Benefits

Scheduled seminars throughout the DC 37 Education Fund provide licensed Professional Engineers and Registered Architects the opportunity to earn Professional Development Hours for license renewal. Engineers are required to have a minimum of 36 development hours as part of the renewal process; 18 of which must be in an interactive classroom setting. These seminars are open to licensed engineers and architects only.

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May-June 2025 – Seminars and Instructors’ biographies.

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ME-191 (*)(+) A.I. Ethical Implications for Engineers & Architects (#1)
ME191 introduces Gen AI algorithms and explains how the software responds to ‘prompts’ to produce text and/or video output. The next section of the course covers the different ‘flavors’ of commercial GenAI that are currently available and how ‘prompts’ are entered into these applications. This section considers how disruptive and problematic output can be produced by the software. The course then introduces the codes of ethical conduct created by the Association for Computing Machinery for computer and software engineers to help provide their practitioners with a ‘moral compass’ to guide their professional activities as part of the software development, refinement, and applications.

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ME-192 (*)(+) A.I. Ethical Implications for Engineers & Architects (#2)
ME192 presents a series of case reports documenting the current successful commercial applications of GenAI and problems identified with its use. The format is discussion-based, i.e. students are read the highlights of a case report of inappropriate Gen AI output. They then discuss why the output is inappropriate and the ethical principle(s) that may have been violated and suggest how the situation could have been avoided, assuming the prompt’s motive was not intentional.

Dr. Gene DiResta, Ph.D. Bio. Engr., P.E.
Gene R. DiResta holds a BS in Biochemistry, an MS in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Bioengineering with a minor in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. He worked in industry for 7 years as a biochemical engineer designing reactors using enzyme technology for the production of food and beverages from bench to industrial scale. He is well versed in the theoretical and practical aspects of instrumental methods of analysis, mathematical modeling and control engineering. He received his PE in Chemical Engineering. Leaving Industry, he went to work as a Medical Physicist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where he directed the Nuclear Medicine Research Lab and was the Technical Director of the Positron Emission Tomography Facility for 12 years. He transitioned from diagnosis to therapy by becoming the Director of the Orthopaedic Research Lab, serving for 12 years before being recruited by NYU to be the Director of their Bioengineering graduate program. Dr. DiResta currently has published over 40 papers in peer-reviewed journals and holds 7 US patents for a variety of devices and processes. He is certified by the American Board of Radiology in Medical Nuclear Physics. His particular outside interest is in the area of the engineering challenges of climate change because it leverages his expertise in chemical engineering, nuclear physics, mathematics and chemico-biologic principles. Climate change is a bioengineering problem because it affects the earth’s biosphere, i.e. its animal and plant life. He is ideally equipped to understand the complexity of the biological effects resulting from climatic effects and develop lectures to explain the phenomena to practicing professional engineers.

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ME-146 The Engineering Behind Modern Technology (Pt 1)
This seminar examines the engineering fundamentals behind every day modern
technologies. Each technology is presented along with the underlying scientific and engineering principles that support it. Specific technologies discussed in this course include the Global Positioning System (GPS), Vehicle Airbags, Medical MRI imaging, Noise Cancellation and Fly-By-Wire Aircraft.

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ME-147 The Engineering Behind Modern Technology (Pt 2)
This seminar examines the engineering fundamentals behind every day modern
technologies. Each technology is presented along with the underlying scientific and engineering principles that support it. Specific technologies discussed in this course include the Nanotechnology, Instrument Landing Systems, The Internet, Bar Code Scanners and DNA sequencing.

Neil Weisenfeld, M.S.E.E., P.E.
Neil Weisenfeld is a professional engineer with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. He has 23 years of experience in the power industry and is currently a department manager in Con Edison’s Distribution Engineering department. He has worked in the areas of Power Generation, System Operation, Engineering and Energy Services. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Power Engineering Society of IEEE for over 10 years, is a senior member of the IEEE and holds four U.S. patents.