March 1 and 2, 2002
AdCom Retreat and Meeting

The IEEE NPSS AdCom held its first meeting of 2002 at the Hyatt New Brunswick. This meeting was preceded by a one-day retreat at IEEE’s main office in Piscataway, New Jersey. The retreat was very valuable in that we had a chance to discuss a few important issues in considerable depth, and we had the opportunity to meet key IEEE staff with whom many of us work on a regular basis. The retreat discussion topics were membership and how much we wanted to pursue increasing member numbers, or whether we wanted to be more selective and seek members who would really contribute to the Society, and publications issues such as quality, time to publication and the transfer to electronic publishing. IEEE staff participants provided extremely useful input.

At the regular meeting on March 2 we welcomed new AdCom members Dennis Brown, National Reconnaissance Office (RE); Mounir Laroussi of Old Dominion University (PSAC); Patrick LeDû of Saclay (CANPS); and Bill Moses of LBNL (RI). New Technical Committee Chairs are Phil Heitzenroeder, PPPL, Fusion; Ron Keyser of ORTEC (Radiation Instrumentation); and Bob Reinovsky of LANL (Pulsed Power). Ron Schrimpf, the vice chair of Radiation Effects represented that TC.

Ed Lampo, our Treasurer, reported that in spite of all the IEEE fiscal problems, we ended up in a positive financial position. However, the tax on our reserves in 2002 will reduce them by about a third. It is more important than ever that conferences run in the black and close on time so that we do not face penalties.

Peter Winokur, our President, again focused on the state of IEEE’s finances. The operations people have done very well in containing their costs but there has not been an equal level of containment effort in all sectors. The IEEE reserves will drop about $35million to make up 2001 deficits. For the first time, in FY02 a balanced budget that does not rely on the stock market should be in place. (Your secretary guesses that the last several boards never heard of the old adage of saving for a rainy day - put those big stock gains away instead of squandering them on millennium medals and new logos and things we didn’t need. Editor’s note: They had, but a majority were convinced that it wouldn’t rain next year or, for that matter, the year after that. Don’t know what happened to their personal portfolios!) The TAB meeting in Tempe, Arizona voted on the principles method of reserve reduction, which is a more equitable plan in which societies essentially pay for the services they use. Unfortunately, this is being phased in over several years so that for this year NPSS will see a very large hit because we have healthy reserves and the algorithm being used is based on reserves – so much for fiscal responsibility. Certain societies with large memberships will need to increase their dues to avoid bankruptcy. NPSS is in sound fiscal shape.

Peter also reported on the soon-to-be announced members digital library that will allow members to acquire articles from publications and conference records to which they do not subscribe. There will be a couple of subscription levels for this service, based on projected use.

Peter also remarked that, despite the aftermath of September 11, we had excellent conferences in 2001, even at the end of the year.</p>

Technical Committee Reports

The CANPS committee, chaired by Christian Boulin, reported on plans for the 2003 RT conference in Montreal, to be held at the Mont Royal Hotel. IEEE Conference Services provided valuable help to Dr. Martin with the contract negotiation. There was a committee meeting in Paris with Christian, J.-P. Martin, the conference chair, J-P. DuFay and Patrick LeDû to work on logistics and conference plans. CEA has designed the poster and it is ready to mail. J.-P. DuFay is in charge of reviewers so has a major role on the program committee. They will offer four half-day short courses. Commercial exhibits are under discussion. The last exhibition was not very successful. They will discuss this with some of the potential exhibitors to try to reach a decision. More volunteers are needed to work on the conference. Christian is seeking to renew and enlarge the Technical Committee.

The Fusion Technical Committee, under Phil Heitzenroeder, met at the SFE meeting in Atlantic City. Phil presented meeting details. There were 133 attendees and 180 abstracts. They tried a new format with a continental breakfast available during the 8 AM plenary sessions. This was successful. However, the number of exhibits was down, with most of the exhibitors being the fusion labs. They had over 50% of the manuscripts submitted electronically.

The 2003 meeting will most likely be in Pleasanton since Berkeley was too expensive. Dick Foley is chair.

The Standing Committee is being expanded to include European and Asian representatives.

Mike Unterweger reported for NIDCom that despite a small glitch, the wideband gap standard is about to be released.

