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The 2013 Joint UFFC, EFTF and PFM Symposium

The 2013 Joint IEEE-UFFC Symposium was held at the Prague Convention Center, Prague, Czech Republic on July 21-25 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the society. We were particularly pleased that the joint symposia were able to host the European Frequency and Time Forum (EFTF) as well as the Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM) workshop. The conference was highly successful on all accounts. Over 300 society volunteers helped to put together outstanding technical and social programs for the 2013 Joint UFFC, EFTF, and PFM Symposium.

The technical program and all information related to the joint conference were offered in the Advanced Program Book (APB). The APB was also published on the conference website. For first time, many participants were able to download the technical program and information on the sessions and speakers on their smartphones.

The attendance for the conference was as follows: 1,232 regular participants, 567 students, 85 exhibitors, and 149 guests for total of 2,033. Attendees represented 49 countries; the four highest attendees were from the United States, France, Japan, and Germany, respectively. About 50 percent of participants registered for the IUS while the other half registered for the ISAF-PFM and the IFCS-EFTF. The summary of the conference registration with their demographic representations are shown below:

     

 

     

 

    

 

A series of short courses were organized by the Short Course Committee — Roman Maev, David Cann, and Jeremy Everard — and offered on Sunday before the start of the technical sessions. The IUS, ISAF-PFM, and EFTF-IFCS offered 24, 12, and 16 tutorial sessions, respectively. A total of 299 registered for short courses, of whom 133 were regular participants and 166 were students.

TPC-Co chairs — Stanislav Emelianov, Susan Trolier–McKinstry, Dragan Damjanovic, Andrei Kholkin, Gaetano Mileti, and Warren Walls – put together four plenary, 144 oral, and 10 poster sessions for four days. Each day there were 12 parallel oral sessions. There were six plenary speakers, 77 invited talks, 1,625 contributed talks, of which 734 were oral and 891 were poster presentations. Also, 48 Student Paper Competition finalists presented their posters on Monday. The SPC Awards were presented by the general chair of the conference to the winners at the student luncheon on Thursday.

Publications co-chairs — Stanislav Kamba (committee chair), Jafar Saniie, and Aaron Patridge — diligently reviewed 560(IUS), 98 (ISAF-PFM), and 268 (IFCS-EFTF) manuscripts for conference proceedings. DVD containing all proceedings was distributed to participants in early November 2013 within the timeframe required by IEEE Publication Department.

Five Platinum Patrons-National Institute of Standard and Technology, Murata manufacturing Co. Ltd., Shoei Chemical, Ultrasonixs, and Verosonics - financially sponsored the UFFC joint symposia. The co-Chairs of Exhibits - Sue Kingston, David Cann, and Sue Kingston were able to successfully bring total of 48 exhibits and 86 exhibitors to the conference. All industry demonstrated their state of the art products on first three days of the conference.

The social activities of the conference were a huge success. All participants joined in the conference reception on Monday at the Prague Convention Center. The Conference Banquet took place on Wednesday evening. Participants were divided into four groups based on their registration. Three groups of about 750 took a three-hour boat trip and over 900 participants attended a gala dinner at the Zofin Palace. Both events included live band entertainment and fine food with wine and beer served during dinner. The conference also provided buffet lunch and a.m./ p.m. refreshments every day.

The conference was financially managed by Debra Coler and Herman Van de Vaart. Their appropriate and timely attention on the financial issues of the conference made the Joint 2013 Conference financially successful as well.

The conference was supported by Institute of Physics, Academy of Science, Czech Republic. Professor Jirka Hlinka, head of the Department of Dielectrics and local chair of the joint conference and many member of his group actively involved on local issues of the Joint conference. Their generous time and energy in helping to organize the successful conference was highly appreciated.

I want to thank all the volunteers for their valuable time, energy and leadership on highly successful organization of the 2013 Joint UFFC, EFTF, and PFM Conference.

Ahmad Safari
General Chair
Department of Materials Science
Rutgers University

 

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