Spring 2002 EDS AdCom Meeting Summary

 

John K. Lowel
John K. Lowel

President, Steve Hillenius, called the Spring Meeting of the IEEE Electron Devices Society to order on June 8th, 2002 in Honolulu prior to the 2002 VLSI Symposia.

Chair Reports

Following the approval of the December 2001 AdCom minutes, Steve updated the current state of the IEEE TAB budget. Again this year, a deficit is anticipated given the existing infrastructure costs, and at the June TAB meeting it will proposed how to charge the technical societies and committees for their share.

In other actions, the EDS ExCom held a Strategic Planning Meeting the previous Friday to look at several future society issues. The topics included what areas (of technology) will EDS emphasize in the future, profiling who future EDS members might be, what society benefits will be included with membership, and reassessing the current technical committees. In particular, EDS must broaden the base of technical interests to embrace emerging research areas such as nanotechnology, and ensure that these activities reflect the global interest and participation of its members. EDS must also determine its role in two new (proposed) TAB technical committees on Semiconductor Manufacturing and Display Technology, respectively.

Treasurer, Paul Yu’s report addressed EDS’ financial position for 2001 and 2002. Due primarily to the 2001 TAB infrastructure charges of $1,986.1K and a negative return from investments ($408K), EDS reserves went down by $2,384.6K for 2001. For 2002, with projected IEEE fees of $1,384.9K, and conference revenue of only $130K, EDS projects a net loss of $790.8K. Paul has worked with the EDS Office to implement several cost saving measures to offset this financial condition. Paul stated that the IEEE TAB might require that EDS take measures to improve our future finances by increasing the EDS membership fee from $6 to $10, increase the prices for EDL and T-ED, and disallow future permanent memberships. AdCom discussion on this topic centered on three main issues; what is IEEE doing to eliminate their budget problems, where is EDS revenue actually coming from, and what is the potential impact of taking these actions? In addition, it was proposed to reduce existing EDS member access to publications from eleven to six in the future, saving additional costs (i.e., IEEE Xplore charges).

The EDS Executive Office under Bill Van Der Vort has been handling a multitude of projects since December. In honor of EDS’ 50th Anniversary celebration this year, they have coordinated the development and distribution of the EDS History Booklet authored by Michael Riordan, worked with the IEEE History Center to develop a portable, historical display in honor of EDS and its technologies in this anniversary year, developed plans for the official celebration of EDS’ 50th anniversary at IEDM in December, made recommendations and changes (primarily cost reductions) to improve the society financial outcome for 2002 & 2003, and worked with the Education Committee to develop a pilot program to offer short courses to companies on site for their employees. Other efforts from Bill and his staff are their new activity to obtain abstracts of all the DL program talks for posting on the web, getting a proposal and appropriate approvals for a “Best Paper” award for EDL with an appropriate rating system, continued improvements to the T-ED manuscript system, setting up a mechanism for IEEE Xplore to sell company sponsorships/advertisements for T-DMR to be displayed on the T-DMR Xplore website, and implementing new procedures to centralize the administrative support of the EDS Newsletter with the EDS Office. Upcoming projects for the rest of the year include coordinating all of the events, displays, and celebratory functions for the 50th Anniversary celebration, continued cost reductions, finalization of the 2002 Graduate Student Fellowship Award competition, expansion of the EDS DL program by adding information of the program to the EDS website posting abstracts of all EDS lecturers, and putting in a new program whereby EDL & T-ED EICs can name reviewers whom they wish to recognize by listing their names and affiliations in the December issues of T-ED & EDL, respectively.

Membership Chair, James Kuo, lists EDS current membership as 7,890 regular members, 4,218 permanent members, and 1,364 students for a total of 13,489. This is a 1.4% gain over last year’s numbers at the same time. Recruiting activities have been fruitful bringing in 62 new members at IEDM, and 78 at ISSCC. The efforts started in 2001 to increase Senior Membership within EDS has been very successful as 120 members have been confirmed since the program began, and 71 others have started the process this year. The application brochures for 2002 in Japanese, Mandarin, and English have been distributed, as well as the various chapter membership subsidies. James and his committee will be continuing the recruitment efforts, student membership drives, DL recruiting, and the SM program going throughout the year. They will also be looking at terminated members to examine the motivations and reasons for non-continuance. EDS terminations for 2002 stand at 13.3%, and in general, IEEE membership terminations, especially in Regions 6 & 10, are quite high. This is an important issue both now and in EDS future planning to look at increasing member retention.