Ron Jaszczak’s report noted that at the 2001 MIC meeting, there were 398 of the 925 attendees who indicated MIC as their primary interest area, but this was probably low since NSS is the default. The NMIS committee has elected a number of new members including Magnus Dahlbom, Lars Eriksson, Margaret Daube- Witherspoon, Steven Meikle and Charles Stearns. The 2002 meeting will be held in Norfolk, VA with Joel Karp as chair and the 2004 meeting will be held at the Ergife Palace Hotel in Rome, chaired by Alberto del Guerra. Sybille Ziegler will be the MIC chair for that meeting.

NSS and MIC have decided to put the conference preparation and management on an equal footing for RISC and NMISC. The first step has been the appointment of a site selection committee with equal representation. Bill Moses is the chair. Bill will also chair the NMISC Bylaw review committee. Ron Jaszczak replaced Joel Karp as NMISC chair on January 1.

Bruce Brown reported that the 2003 PAC is scheduled for May 12-16, 2003, one week before the Real Time conference in Montreal. While overlap is small, it would be better to space our conferences to avoid conflict. There is now a scheduling page on the NPSS web site to help facilitate this. Conference Chairs should check it and have tentative dates posted as soon as possible. Remember, though, to remove tentative information when final plans/dates are in place.

PAC 01 is near closing and the PAC03 budget has been developed.

Bruce presented a request to allow all the old PAC conference records be digitized and posted on the JACoW (Joint Accelerator Conferences Web) site so these could be accessed easily. Permission has been granted by IEEE with the stipulation that every page bear the IEEE copyright and that IEEE will be provided the digitized copy to use on its own electronic publishing sites. This will be funded privately and perhaps in part through the PAC03 budget.

PAC05 planning is behind schedule and was a major discussion topic at the April PAC organizing committee meeting in Albuquerque. PAC07 will be hosted by LANL and held at the Albuquerque Convention Center.

Bob Parker reported that the PSAT TC met at the APS DPP meeting in Long Beach. He and others visited Seoul in late January to investigate the plans for ICOPS 2003. The meeting will be at a hotel in downtown Seoul, in a good location. They still need to identify the whole local committee and the program committee and to present a budget, but there has been enough progress to proceed comfortably with this venue Having the meeting in Asia will allow focus on some new areas including plasma displays, fusion plasmas, and plasma surface interactions. The 2004 meeting will be in Baltimore, 2005 in Monterey, 2006 in Traverse City, MI, and 2007 will be a joint meeting with Pulsed Power.

The 2002 ICOPS award will be presented to NPSS past president Igor Alexeff.

Bob Reinovsky, the new Pulsed Power TC chair, reported on the 2001 PPPS conference, the first truly integrated ICOPS - Pulsed Power conference. Attendance was about 1,000. There were some little complications due to the different cultures of the two meetings, but the meeting was clearly a success since the second integrated conference is now being planned for 2007. Between now and then details will be worked through to have a less complex registration fee system, among other things.

The 2003 Pulsed Power conference will be in Texas, with Mike Giesselmann as chair, and the 2005 conference will be in Monterey, contiguous with ICOPS, but not joint.

Ron Schrimpf reported that the 2001 NSREC conference record had finally been reprinted and distributed and was now of very good quality. They are working on resolving the problems of publication delays. The 2002 NSREC will be in Phoenix and 182 abstracts have been submitted, which is a record. Ken Hunt of AFRL is the chair. Papers on radiation effects in high-energy physics, a new area, are being encouraged. Phelps grants are being offered to select short course attendees.

The 2003 conference will be in Monterey with Allan Johnston of JPL as chair, while the 2004 conference will be in Atlanta with Dan Fleetwood as chair.

Ron Keyser, the new chair of the Radiation Instrumentation TC gave his thanks to past chair Glenn Knoll, who certainly has contributed much to NPSS in his many roles. Ron reported that the 2001 NSS/MIC was successful with almost a thousand attendees and over 900 papers. The exhibit had 34 displays in 40 booths, down a little from some past years, but still a good showing. The conference is almost closed and is well in the black. Craig Woody has been selected as RI chair-elect. Steve Derenzo of LBNL received the first RI Achievement Award. Ed Lampo noted the success and ease in managing the conference finances by using IEEE’s concentration banking system with Conference Service’s budget software.

