Secretary's Report

The IEEE NPSS Administrative Committee held its Annual Meeting on November 9, 2002 at the Sheraton Waterside, Norfolk, VA just before the opening of the NSS/MIC meeting. Traditionally, this meeting is held at the end of NSS/MIC, but the TAB and the Board of Directors’ meeting series interfered.
Ed Lampo, our treasurer, emphasized the importance of closing conferences on time. At the moment four conferences are delinquent and we have been paying fines for the late closings. While the Society is solvent, our reserves continue to dwindle due to IEEE taxes. We can expect a hit of ~$250k by IEEE this year. At times it is hard to remember, to quote Pogo, that “us is them.” On an editorial note, it is very frustrating to see NPSS’s careful fiscal prudence paying for the butterflies.
Peter Winokur, seemingly cheerfully chairing his last meeting as president, thanked many people graciously for their service. Four people deserve particular mention: Ed Lampo, our stalwart treasurer; Gary Alley, who has managed the NSS/MIC short courses for many years now and whose absence will definitely be visible; Vernon Price for his continuing outstanding job on membership and chapter development; and Peter Clout for his and the Communications Committee work in developing our handsome brochure and portable exhibition, and working to migrate and update our web site. Dick Kouzes and Ken Connor continue to keep it up to date.
Thanks were also given to retiring AdCom members Alan Todd and Chuck Britton. Peter’s own term and that of Ed Hoffman end at the end of the year, but they continue as Past-President and President respectively.

Technical Committee Reports
CANPS, under Christian Boulin, continues in its excellent preparation for the 2003 Real Time Conference to be held in Montreal in May under the chairmanship of Jean-Pierre Martin, with assistance from a broadly based international committee, and especially CEA-Saclay who host the web and prepared and mailed the posters. There will be two short courses offered, both of which look exciting. The University of Montreal is handling conference logistics and IEEE is managing finances and registration Check out their web site!
Christian is working, too, to expand the Technical Committee membership. Perhaps some of the ICALEPCS leadership will be asked to participate. Interest continues in holding discussions with ICALEPCS about some kind of common future. He is also working hard to ensure that the RT award is given in 2003. It was not presented in 2001.
The 2001 RT Conference, whose books were managed by the University of Valencia, has not closed. Ed Lampo and Christian are looking for ways to spur them to complete this task.
Fusion Technology chairman, Phil Heitzenroeder, reported that at the last gasp LLNL had to relinquish chairmanship of the 2003 SFE. Rich Callis and the generous people at General Atomics have agreed to host the conference in September/October 2003. Hotel options are being evaluated and a conference team being put in place. Rich will once again be the general chairman. Phil noted that the 19th SFE had closed well in the black, and that the books were in audit.
The SFE has dropped in attendance from a high of 900 in 1979 to about 140 in 2002. The community is spread very thin, the budget situation is poor, and it is hard to find people who can take on the conference organization. Phil has started to look at collocation or merger options with other conferences. A member of the standing committee will, in fact, attend the PSAC ExCom meeting to discuss future options with ICOPS.
Mike Unterweger reported for NIDCom that the germanium X-ray detector standard has been issued. The wide-band gap detector standard has been withdrawn from IEEE and published by ANSI. While NIDCom acted without appropriate AdCom approval, the level of frustration with IEEE was clearly evident. AdCom decided to support Standards Society membership for the appropriate NIDCom members so that being allowed to vote on one’s own standards is no longer an issue. The RISC and NIDCom chairs will decide jointly who is eligible for membership in the Standards Association. Further discussion of Standards and Standards Association membership will occur at the March 1 AdCom meeting.
We were delighted to hear the announcement by Ron Jaszczak, chair of the NMIS Committee, that Ed Hoffman is the recipient of the 2002 Medical Imaging Award. Grant Gullberg is the newly elected member of AdCom from this community. The NMIS constitution and bylaws are undergoing their 5-year review, a process led by Bill Moses. The NSMIC will review the proposed changes and they will be presented to AdCom in time for a vote at the March meeting. Max Vergiever will take over from Mike Vannier as the editor in chief of Transactions on Medical Imaging. There will be a TMI Board meeting in Rosemont, Illinois before the Radiology Society meeting. The 2005 site selection committee for NSS/MIC has selected San Juan, PR as their venue. Tom Lewellen will be the general chair with Simon Cherry as MIC chair and Dick Lanza as NSS chair.
Anatoly Rosenfeld has approached both NMIS and RISC with a proposal for a Melbourne, Australia meeting some time in the future. Perhaps there will be further word later in the year.
Joel Karp reported that the 2002 NSS/MIC, which was just getting underway, had 290 people registered for the short courses and 720 preregistered for the conferences. The exhibit area of over 50 booths was sold out and there were some generous corporate gifts that helped pay for the attractive padfolios distributed to attendees.
