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is a great pleasure and an honor to be writing my first message
as the new President of the NPSS. This has been a remarkable journey
for me, since I started my involvement with the NPSS back in 1975
when I attended my first NPSS-sponsored conference when I was a
graduate student at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. This
was then the Nuclear Science Symposium which was held in San Francisco,
and it was the first time I got to hear talks and meet some of the
famous people I had been reading about in the field of nuclear instrumentation.
I was truly impressed by this, and I quickly realized that this
was a field and group of people that I wanted to be a part of. Well,
I guess it must have really made an impact, since here it is more
than 30 years later, and I now see much more clearly from a different
level what a tremendous organization our Society is, and what great
benefits it brings to its members. It is the place where you will
find your friends, your colleagues, the conferences where you can
present your research, the journals where you can publish your papers
and find the latest new results, and discover many other exciting
opportunities. I’m very proud to be a part of it, and honored
to be taking over as its President for the next two years.
I would first like to thank our former President, and my mentor
during my transition into my new job, Jane Lehr, who provided us
with her outstanding leadership during the last two years, and also
Bill Moses, our previous President, who has been a friend, colleague
and invaluable resource to our Society for many years. We also have
many other talented and competent people in our organization, and
I can tell you that our Society is in good hands and in a healthy
state as we start the new year.
As I’m sure all of you know, the world economy has been in
turmoil during the past several months, and many major companies
and institutions have faced some serious financial problems. However,
we are very fortunate that both the IEEE and the NPSS have weathered
this storm remarkably well so far. Due to our Society’s rather
substantial financial reserves, which are a result of our being
a very well run and efficient organization, we have been able to
absorb much of the economic impact of these events and still remain
viable. In fact, we were able to utilize an additional part of our
reserves to initiate a new, very prestigious, high level award,
which is the Marie Sklodowski Curie Technical Field Award. This
award will be given to individuals making outstanding contributions
to the field of nuclear and plasma science. It is funded through
an endowment of $600,000 by the NPSS to the IEEE Foundation and
carries with it a $10,000 honorarium, a bronze medal and a certificate.
It is an award that spans all the technical fields of interest of
our Society, and will be awarded for the first time in 2011. Instructions
on how to nominate individuals for this award will be made available
soon.
Another major event during the first part of this year was our Society
Review, which is a bottoms up, full-scale review of our entire Society
that is mandated to be carried out for each IEEE Society every five
years. This review took place at the February 12th TAB meeting in
San Juan, Puerto Rico. As of this writing, we have just submitted
our report to the Society Review Committee describing the state
of our Society. Since we are in excellent shape, both organizationally
and financially, I expect that this review will go very well. I
will be reporting on the outcome of the review in the next Newsletter.
Some other new developments are that we now have a newly formed
NPSS Chapter pending in Prague in the Czech Republic, awaiting official
IEEE approval. This Chapter was officially formed on December 12,
2008, with Stanislav Pospisil as the Chapter Chair, and is described
in a later article in this Newsletter. I would like to thank Uwe
Bratzler for spearheading the effort to form this new Chapter. NPSS
will now have 14 Chapters worldwide, and we are pursuing new Chapters
in Korea, Russia, Belarus and Latin America.
We have also had a few changes in some of Committee Chairs which
took effect on January 1st of this year. Chuck Melcher is taking
over from Dick Lanza as Chair of Radiation Instrumentation while
Dick prepares for the 2009 NSS/MIC Conference as its General Chair.
Dan Fleetwood is taking over from Tim Oldham as the Chair of Radiation
Effects in July and will officially represent the TC starting next
January, John Luginsland is taking over from Ron Gilgenbach as Plasma
Sciences Chair, and Stan Schriber is taking over from Ilan Ben Zvi
as Chair of Particle Accelerator and Sciences and Technology. Jean-Luc
Leray will be taking over from Uwe Bratzler as Chair of the Transnational
Committee, while Uwe becomes our new Membership Chair and Christoph
Ilgner begins working on a new program for NPSS for young scientists
and engineers (GOLD program). Bill Moses will become our new Awards
Chair, as well as Chair of our Conference Committee as Ray Larsen
steps down from that position, and Jane Lehr, as our Past President,
will become Chair of our Nominations Committee. I would like to
thank all of our past Committee Chairs for their devoted efforts
in helping NPSS achieve success in all of these areas, and wish
all the new Chairs all the best in their new positions. You can
read more about our newly elected and appointed AdCom members later
in the Newsletter.
I would again like to thank the membership of NPSS for giving me
the opportunity to serve as your President for the next two years,
and I promise that I will do my best to keep our Society healthy,
active and involved with our community as it has been in the past.
I look forward to meeting many of you during my term in office and
finding ways to help make out Society serve you better.
Craig Woody, NPSS Society President, can be reached at the Brookhaven
National Laboratory, Physics Department Bldg 510C, Upton,NY 11973,
USA; Phone: +1 631 344 2752; Fax: +1 631 344 3253; E-mail: woody@bnl.gov.
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