February 6 - Mr. Stephen "Steve" Levy will present “Solar Photovoltaic Opportunities and Case Studies for the TVA Region.” (PDH) Mr. Levy is a TSK Director, and he has spent 35 years in electric power generation, energy storage, transformation and switching.Steve was hired by EPRI to be the Director of the EPRI Power Electronics Applications Center in Knoxville.  He is now co-teaching solar energy at UTK in the Materials Science Department at the graduate level and presently serving as Technical Director of the Tennessee Solar Energy Association. 

February 13 - Mr. Mike Wehrenberg will present “RST Robotics Competition Overview-A program that builds mindshare, activity, and excitement in the STEM education arena.”: a discussion about the Smokey Mountain Regional Robot competition coming up in March.

For many years, the NASA Robotics Alliance Project (RAP) has been supporting participation in the FIRST Robotics Competition by providing grants to high school teams as well as sponsoring FIRST regional competitions. The program depends on professionals working with students. Mr. Wehrenberg is VP/Gen Manager of Kendall Electric.

February 20 - Presidents' Day (Washington's Birthday). No meeting.

February 27 -  Mr. Thomas A. Dittmaier, P.E. will present “Design Build in the Water Industry.” Mr. Dittmaier is Southeast Region Manager, Infrastructure for Burns & McDonnell.

January 2 - New Year's Holiday, no meeting.

January 9 - Ms. Liz Albertson and other will present an overview of PlanET: the project intent, observations from the initial round of Forum input and a few methods of how to become engaged.

January 16 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, no meeting.

January 26 - 6 P.M. EVENING MEETING: Newly elected City of Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero will present “The Importance and Equity of Long-Term Sustainability Planning.” Cost is $25 per person. Payment will be taken at the door. Anyone wishing to attend is asked to  RSVP with your dinner choice by 5:00 p.m., January 23, 2012, to Laura.Ferguson@arcadis-us.com
Guests are welcome. For more information call 690-0705.

January 30 - Mr. Allen Coggins will discuss “Tennessee Tragedies: Natural, Technological, and Societal Disasters in the Volunteer State.”

December 5 - Expansion of the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant (Georgia): How have environmental issues been resolved?

December 12 - Barbara Scott. Environmental Specialist at Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation  will speak about the Status of the Ash Cleanup at the Kingston Steam Plant. She has been serving as the State's representative onsite during the Kingston Ash Recovery project over the past three years.

December 19 - Rob Scott of Eventbooking.com. He will discuss web based computer programming. Robert Ferris Scott is a member of the Technical Society and he is a great grandson of Charles Ferris, the founder of the Technical Society. This will be a professional development hour (PDH).

December 26 - No Program

November 7: Ted Tyree, P.E. of the Knoxville Utilities Board will present a discussion on "Update on KUB Treatment Plants".

November 14: Marie Gray from Management Solutions LLC.
She will discuss Management Solutions, a woman-owned small business with extensive experience in the world of project controls, project management, cost estimating, process improvement, and construction management.
 
November 21: Roy Arthur, Knox County Watershed Coordinator, will be the speaker. What happens to storm water and stream water is very important and disposition of water issues requires much of the Knoxville City Council's time.  The Technical Society members will have opportunities to interact with a person who has both understanding and experience in local gtoundwater management.

November 28: George J. Hyfantis, Jr., Ph.D., P.E. will discuss "The Sevier County Compost Facility".

October 3 - TJ Blasing PhD in meteorology will speak on climate change. Since joining the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) in the Environmental Data Science and Systems group at ORNL, he has been investigating causes of the changing concentrations of aerosols and trace gases and the consequent effects on climate and the biosphere.

October 10 - (Columbus Day): TSK at STEM School. We will meet at the school, which is in the L&N Terminal building and eat at the school ($4 for lunch). Details will be sent by email.

October 17 - Josh Emery from UTK Planetary Science will speak about The OSIRIS-REX Asteroid Mission: Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer. The overarching theme of his research in planetary science is discovering how our Solar System formed and evolved to its present state.

Octtober 24 - Dr. Chris Cherry of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UT Knoxville will speak on Transportation. One of his research interests is transportation needs of rapidly developing countries-specifically China.

October 31 - Patricia Davis-Wiley will speak on Cyber Communication to Teach English in Korea. She is a UTK professor and her areas of expertise are world languages, changing demographics in the US and methods of teaching English as a second language, as well as, issues and trends in teacher education.

September 5 - Holiday. No meeting

September 12 - Dr. Tony Spiva, Prof. Emeritus of UT College of Business will speak about the National Debt .

September 19 - Dr. Khalid Alshibli , Ph.D., PE., Professor in the U.T. Dept. of Civil & Env. Engineering will present a program entitled "Reliability Analysis of CPT (Convective Triggering Potential) Measurements for Calculating Soils Undrained Shear Strength".

September 26 - Ray Tant: Branch Manager/ Principal Engineer at Shield Engineering, Inc will discuss the ASCE Report Card and integrate some of the new material from ASCE on the costs of degraded infrastructure.

