June 1999 AdCom Meeting Summary

John K. Lowell

The Spring meeting of the Electron Devices Society (EDS) Administrative Committee (AdCom) was held on Sunday, June 13, 1999 at the Rihga Royal Hotel in Kyoto, Japan in conjunction with the 1999 VLSI Technology Symposium. This was a very special meeting, since it was the first-ever AdCom session to be held outside the continental United States as part of EDS' effort to globalize itself. To continue this policy, the Spring AdCom meeting will switch to Region 8 when it goes to Toulouse, France on May 21, 2000 at the International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and Integrated Circuits (ISPSD).

President Bruce Griffing's opening remarks were directed to globalization and activities taken by IEEE and the IEEE Technical Activities Board (TAB). Next year, the IEEE will give out 3,000 special Millennium Medals, of which EDS will distribute 45. The cost of this program is underwritten by the IEEE. Recipients of the medal should be announced by year-end. On a more serious note, Bruce advised that IEEE was developing a new financial model for the Institute and all its entities. Although IEEE societies overall (i.e., Technical Activities Board) are doing very well financially, a number of other entities of the Institute are running at a deficit. Thus, a new financial model is being developed to redistribute the wealth of the Institute, which would result in taking a significant amount of funds from a number of entities (primarily the societies). As expected, the societies are quite upset over the implementation of the new financial model, especially since there has not been any effort to reduce the expenses of the entities that are not performing well financially. To send a message back to the IEEE governance, AdCom approved that a letter be sent to the IEEE President, Ken Laker, requesting that "the IEEE Board of Directors table consideration of this new model, and (instead) focus on reducing the deficit spending of other activities". Sadly, Bruce and all other AdCom members noted the passing of Roger Van Overstraeten of IMEC, who passed away earlier this spring. Dr. Van Overstraeten was a former EDS AdCom member and highly respected researcher, as well as a friend to all. He will be greatly missed.

Lu Kasprzak, Treasurer, reported that the surplus for 1998 ($846.8K) was higher than budgeted, primarily due to more income being received from membership fees, Electron Device Letters, various conferences, the IEEE Book Broker and the IEEE Long-Term Investment Program. In addition, Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing and the Journal of Lightwave Technology distributed surpluses to EDS of $34K and $10K, respectively. EDS finished 1998 with $5.6M in income against $4.8M in expenses, with EDS reserves now totaling $5.6M. AdCom voted to add another $250K into the IEEE Long-Term Investment Program.

The EDS Executive Office continues to be busy and productive. Amongst their activities since the December AdCom meeting are the revamping of the EDS Home Page, a letter writing campaign to sections and chapters worldwide where no current EDS presence exists, coordination of the Region 10 Chapters Meeting, preparation for the Divisions I & IV Region 8 Chapters meeting at ESSDERC, and development of the new Membership Directory. In addition, Bill Van Der Vort, Amanda Papasso and Carrie Lin contributed to the EDS membership survey, coordinated with representatives of T-SM and J-MEMS to make them available on-line, and developed the specifications for a centralized adminstrative support system for Electron Device Letters. Upcoming projects include: planning for the Regions 1-7 & 9 Chapters meeting and Meetings "Best Practices" Workshop at the IEDM in December, renewal of the memberships for 11 Eastern European chapters and the implementation of centralized administrative support for EDL.

In the absence of the Chair, Paul Chow, Membership Committee member, James Kuo, gave the Membership report. James stated that there were 12,629 EDS members at the end of 1998, which was a 10.1% growth over the previous year, giving EDS the third highest percentage of growth amongst the thirty-six IEEE societies. At the end of April 1999, the number was 11,916, again, an increase of 5.1% from April 1998. Only the Communications and Solid-State Circuits Societies had higher numbers for 1998. James also reported that there were 3,162 "permanent" EDS members as of the end of 1998. This count is almost 30% of the total EDS members eligible for permanent membership. Finally, the EDS membership survey, which was sent randomly to 2000 EDS members, was completed in April, and results will be coming from the IEEE Institutional Research Dept. in July, to be reported at the December AdCom meeting. The cost for this project was $15.2K.

