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SECRETARY’S REPORT Portland, OR, 25 October 2003 |
| The Annual Meeting of the NPSS AdCom was held on Saturday, 25 October 2003 at the Columbia River DoubleTree Hotel, Portland, OR. Guests included Scott Metzler, guest associate editor for TNS MIC papers, Uwe Bratzler, NSS Program Chair, and Tony Lavietes, 2004 NSS/MIC treasurer. Ed Lampo once again requests more attention to timely conference closings. Conference chairs and treasurers note! An abbreviated schedule: return loans within two weeks of the conference end date; close checking accounts within a month; in no more than three months, get report to Ed for final closing. Any outstanding bills can be paid directly from the NPSS account at IEEE. There remain 365.5K$ outstanding in loans to conferences. We will have a small net increase in income this year, but we can also expect a hit of about 500K$ from IEEE, since their budget has not achieved balance, as it was projected to this year. IEEE hired an external firm to look at the Institute operating procedures. There needs to be improvement in the sense of trust among the entities. Do IEEE’s problems date from 1999-2001? Ed suggested that the problems initiated with the stock market fall and IEEE’s fiscal model was based on a 14% return on investments. The stock market crash killed the IEEE reserves. The financial model has been changed to a “pay as you go” model. Next year IEEE will operate fully under that new model (and ed. note, maybe our reserves will bleed less or not at all). HQ has cut staff costs, which are about 18% of the operating budget. The stock market drop affected many businesses as well as individuals, not just IEEE and AdCom. Changes in business practices are widespread. Ed noted that usually we get a “bonus” on our transactions if the page counts are within 5% of projected. In 2003, journals that are under the page count by 10% are still eligible for the bonus. Ed Hoffman, our president, announced that the newly elected AdCom members are Steven Gold (Plasma Sciences), Allan Johnston (Radiation Effects), Jane Lehr (Pulsed Power); and Charles Neumeyer (Fusion). Ed thanked Richard Callis (Fusion); Ken Galloway (Radiation Effects); Osamu Ishihara (Plasma Sciences), and Edl Schamiloglu (Pulsed Power) for their contributions during their terms as elected AdCom members. Ed has appointed Dick Lanza of MIT as the Energy Policy liaison, and Ben Tsui of Johns Hopkins as the medical liaison. Ron Jaszczak will be the new Fellow Candidate Evaluations committee chair. The five-year society review had some minor criticisms, primarily related to the succession of editors for our journals and Newsletter. Many special-edition editors just serve for one issue, which is too little. Other editors hold their posts for too long and there is no clear training and succession mechanism. This will be addressed at the March 2004 retreat. TPS also needs strengthening as it doesn’t do well in the citations indices. Peter Clout, the chair of SPARC, noted that the review will go to TAB at the November directors’ meeting series. He recused himself on our review and stood, instead, for NPSS. Peter notes that it is not necessary to implement changes based on the SPARC report. These are recommendations, not requirements. Ed also reported that Steve Derenzo, chair for the 2003 Short Courses, feels that we should have a committee to handle educational issues including short courses, and this might also include ABET contacts. This will be discussed at our retreat. Peter Clout suggested that we look at opportunities to do more with our short courses such as providing web-based presentations. Hal Flescher, the Division IV director, explained IEEE’s infrastructure costs to show why there have been big “taxes” on societies in the past few years. He noted that IEEE has a much broader range of activities than other societies. Of IEEE’s 350,000 members, only 210,000 or about 60% belong to a society, so ~140,000 members have other reasons for being IEEE members. These include regional and educational activities, standards, and for US members, IEEE-USA. Societies, standards, and to a very small degree, sections, are money-making entities. There has been an evolution of funding receipt and distribution within IEEE. Initially, all earnings came to IEEE and they doled funds out to the societies. Then, in the 1980s, because the societies objected to this financial system, since earnings were from their intellectual property (IP), the distribution was changed and societies got the money earned from their efforts. Nonincome-producing entities were given funds to run their operations, but societies kept their income and interest on their money, and sections that earned money from things such as regional and sectional trade shows, and conferences also kept the income