health care management related courses which would help students with business management skills needed to manage effectively in health care delivery systems.

Introduction to Xilinx FPGA and career planning

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:36:35 GMT

Speaker: Mr. Tom Hua
Date: 6/28/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

Brief introduction:
Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is an acronym for a specific type of integrated circuit device. For the recent two decades FPGA have been ubiquitously deployed in the electronic systems. To name a few, they are found as useful and as very cost effective components in miniature handheld devices, toys, industries controlling systems, large-scale electronics and computer systems, etc. The demands in use of FPGA grow very quickly and perpetually. These lead to 1). The FPGA manufactures continue to design their parts to be low cost, more powerful, and highly flexible to promote the FPGA market and revenue. 2). The application development environments evolve and become more affordable and user-friendly to help developers in speed up the time-to-market process of FPGA design, and help developers to explore the maximum and optimum capability of the device.

Within the scope of this presentation, I will briefly touch on the topics about some FPGA families and features themselves, their use in the systems, and applications development environment along with my class projects. I expect that this short discussion will excel the FPGA application design study be more enjoyable and effective along with some experiments as a practical approach.

Biography
"My name is Tom Hua. I was born and raised in Viet Nam. I came to the States in 1979.

Thrilled and fascinated when watching a technician wiring up some household light fixtures when I was 11, I knew what I really want to do for my future then. Eager to try things out myself in the following years, I bought many electronics textbooks, electronics tools, and hardware, and started with experiment after experiment. To gain real experience, I went out to market myself and helped friends to fix some TVs and stereos. Then I found my very first electronics job as a tester for a medical instrument manufacture in Pennsylvania in 1979. Realizing my lack of essential fundamental knowledge in electronics, I went back to Iowa and completed an AS degree in electronics technologies even before finishing high school. In 1983, I moved to the Bay Area and started my further pursuit of interests. At the SF Main Library I typed up my first resume. Barely squeezing in many keywords and previous work experience, I managed to fill up only a one-page resume. But that turned out to be enough because it worked! In only fifteen days after settling down, I accepted an assembler position for ClearCom Systems (it still exists) who makes closed-circuit communications equipment. Six months later my first dream finally came true; I was promoted to be a technician.

Up to 1991, I tutored myself more into the digital world. But I wanted more and decided to head to an engineering path. I went to study at several different campuses. Had I not come to study at NPU, I have no doubt that it would have been much harder and longer for me to reach my goal. Of course I stumbled and fail sometimes, but I never gave up easily in my continued search for a right kind of job I would enjoy doing. And I am very delighted to have many professors who taught me how to be a successful interviewee, and stood by me as my job references, leading to jobs after jobs with success!

In the meantime, I completed my AS degree in Business Administration and Management at Ohlone College, Fremont in 2001. It first seemed to be irrelevant to my technical background. But it surely helped me to perform planning, organizing, documenting, and marketing my technical works as well as improving my social skills.

Then the Internet/telecommunications bubble broke violently in the early 2000s. It hit hard on me for four months when I stayed idle without work. Mr. Henry Chang provided such a good reference for me that I landed a job as a technician at Thermo Electron Corp. Although it was a big drop for me from such a high software plateau, that was still a wise choice in that tough job market, he said.

For these years I continue to take classes, keep pace with new technology and job requirements and to prepare for tougher challenges ahead. Simply, it all comes down to hands-on practices, review of my failures, making corrections, and improving my communication skill set - for over fifteen job interviews in the last two years. In the last April through May, I received more than one job offers. Mr. Henry Chang once again helped me reach my goal. I now work for Spectra-Physics as a reputable software developer.

But I want more. I like to share my experience with the NPU students and professors. NPU again provides me such opportunities of success of which I can cherish as well as share with you through my presentations in embedded systems software developments and in the art of job search and interviews... "

IT Career Opportunities with SRG America

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 02:03:37 GMT

Speaker: Ms. Sheetal Kammaje
Date: 6/21/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

Brief introduction:
SRG America is a leading multinational organization that has successfully served the Information Technology market place for over 12 years. SRG America is an IT training and placement company. SRG is looking for Software Consultants and Fresh Graduates to augment our clients in the Bay area and all over USA. SRG America recruits Internship and OPT students. SRG America offers 3 weeks of intensive technical training, and 1 week of workplace etiquette training. After the training, SRG America places the candidate on projects all over the U.S with their clients. Sheetal will be presenting on June 21st at NPU from 1-2pm. She will be open to questions and answers after the presentation.

Biography
Sheetal Kammaje has a degree from San Jose State University in Business Administration. She is currently working with SRG America as a Recruiting Manager. Sheetal has 4+ years experience working with different IT consulting companies.

eCommerce Technology

Northwestern Polytechnic University — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:30:44 GMT

Speaker: Dr. Henry Chang
Date: 6/14/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM

Brief introduction:
To create a successful online shopping store is not a simple task. First you need to set up a website, which involves hardware installation (computer, hard disk, networking, etc), software development and installation (shopping cart, etc), and web page design to make your website attractive to your customers. After that, you get into a cycle of the following tasks:

1. Data processing
2. Collecting product data from the suppliers.
3. Updating the product data in your database, including adding new products, removing obsolete products.
4. Computing a competitive price that maximizes your profit.

Promotion
1. Uploading product data (i.e., web feeds) to leading Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) such as Yahoo! Shopping, Google Product Search, and Amazon.com.
2. Adding information to your web pages for search engine optimization (SEO). The easier your products are searched by search engines, the more visitors will visit your website.
3. Sending emails to your customers.

Checking the results of your promotion
You need to know which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and to see how visitors actually interact with your site. For example, the sequence of the visited web pages, how many of the visitors actually purchase products.

To do these tasks once in a while with a small quantity of products is probably not a big deal. However, it is a daunting task to handle hundreds or even thousands of products several times a week. A big company can probably hire a team of engineers to handle most of the tasks mentioned above, and contract certain tasks (e.g., SEO, email marketing) to outside companies. For a medium or small company, it will be very expensive to maintain a development team or contract different tasks to different companies.

This seminar discusses the techniques of providing a one-stop service for eCommerce companies. For example, one can automatically collect product data from the website of a retailer's suppliers, compute the price for each product based on a set of criteria, update the reatialer's website, embed SEO and web analysis information in each product data, and send the product data to leading Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE) such as Yahoo! Shopping, Google Product Search, and Amazon.com.

Biography
Henry Chang has more than 30 years industry experience involved business activities in US, China, and Taiwan. He has worked in large companies, including 18 years in HP, and small startup companies (WebKomputing, Lead Digi, and Artistic Vision). His interests are in network security, eCommerce, wireless networks, image processing, and embedded systems. He has been teaching at Northwestern Polytechnic University since 1991. He received his Doctor of Computer Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnic University in 2008, M.S. in Computer Science from University of Texas at Austin in 1983, and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tatung Institute of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1974.