Bruce Brown reported on the activities of the Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Committee. In particular, Bruce stressed the effort we need to make to reclaim this community more positively for NPSS. This is our largest and often most profitable conference, and is THE conference for particle accelerators. Let’s not abandon it, but we do need to assess the value of our input to PAC, which has been different from other NPSS conferences. Your secretary thinks that we are essentially making up for a good many years of neglect and our own lack of participation that must be reversed by the engineering community. You can’t build those big machines without the engineers after all!
Future PAC conferences have been scheduled for Knoxville, TN in 2005 with Norbert Holtkamp of SNS as chair and 2007 in Albuquerque with Stan Schriber of LANL as chair. Look for a PAST web site, which should be coming soon. The 2003 conference web site has long been active.
Since Bob Parker was on his way to the PSAC Executive Committee meeting, Edl Schamiloglu reported for him. The 2003 ICOPS is now settled on Jeju Island, Korea and the committee is in place and moving forward with its plans. The venue is a good one, at least from the brochures, but much less expensive than downtown Seoul.
Plans for 2004 are moving ahead and there will be a new short course on the application of plasmas and pulsed fields to biological materials. Stay tuned for more.
In 2007 the ICOPS and Pulsed Power conferences will once more join, this time under the chairmanship of Edl Schamiloglu, and will meet as PPPS in Albuquerque in the week contiguous to the PAC07 meeting. It is hoped that this contiguity will help to expand the exhibits at both meetings, as well as bring some double attendance. Bob Reinovsky, chair of the Pulsed Power TC, noted that the 2007 PPPS would be more streamlined with a simplified registration fee structure. The 2003 Pulsed Power conference, chaired by Mike Giesselmann of Texas Tech, is receiving abstracts now. The 2005 meeting will be collocated with ICOPS, but will not be a joint meeting.
Dennis Brown reported on Radiation Effects for Dale Platteter. The 2002 conference in Phoenix had a 12% increase in attendance over 2001 as well as a 10% increase in international attendance. Sixty percent of attendees were IEEE members. Good going! The 2003 conference will be in Monterey. Check out their web site.
Ron Keyser reported on RISC activities. The 2003 NSS/MIC will be held in Portland, Oregon at the Hayden Island resort, with Ralph James as general chair. The 13th International Conference on Room Temperature Semiconductors is expected to collocate with this meeting. Leadership is in place and conference plans are moving along. However, Gary Alley has resigned as Short Course chair. Gary has given NSS/MIC outstanding service over many years; he will be missed AND hard to replace. An update on the 2000 NSS/MIC held in Lyon indicate that changes in tax regulations caused part of the problem in closing this conference. Ed Lampo and Hal Flescher are working closely with the organization for the 2004 conference in Rome to try to circumvent similar problems.
Erik Heijne reported that he is working toward a Transnational Committee membership of 20 that will represent all geographic areas as well as all NPSS disciplines. The committee’s goal is to encourage membership growth and development of new chapters. Several issues brought to the committee need attention, including the long lead times necessary to get visas, and the need for the hosts in the US to get letters of invitation out early. Of course, potential attendees could also help by making their expected attendance known early and requesting an invitation! The committee is concerned that paper copies of proceedings are no longer being offered in many cases. It was, however, pointed out that these are available from IEEE to IEEE members at nominal cost. Another issue is the expense of electronic access to journals and the myriad problems with firewalls in accessing them, if one can afford the charges. This committee regards itself principally as a channel to AdCom. It also expects that it will disband once AdCom has technical area representatives who also represent the geographic areas in a more balanced way.

Functional Committees and Liaisons
Ron Jaszczak, chair of the Awards committee announced that Peter Clout was the winner of the Shea Award. Having worked with Peter in various capacities through my entire tenure with NPSS, your secretary can vouch that this was a well-deserved award. Congratulations, Peter! The Merit and Early Achievement award winners are also selected by the Awards Committee, and the Phelps grants are managed by them, although these are awarded by the individual conferences that offer short courses, with the amount available based on the number of short course attendees. Note: May 15 is the deadline for nominations for the 2003 awards. Contact Igor Alexeff (i.alexeff@ ieee.org) and also check the NPSS web site for nomination forms. It is also time to start thinking about Fellow candidates. Contact Osamu Ishihara at oishihara@ynu.ac.jp for further information.
Vernon Price reported that a new chapter, with considerable support from people at Brookhaven National Lab, has been formed on Long Island. The San Diego chapter has recently become more active as well. In addition, we have retained more members than in years past, so the society is growing.