from such endeavors. Income earned on the IEEE General Fund reserves used to pay for infrastructure, but with the stock market crash, those reserves went to zero. This was aggravated by the fact that the Board of Directors chose to run deficit, rather than balanced, budgets. This did have some good value in the electronics publishing area (but, secy’s. note, wasted lots in branding efforts, centenary medals and costly locations for meetings). Money belonged to the societies, sections, and regions that earned it. IEEE expected, over the years, a substantial return on its general reserves. In Europe technical organizations can only spend earnings, never capital funds. Because of the board structure, with 32 members, 11 from TAB and 11 from RAB, and 10 others, RAB has a lot of power even though it is a largely non-earning entity. TAB or RAB can prevent changes to the constitution and bylaws. The IEEE income stream is about $250 million a year from dues (25-35 million); standards (3 million); conferences and publications (about 210 million); and society dues, regional conferences and events, Proceedings of the IEEE (the balance). In recent years, the greatest growth in membership has come from reduced fee members from regions with lower member dues, retirees and students. It is necessary to make membership a breakeven proposition, if not money making. For NPS, about 20-30% of expenses are for infrastructure. While societies are having a hard time accepting these costs and the need for funds to pay for infrastructure, these costs are driven by us – not by IEEE staff. They represent the services we need and use. IEEE also provides added benefit, simply by the use of the name and logo, advertising opportunities and so forth. They also offer services at market cost for conferences. The current issues before the IEEE Board include possible changes in the governance structure (Why 10 regions? Why 10 divisions? And so on). Parallel changes are needed in TAB, which is also unwieldy. Change doesn’t happen because there are too many volunteers with a vested interest in the status quo. An organizational reorganization retreat held a few years back has yet to produce results, although Hal thinks that changes are starting to happen slowly. There will also be changes in publications – which should be kept and which should be phased out, based on citations and other parameters such as electronic hits. There is also a problem that some societies, such as ours, are run in a very responsible, business-like way, but others are inept. There has been an increase in the number of societies on the TAB watch list. FINCOM is working with these societies to help them learn about budgets, G&A and so forth.
Technical Committee Reports Phil Heitzenroeder, Fusion Technology chair, reported that the 2003 21st SFE with Rich Callis as chair was an excellent meeting with an outstanding program organized by Jim Luxon. Over 200 abstracts were submitted, and 171 papers were given. There were visa problems for Chinese, Indian and Russian delegates who were ultimately unable to come. Only 3 attendees came from these regions, while 25 papers had been accepted. They had planned on an attendance of about 130. The increase led to added sessions and increased income above the fixed costs. Discussions are ongoing between the Fusion TC and the Plasma Sciences
and Applications ExCom for collocation with ICOPS in the future.
There are also discussions with ANS regarding collocation with TOFE,
which your secretary, former elected fusion AdCom member and fusion
TC chair strongly recommends against. Let’s keep this conference
in the NPSS community! Ron Keyser is still trying to reconstitute the NIDCom committee. Standards Association membership is needed to vote on the standards. AdCom has agreed to pay association dues for appropriate people. Ron Jaszczak noted that the NMIS committee met to discuss the 2007 NSS/MIC meeting. To date there is no site selection committee, but at an open meeting on October 24 there was an 8:6 vote to hold the meeting off-shore, with Hawaii the preferred site. Habib Zaidi of the Geneva University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland received the NMIS Young Investigator Award. Magnus Dahlbom of UCLA School of Medicine will replace Ron as NMIS TC chair in January. AdCom would never have been the same without Ron, but he remains as Fellows Evaluation chair. Bruce Brown reported that PAC01 and PAC03 are closing. PAC05, chaired by Norbert Holtkamp of SNS will be held in Knoxville, TN. His committees are in place and will meet in January 2004. There are concerns, not specified, about Knoxville, so extra care will be given to details. PAC07, in Albuquerque, will be held contiguously with PPPS, the joint ICOPS/Pulsed Power meeting. Stan Shriber will be the PAC07 general chair and Los Alamos will