President's Report

One of the great strengths of the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society is that it is a volunteer society. However, this can also be one of its greatest weaknesses. If you look at the back cover of this Newsletter or on the inside cover of the Transactions, you will see lists of people filling various positions. Except for the administrative staff at Piscataway, NJ, these are all unpaid volunteers. The primary functions of this Society are to hold scientific conferences and symposia and to publish scientific journals. Up to the point of printing the journal or auditing the books on the conferences, essentially all the work and planning is done by volunteers.
We are one the smallest of the IEEE societies with about 3000 in a 400,000 member IEEE. We consist of 8 separate interest groups that deal with some aspect of Nuclear or Plasma Sciences. This means even the largest of these interest groups has less than 1000 participants. The groups are small enough that an individual’s opinion can be heard and make a difference. As I mentioned above, a great weakness our society is that it is a volunteer society, and if the quality and quantity of volunteers is poor the result can be disastrous.
Since you are bothering to read this article, you probably have some concern about the quality of our society. If you are not involved the activities of the NPSS, I would encourage you to get involved at some level. You can start by simply being active in presenting papers at conferences. You can volunteer to review abstracts for conferences and the Transactions. We are always looking for more reviewers. Volunteer to help organize and run a conference or short course. The volunteers are the people who get to chair sessions. Four of our interest groups have Steering Committees or Councils that are responsible for running conferences and overseeing the publication of parts of the Transactions. Each of these groups has about 16 elected seats, and a current elected member of these groups cannot succeed himself. So there is a continuous need for new blood. The AdCom, of which I am the current president, is effectively a steering committee for all of NPSS, where the representatives of the various groups meet to deal with the operation and problems of the society. We also act as the liaison to IEEE and are represented in its steering committee. The members of the AdCom almost always come from the individual councils or steering committees.
I have had the privilege of seeing the strength of the volunteer system at work in the NPSS. When I first attended an AdCom meeting as an appointed chair for the Nuclear Medical Sciences group, I had heard that it was totally a political body in the worst sense of the word. Instead I found a group of people working very hard to make sure that the NPSS worked. Rather than simply representing his own constituency, each member of the AdCom supported actions to help other groups to achieve their goals even when there were negative financial consequences. We are considered to be one the best run societies in the IEEE (At least through 2002!) and to maintain this level of quality we need you to get involved.
Get in touch with Ed Hoffman at the UCLA School of Medicine, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, B2-096 CHS, Los Angeles, CA 90095-6948; Phone: +1 310-825-8851; Fax: +1 310 825-4517; E-mail: EHoffman@mednet.ucla.edu.