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2008 Nuclear Science Symposium, the Medical Imaging Conference,
and the Room Temperature Semiconductor Detector Workshop were held
successfully during 19-25 October, 2008 at the Maritim Hotel and
International Congress Center, Dresden, Germany. Uwe Bratzler (CERN
& TMU) was General Chair and Roger Gearhart was his Deputy.
As with prior years, the NSS/MIC/RTSD meeting was complimented by
ten Short Courses. In addition, we had ten Workshops during the
conference week in Dresden and two satellite Workshops outside Dresden
just before and after the conference week. “Detector Development
for Future Particle Physics and Photon Science Experiment”
was held at DESY, Hamburg from 16-17 October and “Hybrid Imaging
with MR-PET” at the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZD), Jülich
from 27-28 October.
Over 2,000 abstracts from 57 countries were submitted to the conference
with over 1,000 accepted by NSS, 750 by MIC, and 200 by RTSD. The
goal of the conference was to promote participation from Eastern
Europe and that goal was well met with over 100 abstracts coming
from these countries. Over 2,700 scientists and engineers attended
the conference, also setting a record for being the largest NSS/MIC/RTSD
conference ever. Many favorable comments were offered on the technical
program, the social events and on the location in Dresden. The large
number of submissions meant some deserving papers could not be accepted.
Even with this most difficult complication, the Program Committee
put together an exceptional conference covering a broad area of
interests to the community.
The Nuclear Science Symposium (NSS) started Monday morning and ended
on Friday with 510 oral presentations in 68 five-concurrent parallel
sessions and 450 poster presentations in 2 poster sessions. The
NSS program chairs, Rolf Heuer (DESY) and Maxim Titov (CEA-SACLAY)
are to be congratulated on overseeing this large program and minimizing
the degree of subject overlap. The NSS also featured both opening
and closing Plenary Sessions. Three Plenary speakers opened the
program. First, Carlos Alejaldre (ITER- Cadarache) presented The
Status of the ITER Design, then Peter Braun-Munzinger (Darmstadt,
GSI, and EMMI) spoke about the Physics Prospects with the FAIR Facility
at GSI, and the last plenary speaker, Heinz Graafsma (HPAD and XFEL)
presented Recent Highlights from the XFEL Project and Summary of
the DESY Workshop. For the closing session two speakers were invited.
First, J.J. Engelen (CERN) presented his thoughts about Recent Highlights
from the Large Hadron Collider Project, then Sakue Yamada (University
of Tokyo, KEK, and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies
in Japan) talked about Recent Highlights from ILC Project.
The 16th International Workshop on Room-Temperature Semiconductor
X- and Gamma- Ray Detectors also started on Monday with 103 oral
presentations in 16 plenary sessions and over 90 poster presentations.
Chaired admirably by Michael Fiederle (Freiburger Material-forschungszentrum)
and Ralph James (BNL), this workshop, known as the RTSD, is held
in conjunction with the NSS and MIC every other year, providing
an environment for new and fruitful associations between the respective
attendees.
The Medical Imaging Conference (MIC) began on Wednesday 22 October
and ended on Saturday 25 October, with 108 oral presentations in
plenary sessions and 510 poster presentations in 2 poster sessions.
Wolfgang Enghardt (OncoRay) and Sibylle Ziegler (Technische Universität
München) put together an incredible program. On Wednesday,
MIC started with two plenary speakers. First, Michael Baumann (Technische
Universität Dresden) presented Trends in Radiation Oncology:
Integrating High Precision Treatment with Modern Biology, then Rodney
J. Hicks (Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre) talked about PET as a Platform
Technology in Translational Research. Eike Rietzel (Siemens Healthcare)
gave a talk on Thursday 23 October about Image Guided Precision
Radiotherapy: the Technology. The popular MIC Refresher Courses
were continued this year, starting before the morning session began
and were well attended.
For the first time in conference history, highly successful contributions
bridging the fields of nuclear science detection, medical imaging
and solid-state radiation detectors were presented in one dedicated
NSS/MIC/RTSD joint session and two NSS-MIC joint sessions. During
the NSS/MIC/RTSD Joint Session, David W. Townsend (University of
Tennessee) presented Lost in Translation – From Basic Science
to Clinical Reality.