continue to provide assistance, even though Stan has recently moved to Michigan State. The committee continues to recruit senior members and to support/encourage Fellow applications. Patrick O’Shea noted that it is important for IEEE to maintain its relationship with PAC. Mark Rader reported for Tom Hussey, Plasma Sciences and Applications chair, who was unable to attend due to the PSAC ExCom meeting on Sunday. ExCom also met during the ICOPS meeting on Jeju Island, Korea. The conference was impacted by the SARS epidemic. Attendees from several parts of Asia were unable to attend, but many students skewed the normal percentage of student attendees and significantly reduced income. There were a significant number of papers on plasma manufacturing, which is a much more active field in Asia than in the US or Europe. The 2004 conference will be held in the Baltimore Inner Harbor in late June. Future conferences: 2005 – Monterey, CA; 2006 – Traverse City, MI; 2007 – PPPS – Albuquerque; 2008 – proposal for a meeting in Germany. A committee chaired by Christine Coverdale will review PSAC’s constitution and bylaws. The problems in Korea may not be relevant to other foreign meetings. The program quality was excellent, the Koreans were good hosts, and ExCom will look at the ‘forensics.’ While this was very successful as a technology conference, there are cultural issues to be explored. Will people who couldn’t go to Korea come back to this conference? Surveys have been distributed. In Baltimore they will ask in greater detail about the Korean experience. The Pulsed Power conference, held in Dallas this year, was also impacted by SARS and visa issues, according to Bob Reinovsky, Pulsed Power TC chair. The 2005 PP meeting will be in Monterey, contiguous with the ICOPS conference. The 2007 conference will be integrated with ICOPS as the PPPS in Albuquerque, and it is suggested that AdCom meet between the PPPS and PAC, on June 23. Pulsed Power continues conversations with the Beams and Megagauss conferences. They expect action from the Megagauss people for a combined meeting under PPST. The TC has three new members; they are working to formalize committee rotation. Dennis Brown reported for Ron Schrimpf, Radiation Effects TC chair, that the fall RESG meeting will be held in Florida to look at a meeting site for 2006, and at the spring meeting they will look at the proposed site for 2007, with the idea of getting meeting site selection onto a three-year, rather than two-year schedule, to increase site possibilities as the conference grows in size. The 2004 conference will be in Atlanta, with Dan Fleetwood of Vanderbilt as chair. They will add a session on Radiation Hardening by Design. Future Conferences: 2005 – Seattle, Fred Sexton, chair; 2006 – site TBD, Janet Bartlett, chair; 2007 – site TBD, Lloyd Massengill, chair. A special issue of TNS provided a 40-year overview of the field. Ron Keyser, RISC chair, reported that contracts for 2005 have been signed and the committee is in place. The Lyon conference is near closing and we will owe about 185K Euros representing added VAT (2/3rds), extra expenses (1/6th), and 1/6th to defaulted grants promised but not delivered by several European organizations. Questions were raised about financial issues related to the 2004 NSS/MIC in Rome. There is a US treasurer, the budget is being honed, there has been a lots of worrying, and VAT will be charged up front. The Committee is working to decrease meeting costs and to get good value from suppliers. Many safeguards have been put in place for Rome, including transferring funds to IEEE rapidly. VAT collected on registration fees can be passed on to vendors. VAT on conference registration is 20%, while on food it is 10%. There are three VAT statuses: 1) consumer; 2) for profit, charges VAT for services and products – sell – then pay the difference, 3) VAT exempt – in which case VAT can be claimed back, which is likely for foreign delegates to the Rome conference. IEEE should benefit from our international meeting experiences and we should benefit from theirs. There seems to be no clearing house for sharing these experiences and no hard information. The RISC Awards committee is being reconstructed. The new members have not yet been announced. Craig Woody will assume chairmanship of RISC in January; Dick Lanza becomes chairman-elect. Ralph James reported that the total registration for the 2003 NSS/MIC was 1374, a record, with 57% from the US, 7% from Germany, 6% each from Japan and Italy, 5% from France. Uwe Bratzler’s committee and advertising push deserve much credit. Many young people were enlisted to serve on committees. About $35k in sponsorship was obtained from government agencies. More sponsorships should be possible (secy’s note – that is true, but these are almost always allocated toward publication costs