July 4: Holiday - No Meeting

July 11: Dr. Devon Burr, UTK Dept. of Planetary Science. Dr. Burr studies fluvial processes on the Earth and other bodies of the solar system (especially Mars and Titan). The title is "Rivers Anomalies on Earth, Mars, and Titan".

July 18: Barry Molnaa, Director of Project Management, Arcadis, will speak on the topic “How Contaminants Emerge: Can Changing Regulations Impact Your Closed Project?” (PDH)

July 25: John H. Balletto, Principal Scientist/Vice President, Arcadis, will speak on the topic “NuNuclear Power and Emerging Cooling Water Issues”. (PDH)

June 6: Jonathon Burr, TDEC: Overview of Technical and Regulatory Issues Related to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas Production in Tennessee.

June 13: To Be Announced

June 20: Representatives of Hardin Valley Academy's FIRST Robotics Team.  In their rookie year competing in the FIRST Robotics Championships, the Hardin Valley Academy team was the highest placed rookie team at the Smokey Mountain Regional Competition and earned a berth in the National Championship meet.  We hope they can bring their robot.

June 27: Dr. Teja Kurugantipv of ORNL: Dr. Kurugantipv is R&D staff member of the Modeling and Simulation Group in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His research interests include wireless sensor networks for harsh environments, modeling and simulation of wireless propagation in harsh environments, modeling control systems that operate over communication networks, and collaborative signal and information processing in sensor networks.

May 2 - Lee Walter, PE, will be making a presentation entitled, “Beneficial Reuse of MGP Sites as Urban Parks, Utilizing Tennessee and EPA Brownfield Programs."  

May 9 - NO MEETING. The meeting for this week will be the Celebration of the 90th Anniversary of the Technical Society of Knoxville on the evening of Thursday May 12, 2011 at the Crowne Plaza.

May 12 - 90th Anniversary Celebration. The talk title is "Demonstrating Energy Efficient Technologies for a Carbon Constrained World." The speaker is  Ron Domitrovic
Senior Project Manager in the Power Delivery & Utilization Sector at EPRI. He manages EPRI’s Knoxville HVAC laboratory and is the Technical Leader for the commercial Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) and residential mini-split heat pump portions of EPRI’s National Energy Efficiency Demonstration Project.  Dr. Domitrovic has extensive experience in the design of thermal system testing apparatus and in the evaluation of HVAC equipment performance. He was previously a Research Engineer with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Buildings Technology Center and the University of Tennessee Thermal Science Research Center.  EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute)

May 16 - Lynne Liddington, Director at Knox County Air Quality Management will speak. Air quality standards are changing and Knox County will be challenged.

May 23 - Bruce Stearns, Project Manager at Pro2Serve  will speak. In the past he has been owner at Bruce G Stearns & Associates, Senior Engineer at MACTEC ,and Senior Scientist at Fishbeck Thompson Carr & Huber.

May 30:  NO MEETING (Memorial Day Holiday)

April 4 - Emily DeVillers ,Project Facilitator for East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition will speak. Her presentation will be titled: DOE Clean Cities & Biofuels. (PDH)

April 11: "Point of Departure: Site 1 at Baikonur and the History of the Space Age". April 12th Marks the 50th anniversary of the flight of Vostok 1, in which Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth. Ken Barry, P.E. will discuss the history of the construction and operation of Site 1, its current important role in the International Space Station program, and the future of the site and the Soyuz launch vehicle.

April 18 - Dr. Jack Parker, Associate Director for Research, Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UTK will speak. His program title is "Cost Optimization of DNAPL Site Remediation Considering Prediction Uncertainty" ( PDH ). DNAPL (dense non-aqueous phase liquids)

April 25 - Roger Derby, a retired Chemical Engineer will speak about Conditional Probability. Conditional probability is the probability of some event A, given the occurrence of some other event B. You will probably like this if you can get to the meeting.

March 7, 2011 - Dr. John Buchannan, PhD, PE of UTK Dept. of Biosystems Engineering will speak about the SMART facility planned for construction at the UT Arboretum in Oak Ridge.  This will be a facility to test stormwater treatment devices.

March 14, 2100 - Joe Hultquist, Executive Director of East Tennessee Quality Growth will speak. East Tennessee Quality Growth helps area governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations and individual stakeholders achieve consensus on quality growth goals and develop plans and programs to achieve those goals.  An outgrowth of the "Nine Counties, One Vision" campaign of 2000-2005, its mission is to, through dialogue, research, and education, create a vision of quality growth, and promote and facilitate implementation of this vision through regional cooperation and local action.

March 21, 2011 - Becky Ashe, Principal, Knox County STEM Academy will describe the plans and goals for the new Knox County STEM Academy opening in the Fall of 2011.  The STEM Academy will be a high school focusing on preparing students for careers in science, technology, engineering and math. In her 22nd year with Knox County Schools, Becky Ashe wanted a new challenge. She should have been careful of what she wished for, because she got it, being named as the principal of the new STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) school that will be housed in the historic L&N Building on Henley Street and Western Avenue. 