Posters were of exceptionally high quality and one could find attendees
reading posters at just about any time of the day. Other programs
included many workshops and many more short courses, some of which
were two-day events. These short courses, organized by Claus Grupen
(Universität Siegen) and Iréne Buvat (Imaging and Modeling
in Neurobiology and Cancerology Lab), provide an essential opportunity
for the expert and newcomer alike to be taught by practicing experts.
In all, there were 444 short-course attendees.
There were many workshops in the conference center during the conference
week excluding the two Satellite Workshops at DESY and Forschungszentrum
Jülich, but also two workshops in the nearby art’otel.
The Fourth International Workshop on the Molecular Radiology of
Breast Cancer (MRBC) Workshop was held over two days, starting on
Monday 20 October and X-ray Micro Imaging of Devices, Materials
and Organisms was held over three days including a small exhibition
started on Wednesday 22 October. All workshops were very well organized
and Norbert Wermes (Physikalisches Institut Universität Bonn)
with his Co-chair Wim de Boer (Institut für Experimentelle
Kernphysik Universität Karlsruhe) did a great job to arrange
an attractive Workshop program.
On Sunday 19 October, we had a nice “candlelight” Welcome
Reception with a fantastic view of the illuminated Old Town Region.
NSS MIC and RTSD had their respective banquets. The NSS luncheon
was held at noon on Monday 20 October. During this function, Sara
Pozzi, University of Michigan, presented the Radiation Instrumentation
Early Career Award to Grzegorz Deptuch (FermiLab) (see photo). The
luncheon speaker, Astronaut Christer Fuglesang (KTH) gave a talk
on A Journey to Space with Radiation and the Future in Mind. The
RTSD Award Committee elected Prof. Arnold Burger (Fisk University)
as the recipient of the 2008 RTSD Scientist Award. The Edward J.
Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award was presented to Christopher
J. Thompson (McGill University) and the Young Investigator Medical
Imaging Science Award was presented to Katsuyuki Taguchi, (Johns
Hopkins University), (see Society Awards below) on Wednesday 22
October, shortly before the Conference Reception. The RTSD held
its lunch at Thursday noon at the Westin hotel. During the MIC dinner,
on Friday evening in the Salons of the Westin Bellevue, Uwe Ahrendt
(NOMOS Glashütte/SA Roland Schwertner KG) gave a presentation
on the Fine Watchmaking in Glashütte, Saxony.
 |
| Ken Taguchi and Chris Thompson receive their
awards at the 2009 MIC banquet accompanied by Forschungszentrum
Dresden-Rossendorf and IEEE NPSS colleagues. |
The largest event was the Conference Reception, held on the evening
of Wednesday 22 October, using the whole conference center; well
over 2400 attendees enjoyed the ambiance. The highlight of the Conference
Reception was the nice outside fireworks with the burning letters
“IEEE 2008” on the opposite bank of the Elbe River.
Considerable effort was made in seeking financial support for the
meeting, to augment income from registration fees. To this end,
the conference committee was able to raise close to E80k, a result
of the generous donations from institutions and commercial companies;
most of this was used to support financially well over 250 students
and postdoctoral scientists. Klaus Mueller, Merry Keyser and Karla
Funke did an outstanding job in distributing the money to successful
applicants. Our sincere appreciation to these contributors was acknowledged
via the website and a poster showing the respective logos of the
institutions and companies.
The three-day Industrial Program, chaired by Friedrich Wulf (Hahn-Meitner-Institut
Berlin) featured 63 companies from around the world, enabling the
exhibitors to meet the attendees and to demonstrate their products.
Attendees who entered the Exhibition area had a nice overview of
all the booths. The customer interactions were apparently many and
of high quality and the Exhibitors were pleased. The Exhibitor Technical
Sessions were well attended with “standing room only”
at some sessions. It is encouraging that 15 exhibitors have already
contracted for next year’s meeting in Orlando. On Tuesday
21 October, a very nice Exhibitor Reception was held in the Exhibit
hall and in the foyer in front in the conference center.
The use of computer facilities at the NSS/MIC/RTSD meeting has steadily
increased over the years; Joel Surget, our Computer- support Chair
did a great job with the help of many volunteers to manage this
critical function. People nowadays are quite concerned that they
have steady access to the outside world. Taking full advantage of
the number of attendees who bring laptop computers, Smartphones
or Blackberry with WiFi capability, in 2008 the conference staff
covered the main conference center with a wireless network –
including the entire commercial exhibit area and several seating
areas especially on the terrace level, as well as our well-known
Internet Café with a limited number of computers for those
who couldn’t bring their own. The efforts of our NSS/MIC/RTSD
technical team were extraordinarily successful. For this conference,
our team brought, installed, and operated the entire wireless network
along with help from the staff of the Conference Center.
