John K. Lowell
John K. Lowell |
|
The December 2000 meeting of EDS AdCom convened on December 10 in San Francisco, CA, as usual before the IEDM. As President Cary Yang remarked, this year was a very special one for EDS, due to the seminal events of the IEEE/EDS Millennium Medal Awards and the Nobel Prize in Physics. The Millennium awards have already been well publicized and comments on the awards luncheon are printed elsewhere in this issue. The 2000 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three IEEE members: Jack Kilby, Herbert Kroemer, and Zhores Alferov. The first two named are also EDS members. President Yang also gave out AdCom Certificates of Appreciation to outgoing AdCom members, Herb Bennett, Hiroshi Iwai, and Kunio Tada, to the outgoing Meetings Chair, (Jim Clemens replaced by Ken Galloway), Publications Chair (Steve Hillenius replaced by Rinuka Jindal), Ebers Committee Chair (Al MacRae replaced by Lou Parrillo), and VLSI Technical Committee Chair (Philip Wong replaced by Werner Weber). Hiroshi Iwai also was recognized as the outgoing NE Asia Newsletter Editor. The remaining appointed and re-appointed ex-officio members of AdCom for 2001 were approved by AdCom. Cary's opening comments also discussed the new TAB financial model, which is still unapproved, so there is no model yet for the tax on society reserves. Nevertheless, EDS will be more fiscally conservative over the next few years as a precaution. This year in fact the EDS surplus is expected to be much less due to the volatile fluctuations in the stock market.
Treasurer April Brown reported that EDS income for the year was projected to be $5,499K against $4,959 in expenses for a net gain of $537K. AdCom approved April's recommendation to maintain the 2001 EDS membership price and Transactions on Electron Devices (T-ED) and Electron Devices Letters (EDL) prices and page budgets for 2002. The EDS office completed several significant tasks in Y2000, i.e., the Regions 1-7 & 9 Chapters Meeting, the Region 8 Chapters Meeting, and the new manuscript tracking program for T-ED. Upcoming in Y2001 are the offering of EDS short courses on the web, the continuation of efforts towards the EDS 50th anniversary celebration in 2002, and transitioning in the new Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability electronic journal.
On the membership front, Chair James Kuo projects an increase of about 150 new members over Y1999's enrollment, which was 12,977. Of the total, the US dominates with 59.1%, followed by Region 8 (Europe) with 18.7% and Region 10 (Pacific Rim) with 10%. There are also 3,937 permanent members as well. Recognizing the need to help individuals in developing countries cover the prohibitive costs of IEEE and EDS memberships, the EDS Membership Committee has proposed a new program whereby EDS would cover the cost of the IEEE and EDS membership fees for individuals whose annual income fall at or below US$8,600. AdCom approved to fund this program at $10K to cover an estimated 200 members in 20 chapters who would take advantage of this new program. The Membership Committee also proposed a new incentive for existing members to apply for Senior Membership. A direct mail promotion to prospective senior members is planned. AdCom members will serve as conduits for references and assistance. Chapters will receive $25 for each member who is approved to be elevated to senior member grade and who has designated EDS as the nominating entity. A budget of $10K was approved by AdCom for the projected 400 new SMs in Y2001.
The number of EDS chapters worldwide now stands at 103 as reported by Hiroshi Iwai, Regions/Chapters Chair. The newest to be added this year were Denver, Kansai, and a joint ED/LEO chapter at the Univ. of California at San Diego. A new Regions/ Chapters Committee organization has been put in place, with the formation of five Subcommittees for Regions and Chapters (SRC) which is organized into five geographical areas with a chair and vice chair for each area. Further information concerning the reorganization is included in a separate article in this issue. Iwai-san also announced that the ED/SSC Yugoslavia Chapter has been awarded the "Chapter of the Year" award for 2000. Congratulations to this chapter's officers and members on their successful effort!
Outgoing Publications Chair, Steve Hillenius, who will be replaced by Rinuka Jindal, reported that the impact factors for both T-ED and EDL significantly increased this year, and the transfer of editorial responsibility (i.e. manuscript submission & processing) to the EDS Piscataway office has been completed. Steve also introduced Doug Verret of Texas Instruments, the incoming Editor-in-Chief of T-ED. It was also revealed that in place of an archival CD-ROM of all issues of T-ED & EDL back to 1954, a "Best of" publication is under consideration. This publication will include a subset of seminal papers published since 1954 in T-ED and EDL selected by a committee based on information such as the citation index and peer reviews.
In other committee reports, Ken Galloway, Meetings Chair, stated that in 2000 EDS had 31 sponsored meetings, 60 that were technically co-sponsored, and 7 that were cooperatively sponsored for a total of 98 meetings. AdCom also approved the meeting list for 2002. As Technical Committee Coordinator, Steve Hillenius named the two new committees, i.e., Nanotechnology and TCAD that have been added this year. The responsibilities of the technical committees will include reporting new technology directions to AdCom and making recommendations for EDS publications & meetings. On the awards front, this year's EDS Distinguished Service Award goes to Mike Adler, former Division I Director and EDS President, and the J. J. Ebers Award goes to Bernard Meyerson of IBM.