and student travel). The Room Temperature Semiconductor Devices workshop was co-hosted again; this represented some 150 – 200 attendees. The short courses were oversubscribed. The companion tours had 40 to 45 persons each, and the conference benefited from the great warm, dry weather. The river cruises provided excellent networking opportunities. With the much higher than budgeted attendance, the conference should do well financially because the fixed costs per person drop. There were over 1200 abstracts submitted, with 650 for NSS and about 150 for RTSD, which is a turnaround for NSS, where abstract numbers had been declining. Trending and demographics analyses will be beneficial to future committees. Erik Heijne, chair of the Transnational Committee, reported on four areas: 1) Conferences; 2) Visa issues; 3) Exclusion countries; and, 4) New members. 1) Conferences: there is a lot of RADECS activity; particle accelerators and plasmas are pretty well dissociated from IEEE, and something needs to be done about this. The sentiments aren’t neutral. There is European opposition to IEEE where there is an active particle accelerator community. The plasma community seems to be focused in Japan. The particle accelerator community may be hostile because they have a long history of wanting to control their own papers, etc. There is a strong request to consider housing and other possibilities for students in Puerto Rico in 2005 as hotels and travel costs will be high and the conference hotel is isolated. Erik mentioned the Australian proposal to host NSS/MIC. 2) Visas: Twenty to 30 participants for NSS/MIC did not receive visas in a timely way. They need a visa support team. Alberto del Guerra noted the need to be very cautious about issuing “letters of invitation.” This can imply, among other things, that expenses will be paid. Exceptional care is needed for requests from unusual countries, or from individuals with no history of attending the conference. There are fallacious requests from people trying to leave third-world countries... 3) Exclusion Countries: The Transnational Committee is eager to pursue resumption of basic rights of open exchange of scientific information. Hal noted that IEEE is working on this and it is getting solved. They have applied for a license to allow free exchange. Erik said that the committee discussed the possibility of special passports for scientists similar to those for diplomats, to ease the difficulties with visas. 4) Membership on the committee is increasing. The CIP committee is focused toward NSS/MIC, but this could be broadened to include other NPSS technical communities/conferences. Many issues require collaboration with US members.
Functional and Appointive Committees Overseas conferences are an experiment. There needs to be documentation on these experiences and a section on international conferences added to the NPSS supplement. How can CPC’s effectiveness be increased? An introductory letter with the documents and with the web information should be sent to every conference chair, once identified. Conference chairs should come to at least one AdCom meeting, although a session for chairs in conjunction with NSS/MIC would also be desirable. Rich Callis noted that he used the MOM and the NPSS supplement
and distributed them to committee members. They all found this useful Vernon Price, Memberships, Chapters, Distinguished Lecturers chair, reported 37% of the NSS/MIC attendees were IEEE members and 14% NPSS members. He signed up 28 new members during the meeting: 18 are transnational; 10 are from the US. IEEE membership is down 4% and NPSS membership is down 6%. Usually NPSS loses 100-150 and then numbers pick up again in January. Age distribution is an issue. More young people need to be attracted to the society. One way to attract young people may be through chapters. Anatoly Rosenfeld wants to start an Australian chapter and there is also a move toward starting a new Swedish chapter. Chapters have proven tough to sustain. The Distinguished Lecturer program was designed to give chapters some program development assistance. We have abandoned this program, but will perhaps start it up differently. Send Vernon your thoughts (v.price@ieee.org). There is a problem with ABET in that European and Asian institutions are not always recognized and are not on IEEE’s list of acceptable universities, so students have to mail in applications for IEEE membership rather than use on-line resources We need more student involvement and need to be proactive with IEEE HQ to get appropriate institutions recognized. We also need a link from the IEEE web form to permit NPSS membership application at the same time. Fellow Applications are due on May 15th!! These take time to prepare. A number of our fellows are willing to review applications. Contact me and I’ll distribute applications