March 28. 2011 - Chris Butler of the Tennessee Association of Floodplain  Managers will be the speaker. He will provide an overview of the Tennessee Association of Floodplain Management (TN AFPM) including the goals and objectives of this newly formed organization.

February 7, 2011: Anthony Crist, P.E., Gresham, Smith & Partners will speak. The title of his presentation is “A Tank in the Rough: From Brownfield to Wastewater Storage Facility”

February 14, 2011: Susan M. Cange, Deputy Assistant Manager for Nuclear Fuel Supply, US DOE. “Reindustrialization of the Oak Ridge Reservation”

February 21, 2011: President’s Day, no meeting

February 28, 2011: David Dinse, P.E.,Technology Innovations, TVA “Campbell Creek Solar Energy Demonstration Project.”  David Dinse has been employed at the Tennessee Valley Authority since 1981 as an R&D project manager and project engineer. He is the Tennessee Valley Authority’s leading technical authority on geothermal heat pump technology. He has directed TVA’s research on geothermal HP performance in commercial buildings for over 12 years.

January 3, 2011: No meeting

January 10, 2011: David R. Dinse, PE, TVA "Campbell Creek Research Homes – The First Year" (PDH)

January 17, 2011: No meeting: Martin Luther King Holiday

January 24, 2011: Mr. Jonathan Overly, Executive Director, East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition will present “Creating Local Catalysts: Building Alternate Fuels Projects in East Tennessee” (PDH)

January 31, 2011: Mr. Lee L. Riedinger, the newly appointed director for the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He will be making a presentation entitled “The new UT/ORNL PhD in Energy Science and Engineering”.
 

December 6: Larry Small, General Manager, TVA Fossil Generation Development & Construction will speak to the Technical Society on the topic “The Lagoon Creek Combined Cycle Project “ This will be a PDH.

December 13: CANCELLED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER. Check the website for future schedule.

Jonathan Overly, Executive Director, East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition. “Creating Local Catalysts: Building Alternate Fuels Projects in East Tennessee”

December 20: no meeting

December 27: no meeting

November 1:  Stephen Levy , technical director of the Tennessee Solar Energy Association, will discuss Solar Energy in Knoxville.

November 8:  Stephen Yerka. UTK. He has done gradiometer and soil resistance studies of archeological sites.

November 15: Dr. David Ludwig of Arcadis will present his talk on The Precautionary Principle and Sustainability: A Systems Perspective (PDH)

November 22 : An evening meeting. Starting at 6:00 PM
Want to know more about the glass house on the Humanities Plaza?
UT’s Team Living Light is one of only 20 teams chosen to design and build a marketable, functioning, solar powered house for the international Solar Decathlon contest in October 2011. Dr. Edgar Stach, Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee’s College of Architecture and Design is one of the leaders and he will talk about the project.

Please invite anyone you know who might benefit from or enjoy attending Technical Society meetings.

November 29 :  Dr. Yang Liu, Planetary Geosciences Institute, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences,  The University of Tennessee. His topic will be “The Now Watery Moon”.

September 6, 2010 - Labor Day- no meeting.

September 13, 2010 Larry Cole, in TVA’s Integrated Resource Plan Group, will discuss the Integrated Resource Plan, also known as “TVA’s Environmental and Energy Future.” The plan will outline TVA’s electricity needs over the next 20 years. The plan will outline various sources for producing electricity over the next 20 years, including their costs and reliability, as well as their potential impacts on the environment. It will also review ways to implement more energy efficiency and consider types of viable renewable generation that are available.
 
September 20, 2010 Dr. Howard Hall, Director of the Baker Center’s Global Security Program.  He also holds the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair.  His presentation will be “Averting Armageddon:  Global Challenges in Nuclear Security.” (PDH)

September 27 , 2010  Ralph Boroughs, Electrical Engineer, Electric Transportation, Technology Innovation and Demonstration, Office of Environment and Technology, Tennessee Valley Authority.  He will speak about TVA’s Electric Car Program. (PDH)

August 2, 2010 - Ms. Robbi McKinney,  "3D Visualization using
ArcGIS”. (PDH)

August 9, 2010 - Mr. Ken Barry, P.E., D. WRE, Senior Project Engineer/Project Manager ENGINEERING INTEGRITY.  S&ME, Inc: “Process, Management, & Duty: Engineering Ethics Case Studies" (PDH)

August 16, 2010 - Mr. Randy Rainwater, P.E. Of S&ME, Inc. will give a presentation entitled  "ASTM International".(PDH)

Aug.23, 2010 - Ms. Dana Vaughn Watershed Representative for TVA will speak on "Watershed Management." A look at TVA’s approach to watershed management of the Tennessee River System and how partnership efforts with citizen groups and other agencies perpetuate TVA’s legacy of working with communities to improve environmental quality. (PDH)

Aug.30, 2010 - Mr. Dennis Yankee, TVA Senior Environmental Manager for the Kingston Ash Recovery, will speak about the latest efforts on the Kingston ash spill.