The Education Committee, under Ilesanmi Adesida, has been quite busy this year. The DL program has given 42 lectures by 26 lecturers. This is a good number, but changes in the program are being considered to have more lecturers and chapters participate. Questionnaires concerning the DL Program were sent to both lecturers and chapters. Lecturers like the program and value their participation. However, they believe that the program should be better promoted, have an improved budgeting process, and perhaps include video conferencing. Chapters, in turn, like the program, but feel that more lectures should be available on video. The disparity between lecturers who do and do not actively participate (for whatever reason) is also growing. It is the committee's opinion that those who do not give at least one talk every two years may be dropped from the roster. The EDS Graduate Fellowship announcement is going out early in 2001. The EDS Short Course "Vanguard" program for 2000 was comprised of three live presentations in the US and in 2001 short courses will be given outside the US as well. EDS expects to launch its first efforts at giving these courses over the web within the next year. AdCom approved the underwriting of independent short courses, live and web based. Our EDS outreach program has made some progress at extending assistance to several minority universities to form student branch chapters.
In other actions, a proposal for EDS to support the (ISDRS) meeting as a follow-on to IEDM was withdrawn. EDS received fifty Fellows nominations this year of which 2 were rated extraordinary, with 23 highly qualified. Twenty-six of the nominees evaluated by EDS were approved by IEEE. Subsequent to the meeting it was learned that 41 EDS members were approved as Fellows. April Brown presented a motion for EDS to underwrite its portion of the cost ($7K) to start an IEEE Nanotechnology Council in which EDS will participate with 17 additional societies; AdCom approved this motion. The society also voted to be a co-sponsor (33%) of a new IEEE Nanotechnology Conference with two other IEEE societies. AdCom also gave its consent to the several changes in its Constitution and Bylaws. The changes primarily involved granting Technical Committee chairs the same voting rights as Standing Committee chairs and giving technical and standing committee members two-year instead of one-year terms. A summary of the changes to the EDS Constitution and Bylaws is included in another article in this issue. Five thousand dollars was also approved by AdCom to continue the current project at the Historical Electronics Museum in Baltimore, MD.
Craig Casey reported that luminaries John Saby, Gene Gordon, and James Early have been interviewed for the EDS Oral Histories Project which is part of EDS' 50th Anniversary Celebration. These interviews, along with another dozen or so to be conducted with other famous individuals in the field of Electron Devices, will comprise a 50 years of EDS History Publication to be sent to all EDS members. Recently, the histories were given over to Michael Riordan, author of the book "Crystal Fire" who is now under contract to complete them and conduct all the remaining interviews. Ralph Wyndrum, current Division I Director, addressed the AdCom giving an outline of projected plans for IEEE covering membership, the IEEE Presidential Election, IEEE Awards, New Products & Services, and IEEE Operations. Mark Law, this year's IEDM Chair, stated that 2300-2400 attendees were expected for the 2000 meeting and all short courses were sellouts.
Turning to publications, all EDS flagship journals continue to prosper. The statistics of Yuan Taur, EDL Editor-in-Chief, showed that 183 of 442 submissions were published in 2000, very close to 1999's total. Moreover, turnaround time has been reduced to about 7 months with the move of the Publications Office to Piscataway. Outgoing T-ED Editor, Renuka Jindal, presented his study of the impact factor for T-ED to find out just exactly how the journal has been affected over the last twenty years. EDS Newsletter Editor, Krishna Shenai, made a request for a page increase to handle such additional news areas as student articles, and educational activities, but no vote was taken pending a financial assessment of the request.
The Compound Semiconductor and ICS Technical Committee (TC) has joined with the Opto-Electronic Devices TC in several projects and meetings. Herb Bennett, chairman, listed several conference-related satellite workshops on SiGe technology and Compound Semiconductor Physics given within the last year. Both groups will promote new areas embracing SiGe technology for wireless applications, magnetic semiconductors, InP & GaAlAs HEMTs & HBTs, new photonic materials, nitride-based devices, and larger wafers. Raj Singh's Semiconductor Manufacturing TC has worked on conferences, journal special issues, 300mm manufacturing, interactions with Sematech (and related international groups), and the role of foundries in 2000. Philip Wong has gotten his VLSI Technology TC to sponsor an "Emerging Technologies" panel discussion at IEDM 2000, and a special issue of T-ED on computational electronics.
 |
 |
S.C. Sun, Ilesanmi Adesida, Paul Yu and Kei May Lau in discussion at the AdCom meeting. |
Craig Casey presents to AdCom the status of the EDS 50th Anniversary project to produce an oral histories booklet. |
In closing the meeting, all current EDS officers were re-elected to their positions, four AdCom members were re-elected for a second term (Ilesanmi Adesida, Arlene A. Santos, S.C. Sun and Paul K. L. Yu), and three new AdCom members, H. S. Philip Wong, Leda Lunardi, and Toshiro Hiramoto were elected. The next meeting of AdCom will be in Singapore on July 8, 2001.
John K. Lowell
PDS Solutions
Richardson, TX