to available fellows. Hal Flescher addressed the question raised in July of what the 20% assessment on conferences really is. As a line item it is G&A (General and Administrative costs). It is generally agreed in FINCOM that this should be the averaged return for all our conferences. This pays for IEEE infrastructure costs – or the cost of doing business. This is to be added to the Conference Policy Committee NPSS supplement to the MOM. It is up to each conference whether or not to have a contingency line item, but it is highly recommended. The Loma Prieta earthquake, for example, required rescheduling NSS/MIC, with much expense involved. Contingency covers this sort of problem. Peter Winokur thanked the chairs of the technical committees who each fielded two excellent candidates for open AdCom position. Ed Hoffman reiterated that we had very good candidates for all positions. Paul Dressendorfer, our Editor–in-Chief, commented further on the 5-year review of our publications. It was clarified that there is a publications review committee that coordinates with SPARC. Bob Lorenz is in charge. They suggested term limits for editors and the EIC, as well as establishing a mechanism for nominating editors. We do need greater depth in trained editorial staff. This will be addressed in March, especially for conference editors. TPS ranks low in the citation impact index (a function of the number of times a journal is cited over a two-year period and the number of papers in the journal.) This has to be addressed, as does the long time to publication of manuscripts. It is competing with the Journal of Applied Physics, which covers a much broader subject area. TPS’s greatest strength is the special issues. We don’t promote our journals very well either on the web or at conferences. The society should pursue this and work for greater exposure. The TNS February, June and October issues are devoted to NMIS papers in an effort to get these into the medical indices to improve their impact factor. Eighty NSS papers were published in the August 2004 TNS, with a few additional NSS papers published in December. On average, 50% of manuscripts are accepted. The journal is now coming out on time, and should make its 2003 page budget projections. The big differential in cost between paper and electronic subscriptions has to do with production and mailing costs. At $60 a year, paper subscriptions to TMI are dropping, even though that is incredibly reasonable. If you have an electronic subscription, you have access to all the journal issues, but once your subscription ends, you have nothing. With paper you have that shelf full of transactions available in perpetuity. A yearly CD-ROM containing all issues of that year’s journal would resolve this and should not be too expensive to produce. The new Society brochure has been produced and about 6,000 mailed to NPSS members and to members of other societies with appropriate technical profiles. In 2004 there will be a one-sheet insert sent to appropriate TIP codes. The booth is available for North American conferences. Posters are available and they and the booth can be requested from Peter Clout’s office (clout@vista-control. com). Peter, Ken Dawson or I need to know well ahead how many extra copies of the Newsletter are needed for conferences. The Newsletter appears in March, July and September, so the order needs to go in at least 6 weeks prior to the publication date. These have been a good sales tool for NPSS. Dick Kouzes continues to look after our web site. Technical committees really need web masters to liaise with Dick and to keep their sites up to date. Why don’t YOU volunteer for your field of interest! Links to other sites where information on the field can be found really enhance the TC’s site value. It is important to do trial searches and do whatever is necessary to keep NPSS and our TC pages at the forefront of topical responses in searches. Tony Lavietes reminded us that web registration developed for NSS/MIC can be expanded to be used for any NPSS conference. The server in use is being upgraded. Tony discussed the issue of computer and AV equipment rentals. The cost for NSS/MIC this year was $53k, not including labor costs. Tony proposes purchasing 50 laptops and 20 LCD projectors. Issues include lifespan, which Tony projects at 5 years. Cost would be $50, 000 and the equipment could be used by any or all of our conferences. At $550/day rental cost per LCD projector, the purchase cost would be recouped in a year. Mikes and lavaliere mikes are also worth considering. Issues include cost of packing, shipping, and storage. Costs will come down. There seemed to be fair consensus about purchasing LCD projectors. Most people bring their own laptops these days. Tony will come to AdCom in March with a proposal and this issue will be discussed in depth.