Hiroshi Iwai, Regions/Chapters Committee Chair, puts our current chapter total at 104. We expect that a new chapter in South Brazil, and joint ED/SSC one in Bulgaria will be approved this year. Iwai-san also mentioned that there are efforts underway to change the French chapter from being a joint ED/MTT one to a full-fledged ED one. Reporting for the Educational Activities Committee, Ilesanmi Adessida, focused on three major projects, namely, the DL program, the EDS Graduate Student Fellowship, and the Short Courses. He reviewed the current status of the DL program showing that the effort has become more visible to members through the EDS Newsletter and website. Fifty lectures are scheduled for 2002 with sixteen lecturers participating and sixteen of the talks funded. So far EDS has spent $8.4K on the program from a budget of $12.8K. As for the Graduate Student program, all the nominations have been collected and voting on the seventeen nominees by the selection committee is in progress. Notifications to recipients went out July 15, 2002. Dr. Jack Lee gave one company-sponsored short course at Applied Materials in April. Ken Galloway, Meetings Chair, listed 140 EDS-supported meetings (33 sponsored/ co-sponsored, 98 technically sponsored, and 9 cooperatively sponsored), with 101 scheduled for this year. Since 9/11/01, many conferences lost money, and profits from these meetings are expected to drop sharply from earlier projections.

Key Reports

The 2002 Symposium on VLSI Technology has done well at rebounding from last year’s slump. Projected income should match the actual (~$382K), and attendance exceeded the predictions. While the number of short course attendees is not as high as in previous years, the meeting should be successful. There have been suggestions raised at AdCom that this meeting consider alternative sites such as Shanghai instead of the traditional two (Kyoto & Honolulu) in the future. Attendance at the 2001 IEDM dipped significantly in comparison to past meetings, but the lost revenue was assisted by receiving a waiver from the hotel for a substantial penalty.

As presented by Chair, Renuka Jindal, EDS publications continue to progress. With the increased interest in nanotechnology society-wide, EDS is formulating a policy statement establishing its areas of specialization. The numerous special issues on this subject planned by various technical societies dramatize the importance of this action. EDS’ Nanotechnology Technical Committee plans to draft a “memorandum of understanding” to define our society specialization to avoid conflicts with other publications. A vote to support this action was approved. AdCom also discussed the prevalent problem of numerous authors on both T-ED & EDL papers. At issue is establishing which listed authors performed the majority of the work, and which ones were in mainly support roles. In the end, AdCom’s decision was that any author’s list must remain the responsibility of the submitting institution, and it is not EDS role to decide the amount of involvement of each named author. The Publications Committee may work on a “template for future authors” suggesting guidelines on how to select authors, and will adopt a policy whereby an author list cannot be changed after a paper has been accepted. On a financial note, revenue from T-ED & EDL is increasing as on-line access replaces traditional hardcopy distribution. EDS progress in providing both IEEE Xplore access, and an archival DVD for past T-ED & EDL issues faces some significant cost hurdles. Papers published before 1988 are more expensive to digitize that those that are post-1988. For example, to digitize the pre-1988 papers for both journals is $190K whereas the post-1988 material costs $90K, a significant difference in the face of budget shortening (see above). It was voted to spend $22K in 2003 to digitize EDL issues published prior to 1988, and $102K in 2004 to complete the digitization of T-ED issues published from 1952-1987, and discuss digitizing the pre-1988 IEDM Proceedings (in 2003 & 2004) with the IEDM Committee. In a final Publication action, two winners for the annual Rappaport award were announced, and a motion to establish a “Best EDL paper” named for George Smith has been submitted to TAB for approval with the initial presentation to take place in December 2003.

Bill Van Der Vort, giving the Awards Chair report for Al Mac Rae, encouraged the AdCom to nominate more members for the IEEE Field Awards. On the Fellows side, Lou Parrillo, Fellows Chair, announced that a record 57 nominations were received this year. Lou described the fellow selection in detail. A forum on “50 Years in 50 Minutes” is planned for the December 50th Anniversary celebration at IEDM with Lou Terman, James Early, Richard True, and Jerry Woodall being the featured speakers.

The next meeting of EDS AdCom will be on Sunday, December 8, 2002, in San Francisco prior to the 2002 International Electron Devices Meeting.

John K. Lowell
EDS Secretary
Consultant
Dallas, TX, USA