As usual, our stalwart Newsletter editor requests that conference chairs send him articles announcing their conferences well ahead of time, and a follow-on article after the conference is over is also welcome. Let us all know how things went – what was exciting and new. And TC chairs, you, too, should be sending updates on activities in your field at least once a year, and if there’s some really hot news, there’s always room to add a note. Contact Ken at k.dawson@ieee.org or kend@triumf.ca for Newsletter deadlines. Also note that Ken has been awarded the IEEE’s Emberson Award for outstanding service. See the article about Ken elsewhere in this Newsletter. Congratulations!
Our TPS and TNS editors both talked about publication delays, which seem to be getting worse, rather than improving. There are also problems with the quality of images in the electronically posted journals, and this is critical for NMIS papers. In general there is very little follow-up by IEEE with editors and authors, and the Publications Department does not seem to use good business practices and has very tight staffing, which exacerbates an already bad situation. However, there is also a problem with authors and editors being late and not adhering to the stated timelines, which then bumps the publication to the back of the queue. Both editors are now using Manuscript Central to process papers.
Look forward to a new NPSS brochure in 2003. Peter Clout and the Communications Committee are working on it. We also expect to see our booth at most NPSS conferences, so come by and say hello. The Committee is also working on a PAC-specific flyer. Let’s work to make NPSS more visible at PAC. This was our conference for 30 years before the physicists horned in! It is really time for a better balance and our accelerator engineers need to make an effort to participate more fully in the planning and organization. Come on, folks; if this is your area, take part!
Jay Forster noted that there was very little PACE activity in 2002. There will, however, be a PACE workshop this March. NPSS is very active in providing short courses, which is part of PACE oversight.
Peter Winokur reported that the president finally (after our meeting) signed a bill authorizing the doubling of NSF’s budget over time, but other agencies supporting the physical sciences (DOE being the largest) have seen little in the way of funding increases, and so far the FY2003 budgets have not been passed, leaving many of us in murky waters.
Ron Jaszczak reported that the TAB Awards and Recognition Committee has made some minor word changes to their information, but nothing that impacts us. We could work to establish a Technical Field Award (TFA) since none of the existing TFAs embrace the areas covered by NPSS. The TFAs need to be fairly broad and are often sponsored by more than one society or by corporations.
Our liaison to the Coalition for Plasma Science, Gerry Rogoff, announced that a proposal is in the works to get a history of the plasma sciences into the IEEE virtual museum. CPS will also resume its luncheons with congressmen and congressional staffers.
Erik Heijne, our liaison to the Sensors Council, noted that the Sensors Journal has about 1200 subscribers and the first Sensors conference, held in Florida in June, had about 450 papers given, out of 650 abstracts submitted. The next conference, to be held in Toronto in October, is in direct conflict with NSS/MIC. Erik was unable to attend the June meeting and has been unsuccessful in getting feedback from the council despite a number of attempts.
Hal Flescher noted that Philippe Calvel of Alcatel is the new president of RADECS and that the first major RADECS conference to be held outside France will occur this year near Amsterdam.

Actions Taken by AdCom
A motion was presented that the funding for NPSS recruiting be paid for by AdCom rather than by the conferences. This will be investigated further, but it is up to each conference chair and technical committee to decide whether they want to support this effort.
It was clarified that AdCom does pay for its activities held in conjunction with a conference, but also gives the conference extra room nights and meal functions to help meet its contractual obligations. This is a win-win situation since AdCom does not need to establish a separate master account with a hotel, and the conference gets credit for what AdCom uses.
It was moved, seconded and passed that IEEE NPSS be in technical cooperation with ICALEPCS, which we have supported since its inception. Several NPSS members are on the management committee and are involved with the program.
It has been suggested that NIDCom become a functional committee. A proposal on how to accomplish this will be presented at the March meeting. If NIDCom does become a functional committee, the size of AdCom or the distribution of seats will be reevaluated. AdCom may decrease in size or seats may be redistributed based on a new field of interest survey of the NPSS membership.
Ed Hoffman was elected President of NPSS by acclamation. Mark Rader and Bill Moses stood for the office of Vice President/President elect. We congratulate Bill Moses on his election and thank Mark for his willingness to serve.
It was moved, seconded and passed that a new brochure be developed and printed. A cap of $12,000 was set for the cost.
It was moved, seconded and passed that a new flyer focusing on PAC be developed that would serve for PAC2003 and PAC2005. A cap of $3000 was set for production and distribution costs.
It was moved, seconded and passed unanimously that the wording of both the Merit and Shea award statements be changed to allow each award to be presented at the conference of the recipient’s choice.
Ed Hoffman presented Peter Winokur with a past president’s pin and Peter was given a round of applause and warm thanks for his service as president.
The next meeting of AdCom will be held on Saturday, March 1, 2003 at the Hyatt Union Station, St. Louis, MO.
Albe Larsen, the NPSS secretary, can be reached at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, P.O. Box 4939, Stanford, CA 94039; Phone: +1 650 926-2748; Fax: +1 650 926-5124; E-mail: amlarsen@slac.stanford.ca.