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Message from the President
The fact that a society like ours has existed
for 50 years is a testament to our ability to adapt to change.
The challenges that we have had over the last decade have been
one of coping with growth and utilizing our resources to better
serve and benefit the membership. We have established an executive
office to maintain a standard for service and have moved the publications
activities there. This has dramatically reduced the turn-around
time for paper publication and has reduced the burden on the volunteers
that serve as editors and reviewers. We have also driven and have
been one of the first to implement electronic distribution of
journals. We have expanded our international chapter representation
over the last ten years from 32% non-North American to 58% in
2002. This has also created a better balance of representation
on our officers and AdCom members. This change in the Society
is representative of the change in the business and the way the
world has become smaller with the ease of communications and the
advent of the internet. Looking forward, I feel that the challenges
that we are confronted with in the research and businesses that
the Society represents are greater now than they have been for
our entire history. We are looking at the end of the roadmap for
the transistor scaling, a globalized economy that is making many
of our technology innovations a widely available commodity and
new technology developments that will challenge and disrupt our
established institutions. The viability of the Society will be
determined by how quickly we will be able to adapt to these changes
and position the technical component of the Society to the interests
and needs of the people who will be driving these changes. These
changes will be driven by the technical component of this Society
and I believe that the future will be determined by how well we
can attract the best researchers and developers to participate.
We have created several new technical committees over the last
several years and have given the technical committees a greater
influence in the direction of the Society activities. I would
like to see more society members become active in these committees
along with the organizing and editorial committees for the meetings
and journals. I think that the challenge for me and the Society
as a whole will be in continuing to make these activities attractive
to the best researchers and developers in the world as a natural
part of their jobs. I would like to encourage you all to think
about ways that we could do this better and to let me know how
the Society can better serve you each individually. If we succeed
in keeping the Society vibrant and relevant to the world’s
device community, we can all look forward to the 100th anniversary
in 2052. Steven J. Hillenius |
It
is my privilege to serve as the President of the Electron Devices
Society for the year 2002. This year we will be celebrating our
50th year as a society and I look at this opportunity as a means
to give a start for the society into the second half of our first
hundred years. This society was born two years after the invention
of the transistor and has grown over the years as the entire field
of microelectronics, photonics, power devices, vacuum electronics
and MEMS have evolved into major businesses throughout the world
and have affected the daily life of almost everyone.