National Engineers Week is celebrated around the country this week, with the annual event timed each year in February to commemorate the birth of engineering, beginning with the first U.S. engineer and President, George Washington. This will be the 62nd annual celebration around the country.

In New Hampshire, the highlight of the weeklong celebration is the annual awards banquet and engineering trade show at the SERESC Conference Center in Bedford. The event is scheduled for Thursday and will feature educational sessions, awards and banquet.

The New Hampshire Society of Professional Engineers (NHSPE) and the New Hampshire Joint Engineering Societies (NHJES) are the sponsors of the event, at which the Engineer of the Year and Young Engineer of the Year will be named.

The afternoon of educational sessions and guest speakers will provide a total of three professional development hours (PDHs) for engineering professionals. Cost is $50, and the sessions will include multi-modal remote sensing system (MRSS) for bridge inspection and monitoring; lessons learned from the earthquake in Japan; and Spin Fin Piles for offshore structures.

Keynote dinner speaker will be James C. Rautio, Ph.D., E.E., the founder of Sonnet Software, which is now the leading vendor of high-accuracy three-dimensional planar high-frequency electromagnetic analysis software. He will be talking about the life of James Maxwell, the originator of what came to be called "Maxwell's Equations" in 1865, but it was not until 1888 that Maxwell's equations were widely accepted. The survival of Maxwell's equations was up to four researchers who comprised a group called "The Four Maxwellians." Rautio's presentation describes the torturous 23-year path Maxwell's equations took from their creation to their initial acceptance.

Cost to attend the banquet is $47 per person or $30 per student.