Functional Committee Reports

Vernon Price reported on NPSS membership. Thanks to Vern’s hard work, we are now among the fastest growing IEEE societies.  The greatest increase in growth has been among Europeans (10%) and all other than Canadians and US members (5%). We are still struggling with the problem of having the RAB folks who decide on membership understand about acceptable non-US/Canadian degrees. Christian Boulin is helping with this. He is focusing in particular on Italian universities, since we will hold NSS/MIC in Rome in 2004 and hope to be able to increase membership there. Vern also noted that retention of members who join at conferences is about 85%. One of the biggest reasons for dropping membership is no receipt of journals to which members have subscribed. There seems to be a gap somewhere in getting subscriptions straightened out for new members and especially ones outside North America and Western Europe.

The first stand-alone issue of NMIS papers in TNS occurred this spring. These issues will appear in February, June and October. Editor-in-chief Paul Dressendorfer also reported that there will be a special issue of papers from the Real Time conference held in Spain, and another with papers submitted from the RADECS conference. The issue of paying for fully edited publications received considerable discussion.

Peter Clout reminded us that the “new” NPSS brochure is now in its second year of use and will be revised and updated for 2003 when Ed Hoffman becomes our president. Other communications pieces are being considered such as one-sheet flyers on “Why Join NPSS?” and “Why Publish in NPSS Journals?” The new web site is up and running with IEEE as the host. Dick Kouzes and Ken Connor have done a fabulous job with this and received a hearty round of applause, although in their absence. If you would like to have the IEEE NPSS display at your conference, or want brochures to put in conference briefcases, please contact Peter Clout.

The Fellows Committee noted that we gained nine new Fellows in 2001, which is 3.5% of the total, and a very good number considering the size of our society. We should be working harder though, to add more Fellows in High Energy Physics, Fusion, and several other areas where we have outstandingly qualified members but very low representation of these communities among our Fellows. If you know of a worthy candidate (must be a senior member of IEEE) contact the appropriate Technical Committee chair or Osamu Ishihara, the Chair of the Fellows Evaluation Committee.

Hal Flescher, our liaison to RADECS, reported that they met in Cannes in January. RADECS is seeing some positive evolutionary changes that are providing some overlap and corporate memory from one conference to the next. It is also becoming more international in scope.

Ken Galloway provided feedback from the ad hoc committee appointed to examine frequency of AdCom meetings. The consensus was to make no changes at this time, but recommended that the issue be revisited in 2-3 years. They also recommended greater use of subcommittees to look at specific issues and report to AdCom. There is also a feeling that the elected members of AdCom should play more active roles and participate in areas where they will learn and be able to become part of the corporate memory, such as finances, membership, and the secretary’s job, for a few examples.

Actions taken by AdCom

• It was moved that PAC03 papers be placed on the JACoW site for open use. After considerable discussion, this motion carried.
• It was moved that up to $2600 be allocated to replace graphics and a shipping container lost by UPS. This passed unanimously.
• It was moved that beginning in 2003 member dues be increased to $10 from $5. This passed unanimously.
• It was moved that the NPS permanent membership category be eliminated beginning in 2003. However, those who have already elected and paid for permanent membership will have that membership honored. Passed.
• It was moved that member subscriptions to TNS and TPS be $20 for either print or electronic copies and $30 for BOTH print and electronic copies. Amendment: that print and electronic copy be $20 each whether one or both formats are ordered. The amendment carried, as did the motion so beginning in 2003 our journals will be $20 for print and for electronic copies. Part of the rationale was that maintenance of electronic copy is potentially quite expensive, especially when migration to new media has to be considered.
• A motion to allow AdCom members to serve two consecutive terms was defeated.
• A motion to require IEEE NPSS membership for conference officers with fiduciary responsibility was deferred to the next meeting.
• A motion to increase the publication assessment on conferences that publish papers in the TNS be increased from $35 to $50 per page beginning with conferences held in 2003 carried unanimously.
• A motion to hold the 2003 Dusty Plasmas conference in cooperation with IEEE NPSS carried.

A motion to assess a per copy charge to conferences that provide Transactions to attendees was tabled. More information is needed to make an informed decision.

The next meeting of AdCom is on Friday, 31 May 2002 at the Banff Center, Banff, Alberta, Canada. The Annual Meeting of AdCom will be held on November 9, 2002 in Norfolk, VA.

Albe Larsen, the NPSS Secretary can be reached at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, P.O. Box 4939, Stanford, CA 94039; Phone: +1 650 926-2748; Fax: +1 650 926-5124; E-mail: amlarsen@slac.stanford.ed