Liaison Representatives Reports Jay Forster reported that NPSS ranks 11th in standards overall, and has the greatest number in Division IV. Our rank may soon go up since there are about 240 standards up for withdrawal. There are two new standards web site available to help with developing standards. One is on International Standards and the other relates to international electrical standards. Lou Costrell, Gary Johnson and Mike Unterweger are available to give advice about these. Remember that there are awards available to those who write standards. Jay is the recipient of the 2003 IEEE Steinmetz Award presented
on December 5th. Congratulations, Jay! More NPSS members should
be nominated for IEEE awards! The Sensors conference directly overlapped with NSS/MIC. Erik Heijne, our liaison, is working to get conferences and meetings scheduled so that they don’t conflict with our conferences and AdCom meetings. The 2003 conference had about 800 participants, up from about 700 in 2002. The Sensors Journal has a conference issue and three others of contributed papers. Erik was asked to be guest editor on an ion sensors for homeland security special issue. The focus is detection of nuclear materials. Hal Flescher reported that the 2003 RADECS conference was in the Netherlands, sponsored and run by ESSA. RADECS is looking into ways to raise funds. The 2004 workshop is hosted by Alcatel Spain; dates and site were to be decided. NSREC and RADECS have some overlap, but RADECS is principally European. They do, however, publish through NPSS. Ken Dawson has been our Newsletter editor for the past 9 years.
He feels that the Newsletter needs a fresh look, and that it should
provide full coverage of our society activities – including
updates on what is happening in each area of interest!. Because
NPSS covers so many fields, we need to represent them all. Some,
such as Radiation Effects, do a great job in providing information.
Others are heard from only with urging. Some are just not heard
from at all. Ken has encouraged technical update articles. These
do not materialize too often. Some committees have not submitted
a report to the Newsletter in years. Most information appears only
after much urging. There are rarely reports from the TCs on Awards.
Everything going on in the society should be covered in the Newsletter! Simply getting information for the yearbook is difficult. Lists
of committee members do not get submitted in a timely way. How much
effort does that take, one must ask, as several people did. Material
on the web is often out-of-date. The web also has no deadlines for
renewing or posting new material. The Directory is a lot of work,
and it is bad when one’s colleagues are unresponsive. The
last yearbook was published in 2002! Support was requested for the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements: Randy Brill has been involved with this organization since 1972. The NCRP has been in existence since 1928. There is also an international sister organization. They are involved with dosimetry, health effects and so on to develop radiation guidelines, rather than standards. IEEE is listed as a supporting organization, but there is actually no support given, and the IEEE people named do not attend meetings. Ed Hoffman queried a colleague about NSRP and got an extremely negative report. Glenn Knoll serves on an NCRP committee and says they overlap with our interests. We should be careful in how we deal with them, and pay attention to this, but encourages support. Randy is involved with them through COMAR - rf fields, cell phones and so on. NCRP depended on both the stock market and contracts from various organizations to fund projects so are having financial problems. They used to produce 5 to 10 publications a year. They have been reducing staff and have been unable to meet a timely publications schedule. Their materials are used by the medical and accelerator communities, among others. Fast neutron dosimetry and measurements guidelines, for example, are used almost as standards. They seek field leaders to provide input to the guidelines. Once an area of need is identified, they seek funding. Since each publication costs in the range of $100k, and since they are a US organization only, it is unlikely we will give support further consideration. For many years there were no funds to attend AdCom meetings, but in the last few years limited funds were established to permit attendance at least one AdCom meeting a year. AdCom attendance for TC chairs and elected members is assumed to be required, but our bylaws state that anyone missing three sequential meetings (NOT three meetings in a year) will be dismissed. It has been suggested that this be tightened to two meetings, requiring a bylaws change. The goal is to have members attend meetings and participate in managing NPSS business well. ICOPS provides some travel support for PSAC representatives in its budget. We provide limited funds to help individuals without institutional support. This may well be discussed further at the retreat. A proposal to sponsor “Modern Microwave and Millimeter Wave Power Electronics” to be published by the IEEE Press/John Wiley was presented by Edl Schamiloglu on behalf of the editors. The book is a summary of work funded by the AFOSR and most of the editors are active in NPSS. Edl Schamiloglu moved and Bob Reinovsky seconded a motion that, contingent on ExCom’s approval, the NPSS endorse the publication of “Modern Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Power Electronics,” R. Barker, N. Luhman, Jr., J.Booska, G. Nusinovich, editors. The motion carried. Subsequent to the AdCom meeting it was reported to the NPSS Secretary that the PSAC ExCom endorsed the book and IEEE has been duly notified.
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