Y-IEEE kicks off 'Quaranteams’ and Makes History

10/01/2020

Despite its membership being located across the country due to the impact of COVID-19, Y-IEEE, the Yale Student Branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, remains energized and plugged in.

At their recent kick-off event – conducted over Zoom – the group announced their planned projects for the year. Working in groups – named “Quaranteams” – the projects range from supporting New Haven high school students to communicating in space. Here is this year’s planned Quaranteam projects:

Yale Space Station: Y-IEEE intends on constructing a ham radio station, placed at the top of Sterling Memorial Library, to perform mini experiments. In partnership with Yale’s Pathways to Science, Y-IEEE hopes to execute a live-contact with astronauts at the International Space Station in an event intended for the Yale and local New Haven students.

High School Engineering Support (“The Ohmies”): Also a collaboration with Yale’s Pathways to Science, the Ohmies intend on working with a local public high school to build purposeful projects and meaningful relationships. This year, the group plans to assemble and send students kits for solar-powered mini cars and meet regularly over Zoom to help the students understand the components and build the cars.

Modular Tower Screen: By installing controllable lights on a large Yale building, this Quaranteam aims to make a very large, low density screen to incorporate mass interactivity, including games and more.

Harkness Tower Lights: Y-IEEE aims to put their architectural mark on the iconic Yale building, by installing programmable multi-colored LED lights that project onto Harkness Tower, similar to the Empire State Building.

LoRa Project Team: Y-IEEE plants to build a LoRa mesh network that provides coverage to the greater New Haven area. This task is essentially akin to designing and deploying their own cellular service that one can connect to anywhere in New Haven.

LED Jumbotron: Y-IEEE plans to continue their work on a modular, Arduino-controlled, interactive display by creating new programs for interactivity, updating the hardware, and more.

Leading the kick-off event were Y-IEEE’s new co-chairs, Taylor Chapman ’22 and Tamar Geller ’23. Their election marks the first time in 109 years that the branch co-chairs are female.

The mission of Y-IEEE is to promote Electrical Engineering at the intersection of liberal arts and technology via exciting projects and inspiring events to facilitate a vibrant, spontaneous, and ambitious culture of engineering at Yale. To learn more and join, visit their Instagram or Facebook page.