| With
the New Year come changes at NPSS. We welcome our newly elected
AdCom members whose brief biographies can be found in this issue.
We also welcome a couple of Technical Committee Chairs: Edl Schamilaglu
and Charles Watson. Unfortunately, we also say “au revoir”
to an equal number of what are now old friends. I heartily thank
Steven Gold, Allan Johnston, Charles Neumeyer, Gerry Cooperstein
and Tom Llewellyn for their exceptional service to our community.
You may have noticed that the number of incoming is larger than
the number of outgoing by the number one. This is because my term
as an elected AdCom member has now expired.
I am reminded of how little I knew about the structure and organization
of NPSS when I went to my first AdCom meeting in 2004. AdCom is
comprised of Officers, elected AdCom members, Technical Committee
Chairs and Functional and Appointive Committee Chairs. There are
both voting and nonvoting members of AdCom.
NPSS represents eight technical communities, referred to as Technical
Committees (TCs), of which you, as a member, are part of at least
one. Each TC is represented by its Chair and its elected members.
Only elected members are eligible to run for President. The distribution
of elected members is based on the size of the technical community
and each TC organizes at least one conference. The Technical Committee
reports, as well as contact information for the Chairs who have
submitted reports, can be found in this issue. A full list appears
on the back cover.
To help run the Society, the NPSS has officers, some of whom are
elected by AdCom such as the President, Vice-President and Past
President. The duties of the President are to preside over AdCom
as well as represent the Society to the IEEE Technical Activities
Board (TAB). TAB is comprised of 39 different societies and its
own governing board. This year’s NPSS Vice President (and
next year’s President!) is Craig Woody. The Past President
is, of course, Bill Moses. The appointive Officer positions are
Secretary and Treasurer. NPSS is fortunate to have extraordinarily
capable and long-serving officers in Albe Larsen, Ed Lampo and Tony
Lavieties, who among other duties, serves as NPSS Conferences Treasurer.
It is also noteworthy that of the six NPSS Officers, five Technical
Committees are represented.
The real “business” of NPSS is handled by the Functional
and Appointive Committees. Two of these are “ex-officio”
and filled by the two most recent Past Presidents. Others are appointed
committees of various sizes to meet specific needs such as Finance,
Fellow Evaluation, Conference Policy, Communications, Nominations
and Standards. Other Functional Committees are Membership and the
newly formed Committee on Chapters, Local Activities and Distinguished
Lecturers. Many of these committees also act as Liaisons to the
IEEE TAB counterpart committees or coordinate numerous related activities.
For instance, the Publications Committee Chair represents each of
our publications to TAB including the fully sponsored publications
Transactions on Nuclear Science, Transactions on Plasma Science
and the Newsletter, as well as the publications we co-sponsor with
other IEEE Societies, the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging and
the IEEE Sensor Journal.
The other type of appointed position is “liaison” which
represents NPSS to various entities, not all of which are related
to IEEE, but in which we have a stake. An example is our relationship
with the Coalition on Plasma Sciences (www.plasmacoalition.org),
an independent organization whose mission is to increase awareness
and understanding of the plasma sciences and their many applications
and benefits for society. Another example is the RADECS conference,
a radiation effects conference traditionally held in Europe, with
which NPSS has no formal relationship, but has formed an alliance
of shared interest. Not all of our liaison positions encompass technical
interests. For instance, we have very active liaisons to the IEEE
USA R&D Policy Committee as well as to the Social Implications
of Technology Society, neither of which are specific to NPSS, but
which cut across all areas of IEEE activity.
Hopefully, the last bit of mystique regarding NPSS is the variety
of our technical committees. When I first came to AdCom, I couldn’t
fathom what they had in common and made some inquiries. Kris Kristiansen,
from Texas Tech University, told me how some researchers in the
plasma sciences field were interested in forming a group within
the IEEE and the Nuclear Sciences Group suggested they join together
since both groups were relatively small and had so much in common.
That same year, 1972, the combined groups became the IEEE Nuclear
and Plasma Sciences Society. With my current vantage point, I see
not only all that we have in common, but that the interests of our
technical committees truly form a spectrum and that spectrum is
reflected throughout the NPSS leadership.
Many of these positions are filled by Past Presidents of NPSS, a
fact that continues to truly impress me. Ron Jaszczak is an elected
AdCom representative from Medical Imaging and one of our representatives
to the Transactions on Medical Imaging editorial board. Peter Winokur
chairs the Awards Committee and the Fellow Evaluation Committee.
Bill Moses is the Nominations Chair and Peter Clout works tirelessly
as the on the Communications Committee. Ray Larsen is in charge
of Meetings, Policies and Procedures, liaison to the Social Implications
of Society and has just accepted another role as to represent NPSS
in the Humanitarian Technology Challenge, a newly initiated collaboration
between IEEE and the United Nations. Another Past President, Hal
Flescher, is the 2008 IEEE Vice-President Elect for Technical Activities,
as well as our Finance Committee Chair.
I am very lucky to have such a cadre of talented, dedicated (and
good-looking!) volunteers to run NPSS. It must be hard to get away
though. I am “on the hook” for another 7 years. Even
our departing elected AdCom members are not going far: Steve Gold
has accepted the position of Chair of the Chapter and Distinguished
Lecturer Program, Allan Johnston will remain as the NPSS liaison
to the IEEE Women in Engineering Affinity Group and Charles Neumeyer
will continue as Liaison the IEEE USA Energy Policy Committee and
will be the General Chairman of the 2011 Symposium on Fusion Engineering.
Jane Lehr, IEEE NPSS President, can be reached at Sandia National
Laboratories, MS1152, PO Box 5800, Albuquerque, NM 87185-1193; Phone:
+1 505 844 8554; E-mail: jmlehr@sandia.gov.
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