Attendees of the June 1999 AdCom Meeting in Kyoto, Japan

Outgoing Regions/Chapters Chair, Cary Yang, gave his committee report. He will be succeeded by Hiroshi Iwai as of this meeting. Cary welcomed new committee members, Cor Claeys, Don Butler, Arlene Santos and Hiroshi Nozawa. The committee will ask Chapter Partners to assess and evaluate their respective chapters when the 2001 annual subsidy requests are submitted. Each chapter chair, whether or not he or she is an EDS member, will receive a copy of the new EDS Membership Directory, and an effort to get more chapter-related information on the web will be started. A parallel investigation of putting the membership directory on the web in a manner similar to that of the LEO society is also being looked at. Iwai-san will conduct the Region 10 Chapters Meeting later in the day, as summarized in this issue of the EDS Newsletter. The 1999 Region 8 Chapters Meeting, which will be held in Belgium in September, will again be jointly conducted with the other eleven Divisions I and IV societies. A petition to add the name of the chapter chair on the Chapter-of-the-Year certificate was declined. At present, there are 97 chapters across the ten regions, of which, 61 are joint with MTT, AP, CAS, CPMT or LEO. Proposed chapters in Bombay (India) and the Mohawk Valley (New York) are currently in progress. The total amount of chapter subsidy money awarded for 1999 was $41K, up from $10K in 1995. Later in the meeting, AdCom received excellent progress reports from the Tokyo, Seoul and Malaysia chapters, in addition to a detailed Partners report by Arlene Santos.

Steve Hillenius, Publications Chair, noted that C.L. Lou and H.S. Philip Wong have joined his committee. He also announced Yujan Li and T.P. Ma as winners of the 1998 Paul Rappaport Award, for their paper included in the June issue of T-ED entitled, "A Front-Gate Charge Pumping Method for Probing Both Interfaces in SOI Devices". The new EDL Editor-in-Chief, Yuan Taur, took over for John Brews as of May 1st. He, in collaboration with the Executive Office, is busy transferring the EDL Publications office to Piscataway. He and others are currently working with Judge Technical Services to develop a database manuscript system that the Executive Office will be able to use to provide administrative support for the EDL Editor-in-Chief and all EDL Editors. Ms. Marlene James, formerly of the LEOS Publications Office, joined the EDS Staff on June 7th to take on the responsibility of providing administrative support for EDL. Steve added that the archival CD ROM project concerning EDL and T-ED will be put on hold pending the expected development of DVD formats and new IEEE Publications software (EPIC) in the near future. His study has shown that a CD ROM going back only to 1996 is not attractive, and that many back issues of EDL and T-ED are or will be available on-line to members soon.

The Meetings Chair, Jim Clemens, indicated that EDS will have 18 sponsored or co-sponsored meetings, 57 technical co-sponsored meetings, and 10 cooperative meetings in 1999. His trends show that while the number of sponsored/co-sponsored meetings has stabilized at 33 since 1993, technical co-sponsored meetings have increased from 2 to 77 over the same period. Conversely, cooperative meetings have declined from 39 to 12 in the same time frame. AdCom supported his motion to approve the schedule of meetings planned for the second half of 2000. Jim also showed that, as a result of the globalization effort, the rate for new meeting sponsorship requests are running at about one per month, and that such requests are predominately from Regions 8 and 10. There was a follow-up discussion with regard to whether or not EDS should take a pro-active stance to support this trend more vigorously, or to take a more passive approach. It was decided that the promotion of new meetings is best left to the respective technical committees who have been universally charged with this task already. There was also discussion of what must be done to get delinquent meetings to close their books on-time, and that EDS has withdrawn its previous support for some meetings which are now outside the mainstream interests of the society.

The Short Course Committee, chaired by Jason Woo, has proposed two classes for next year, Communications Technology, and 0.15u CMOS Device & Design and Optimization. Scheduled versions of these are planned to be offered in Austin, Portland, and San Jose, although no definite dates are available. This project will require additional work to find instructors, determine appropriate fees, and develop budgets. Bruce Griffing reported that the EDS Fellows Committee has received 43 nominations to evaluate this year and they should submit their evaluations to IEEE by June 18th. There should also be a renewed attempt to encourage and support the nomination of Fellows from regional areas such as Korea and Japan, where currently few EDS Fellows exist.

The original two-year agreement between EDS and the Electrochemical Society (ECS) to collaborate on Electrochemical & Solid-State Letters will terminate in 1999. AdCom approved both a renewal of the agreement for 2000 under basically the same terms as the first, and an additional proposal for 2001 stipulating that, in the future, such renewals will be automatic unless changes are being proposed. In another area, a request was made and approved to increase the EDS grant to the IEEE History Center, from $25K to $65K. All society grants will be matched by the IEEE Foundation, so EDS' contribution is extremely important to the History Center. AdCom approved a request of the Device Reliability Physics Committee to sponsor a new journal for 2001 to be titled, Transactions on Reliability of Electronic Materials and Devices. The new publication will be totally electronic, but still peer-reviewed and archival. The committee demonstrated a need for this project by pointing out that, while important and popular, the subject of reliability has not found a home within any of the current publications. It is hoped that the new publication will be co-sponsored with the Reliability Society, although there have been discussions with several other societies as well. The committee expects that the Transactions will require funding of $24K in the first year, but will be solvent in year two and beyond.