The pleasant vicinity of the venue also led us to put in extra effort
to provide an unusual and exciting Companion Program brought together
by the Companion Program Chair Merry Keyser and her team of excellent
volunteers. The tours were very well attended. We were fortunate
that the tour company was very flexible and a large number of participants
were able to register for tours on-site. A total of more than 460
attendees and family members took part in the companion program.
One special tour was offered and sold out in advance to visit the
Radiation Source ELBE (“Electron Linac for beams with high
Brilliance and low Emittance”) at the research center Forschungszentrum
Dresden-Rossendorf (FZD). FZD scientists gave an overview of the
linac itself as well as the two free-electron lasers connected to
it and the variety of secondary radiation available from ELBE: coherent
infrared radiation, quasi-monochromatic X-rays, bremsstrahlung,
pulsed neutron beams, and pulsed mono-energetic positrons. In addition,
they presented the 150 TW laser system, which is located in the
ELBE building. This high-intensity laser is used for particle acceleration
- a fascinating new topic in the broad spectrum of physics in general
and of acceleration technology in particular.
In the area of Special Events we had several smaller meetings such
as the Round Table on Nano CMOS and 3D Electronics for Scientific
Instrumentation and Imaging: Opportunities and Practical Aspects
chaired by Erik Heijne, Alessandro Marchioro, and Ray Yarema. For
the first time we held a Marie Curie Fellows: Networking Event with
Opportunities to Meet Other Fellows, Senior Colleagues, and EU Representatives
organized by Erik Heijne. Under the patronage of the IAEA, a meeting
on Nuclear Instrumentation for accelerator applications and non-intrusive
detection in a changing world was organized by F. Mulhauser (IAEA),
R. Lanza, and G. Nebbia. For the first time at this conference we
had a Women In Engineering (WIE) session called New Challenges and
Opportunities for Women Scientists and Engineers in the World of
the Internet Era. See Barbara Obyrk’s report below. We also
held a well-attended session on Technology Transfer and Intellectual
Property. This roundtable was organized by Jean-Marie Le Goff (CERN)
and Hartmut Hillemanns, (CERN). Special sessions were also held
on Homeland Security Applications and Nuclear Power Systems.
The promotion for this meeting was also outstanding due to the efforts
of the CIP (our Conference Information and Promotion group) and
Dora Merelli of CEA-Saclay. Publicity and Press Chair Christoph
Ilgner (CERN) did an excellent job in world-wide conference promotion.
And that brings us to the long list of volunteers who made this
meeting such a success. The DVD being out on time is primarily due
to the efforts of Paul Sellin (Surrey), our conference editor, together
with help from our web master Bo Yu (BNL). The meeting would not
have happened at all without the efforts of our Conference Coordinator,
Ralf Engels (FZJ). Our technical team (who did such a great job
with our network challenges) was headed up by Dora Merelli, Tony
Maeda, Dave Gregonis and staff from our local partner FZD with the
guidance of Uwe Konrad (FZD) and Christine Bohnet (FZD).
The registration went very well indeed thanks to Christina Sanders
(Registration Chair) and good folks at Intercom and Labten.
This list could go on and on with many volunteers who have not been
mentioned, but we are sure we should not forget our Treasurer, Ron
Keyser (ORTEC) and his Co-Treasurer Peter Joehnk (Forschungszentrum
Dresden Rossendorf) who are still collecting invoices and completing
the accounts.
Most importantly, special thanks go to the local organizer, Forschungszentrum
Dresden Rossendorf (FZD), to our Honorary Chair, Prof. Dr. Roland
Sauerbrey, Scientific Director of FZD, and to Dr. h. c. Peter Joehnk,
Administrative Director of FZD, for their overall strong support
of this important annual meeting of our world-wide science community,
and for their untiring efforts throughout the week.
We hope that the main outcome of this third European meeting was
an excellent experience where you made new friendships and returned
home pleased with your experience. This is the best reward for all
the people who did the hard work of the meeting.
This report was prepared and submitted by Ralf Engels who can
be reached at R.Engels@FZ-Juelich.de
; Ron Keyser, who can be reached at Ron.Keyser@ametek.com
and Merry Keyser who can be reached at rmkeyser@aol.com.
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