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The Nuclear Science
Symposium, Medical Imaging Conference, Symposium on Nuclear Power
Systems, and the 14th International Workshop on Room Temperature
Semiconductor X- and Gamma-Ray Detectors was held for the first
time in Italy, in the prestigious city of Rome, on October 16-22,
2004. The conference under the “patronage” of Mr. Philippe
Busquin, Member of the European Commission and of the Italian Ministry
of University and Research was sponsored by the Nuclear and Plasma
Sciences Society of the IEEE, the University of Pisa, the Department
of Physics of the University of Pisa, the Istituto Nazionale di
Fisica Nucleare (INFN), CERN, the Associazione per lo Sviluppo Scientifico
e Tecnologico del Piemonte (ASP), the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), and the Municipality of Rome.
The Conference has been also supported by several companies listed
below in alphabetical order:
CDC S.p.A., CPS Innovations, CTI-Concorde LLC, GARR, General Electric
Global Research, Hamamatsu Photonics Italia s.r.l., ORTEC, Philips
Medical Systems, Programatica S.p.A., Siemens Medical Solutions.
The venue of the conference was the Ergife Palace Hotel, one of
the largest exhibition and congress areas in Europe. The Nuclear
Science Symposium has been an outstanding meeting for scientists
and engineers working in the fields of nuclear science, radiation
instrumentation, software and their applications. The Medical Imaging
Conference was once again an extremely productive scientific meeting
of international experts on the physics, engineering, and mathematical
aspects of nuclear imaging in medicine. The Room Temperature Semiconductor
Detectors workshop has joined in for the second year in a row, bringing
an additional forum of scientists and engineers working to develop
new solid-state radiation detectors and imaging arrays.
Two excellent sets of short courses were given at the start of the
NSS/MIC programs, covering a wide range of nuclear and medical technology.
One set was mostly related to NSS topics (SC1: Radiation Detection
and Measurement; SC2: Detectors for Astroparticle and Synchrotron
Radiation Experiments; SC3: Semiconductor Strip, Pixel and Voxel
Arrays; SC4: GEANT4).The other set was principally related to MIC
topics (SC5: Detectors for SPECT and PET; SC6: Biomedical Applications
of Particle Detectors; SC7: Optical Imaging; SC8: Statistical Methods
for Image Reconstruction).
We were fortunate to receive many grants from public institutions
and private companies toward the financial support of PhD students
and young post-docs. In addition, an INTAS grant and an FP6 grant
from the European Union have allowed support for scientists from
Russia and other Eastern Countries. A summary is presented in Table
1. Portions of some grants were specifically targeted for short
course fees. In total, more than 300 attendees enrolled in the short
courses.
Table 1- Grants and Educational Program
Sponsor Number of Grantees
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•INFN (Italy) 12
•IEEE [Short Courses] 2
•NIH (USA) 35
•NIH [Short Courses] (USA) 9
•(Medical Imaging) Companies 22
•INTAS (EU) 20
•FP6 (EU) 6
•ASP (Italy) 4
The Industrial Program was extremely successful. Almost 50 companies
from all around the world were present to demonstrate their latest
products in detectors, pulse processing instrumentation, imaging,
software, and other associated areas. The exhibition was complemented
by a series of seminars and technical presentations, which allowed
an in-depth exchange of information between attendees and exhibitors
on existing products, future developments and needs.
The entire Conference program extended over an eight-day period
(including the NRBC workshop), the time schedule for which is listed
in Table 2.
Table 2 - Time slots allocated to the various events of the Conference
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•Short Courses (3.5 days)
•Nuclear Science Symposium (4 days)
•Medical Imaging Conference (3.5 days)
•RTSD (3.5 days)
•SNPS (1 day)
•GW Workshop (1 day)
•SR Workshop (1 day)
•NRBC Workshop (1.5 days)
•Industrial Program (3 days)
We received an extraordinary number of abstract submissions: more
than 1650 in total. This number sets an all-time record for the
Conference. An outstanding scientific program was laid down by the
chairs of the various tracks with the help of more than 400 reviewers.
The total number of registered participants has also set an all-time
record with a final number of 1835. The participation by country
is shown in Figure 1. Europe had the largest attendance with a total
of 55.23%, followed by North America (31.23%) and then Asia (12.17%),
while the remaining countries reached 1.37%. The subdivision among
the various categories is represented in Table 3. If one considers
the registered accompanying persons and the additional attendees
at the NRBC workshop, the total number exceeds 2200.