The chair of the VLSI Technology and Circuits Technical Committee, H.S. Philip Wong, reported a strong program for his group. For this year, they have already completed one workshop on Passive RF Components (at ISSCC) and will hold another on 300mm Technology at the ISSM in October. A new workshop on Emerging Memory and Storage Technology is planned. Special Issues of T-ED are in progress. The first special issue on Computational Electronics, "New Challenges and Directions", is scheduled to appear in the June 1999 issue, and a follow-up one on Interconnect Systems will be announced. Book proposals are also being entertained. Philip asks that anyone interested in participating in the Memory workshop should contact him directly. The Compound Semiconductor IC Technical Committee, under Herb Bennett, has been active in the Compound Semiconductor Roadmap, working with the LEO Society, and in identifying and publicizing new topics and areas of interest in several publications. They have developed a joint website with the ODTC-WEB at COBRA, supported by Einhoven University (Netherlands), and have contributed to IEEE Spectrum. Among the areas currently being promoted for compound devices are seamless, packet-switched systems architectures, merging of audio, visual, and multimedia, high bandwidth applications, wide-gap power devices, automotive radar and advanced A/D conversion with high count HBTs or RTDs. Reporting for the EDS representative, Steve Knight, Herb Bennett summarized the work of the IEEE New Technology Directions Committee (NTDC) committee also. The NTDC is responsible for identifying emerging technologies of interest, and interfaces closely with all the technical committee chairs. Steve is currently looking at literature searches, meeting reports, teleconferences, and other methods to examine the worldwide scope of new technologies. They plan to report their findings to AdCom and publish them to members in cooperation with IEEE Spectrum and Circuits and Devices Magazine.

The new EDL Editor-in-Chief, Yuan Taur, reported that in 1998, 527 papers were submitted, with 149 of them being accepted. As Editor-in-Chief, he must find a more equitable system of reviewing since some Editors review a disproportionate amount of submissions in comparison to others, and he will work to refine the new support system at the Executive Office. As always, turnaround time is critical. The current rate for EDL is 8.3 months, which is too long. Yuan will work towards a more acceptable figure of about five months. James Kuo reported on Circuits and Devices Magazine, which is now jointly sponsored by only EDS, CASS and LEOS. The other two Division I societies (CPMTS and SSCS) have decided to discontinue their support of the publication. Ken Werner has been approved as the chair of the Advisory Board, which includes EDS advisors, James Kuo and H. G. "Skip" Parks. P.K. Vasudev has recently been appointed as the magazine's editor for subjects on device technology and ICs. The magazine is currently maintaining a reserve of $130K and will distribute about $55K this year to its original supporting factions. John Lowell announced that a new agreement between EDS and the Journal of Lightwave Technology (JLT) will allow free on-line access of JLT to EDS members, and, in return, JLT subscribers will get access gratis to EDL and T-ED. The change is currently in effect.

Hiroo Masuda reported on the 1999 International Workshop on Statistical Metrology, which was being held as part of the VLSI Symposia. The meeting is co-sponsored by the Japanese Society of Applied Physics and, this year, accepted 15 of 19 submissions. Eighty-one attendees were counted. The meeting will be reported in Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing in the near future. The other meeting, held prior to the VLSI Symposium, is the Silicon Nanoelectronics Workshop, which this year welcomed 34 papers and over 96 attendees. Single electron memory, tunneling devices, and vertical MOSFETS have received a lot of attention at the meeting. The 1999 Symposium on VLSI Technology is expected to draw over 500 people to hear 78 papers. The organizers were delighted with the return of contributions from Korea and Taiwan, which decreased significantly last year. This year, the meeting looks at consumer technology applications in its plenary sessions. The AdCom heard reports from two meetings, the 1998 IEDM and the 1999 IRPS. The former had 1,822 in attendance and will return a less-than-expected total of about $75K due to some unforeseen mishaps during the meeting. Short course attendance was also lower than estimated. The IRPS faired well reporting 630 attendees with a return of $38K to EDS. The IRPS is starting a new trend, since it will require all submissions and presentations to be in PDF format.

The next meeting of AdCom will be on December 5, 1999 in Washington, D.C. prior to the start of the IEDM at the Washington Hilton and Towers Hotel.

John K. Lowell
Oracle Corporation
Irving, TX

Return to Table of Contents...