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Table 3 – Attendee breakdown by various categories
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•IEEE Member 368
•IEEE Student 103
•Non-IEEE Member 789
•Non-IEEE Student 237
•One-day only 86
•Short Courses only 21
•Retired/Unemployed 16
•Committee Members 72
& Invited speakers & staff
•Exhibitors 143
----------------- Total 1835
The Grand Opening of the Conference (see Fig. 2) was held on Monday
18 October, chaired by the General Chair, Alberto Del Guerra, with
the participation of the president of INFN, Prof. Roberto Petronzio,
the Director of the Sezione INFN of Pisa, Prof. Rino Castaldi, the
vice-rector of Pisa University, Prof. Enrico Giaccherini, the Director
of the Physics Department of Pisa University, Prof. Paolo Rossi
and the official representative of CERN, Dr. Jean-Marie Le Goff.
Following the Grand Opening, two distinguished invited speakers
shed light on subjects of general interest: Prof. Pier Andrea Mandò
(Florence University) on “Nuclear Techniques for the Cultural
Heritage,” and Dr. Lothar Strüder, (Max Plank Institute,
Munich) on “Semiconductor Detectors - In Heaven and on Earth.”
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| Figure 2: The Opening Session, NSS/MIC Rome
2004 |
The opening session was followed by the traditional NSS Luncheon,
during which Prof. Ugo Amaldi (University of Milano Bicocca and
TERA Foundation) gave an excellent talk on “Advances in Radiotherapy:
from the Discovery of X-Rays to Hadron Therapy.” As for the
detailed NSS scientific program, the accepted papers were assigned
to 44 oral parallel and two plenary poster sessions. Moreover, two
dedicated joint NSS-MIC sessions presented contributions bridging
the fields of nuclear detectors and medical imaging.
The Medical Imaging Conference was officially opened on Wednesday,
20 October by two invited speakers: Professor Peter Morris from
the Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre of the University
of Nottingham (“Exploring the Mind with Functional Magnetic
Resonance”), and Professor Michael Unser of the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology in Lausanne (“Medical Image Interpolation
- the Quest for Higher Quality”). The MIC banquet on Thursday
evening featured a lecture by Professor Giovanni Ettore Gigante
from the University La Sapienza in Rome, who shared his experience
in using physical techniques for the analysis and restoration of
art works. As for MIC, the program included 10 oral sessions, and
4 non-overlapping poster sessions.
To foster poster sessions and young student participation, four
poster awards were given, two for NSS posters and two for MIC posters,
respectively.
The 14th International Workshop on Room-Temperature Semiconductor
X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Detectors scientific program was arranged in
12 oral sessions and 1 poster session. The Symposium on Nuclear
Power Systems was arranged in three oral sessions. This year, two
one-day Workshops on “Sensing, Control and Readout of Gravitational
Wave Detectors” and on “Synchrotron Radiation Detectors”
were also held on Thursday 21 and on Friday 22, respectively. Finally,
the “2004 Workshop on Nuclear Radiology of Breast Cancer”
was run on Friday 22 and Saturday 23 October, as a satellite workshop
to the conference. A Conference Record CD-ROM is due for release
early in 2005.
More than 200 Internet connections, both wired and wireless, were
set up so as to satisfy the needs of the attendees in four separate
locations, including the Exhibitor Area. The IEEE membership desk
located near the Registration Desk, was run very efficiently by
Vernon Price and attracted quite a number of new IEEE members.
Due to the extraordinary number of attendees all the social events
were also sold out:
- Welcome Cocktail at Ergife Palace Hotel (Monday,
October 18)
- Exhibitors Reception at Ergife Palace Hotel (Tuesday,
October 19)
- Conference Dinner at Villa Miani (Wednesday, October
20).
The Tour program (which was also sold out) included
Rome Seen from Its Belvederes, The Glories of Baroque Rome, Ostia
Antica, Imperial Rome, Tivoli and Stately Homes, and The Vatican
Museums,.
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| Figure 3: The Organizing Committee of the
Rome 2004 NSS/MIC Conference |
It was a tremendous job to organize and run such a huge conference.
As is always the case, there were some flaws and difficulties. Nevertheless,
I hope that the attendees were satisfied both with the scientific
content and the general organization. If this is the case the merit
goes entirely to the team of extraordinary friends and colleagues
(see Fig. 3) who shared with me the burden of organizing this conference.
Alberto Del Guerra can be reached at: Department of Physics,
University of Pisa, Via F. Buonarroti 2, 56127 Pisa, Italy; Phone:+39
050 2214942; Fax: +39 050 2214333 ; E-mail : alberto.delguerra@df.unipi.it
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