SECRETARY’S REPORT

New Orleans, LA, 12-13 March 2004

The AdCom held a retreat and business meeting in New Orleans on March 12-13th, 2004. This meeting was unusual as both the President and Secretary were unable to attend and so the Vice President, Bill Moses, took the chair and the author of this report paid the price of not attending the evening meal the day before when the problem of the lack of a secretary was discussed and he found himself appointed the relief secretary. It is my belief that the relief was elsewhere when I succumbed to the fait accomplis.

With the New Year, there are new members of AdCom and so part of the retreat was taken with an introduction to NPSS, the IEEE and in particular to the financial issues. Just like any organization, the infrastructure takes resources to develop and maintain and this infrastructure does not, in itself, always have sufficient revenue. Thus taxes are necessary. Of course, the costs are not always appreciated and even the benefits are forgotten. Hal Flescher covered all of these prickly financial issues.

• Other topics discussed were:
  
• Publications Review
  
• Educational Activities
  
• Overseas Conferences
  
• Communications with NPSS Members and to Potential Members
  
• Communication Among AdCom Members
  
• Meeting Finances and Audit Committee
  
• Effective AdCom Subcommittees

The AdCom business meeting was the second day. The writer apologizes to the reader that the following is hardly riveting reading. This reflects the meeting which, while interesting and useful to the members in their work of running the many activities of the NPSS, could by no way be described as attention holding. There are the moments of high drama when personalities and opinions clash for a moment but these occasional interludes are difficult and sometimes inappropriate to capture in writing for the membership.

Ed Lampo, our treasurer, reported the details of the publications' finances, meetings' finances and general society finances. Conferences are our most demanding activity on the volunteers who manage them and there are many details to be attended to. The treasurer of the conference has not only to manage the finances but also prepare the books for the IEEE audit. Bills and payments follow the meeting and so it is the treasurer who has to do a considerable portion of the work when the meeting is over and everyone else can relax. There are good, legal, reasons to close out the conference books as soon as possible, leaving outstanding payments and bills to be handled by the society. However, it seems that even though Ed Lampo is happy to handle the tail ends, some conference treasurers find the preliminary closing difficult to do and the society pays fines to the IEEE for late closings. Overall the finances of the society are healthy and this was helped by the bonus that TNS received for publishing pages within the tolerance of the page budget in 2003.

Both Bill Moses and Hal Flescher gave reports to AdCom and these are covered elsewhere in this newsletter.

From the technical committees, Computer Applications (CANAPS) is selecting the site for the 2005 meeting and this could be in the US or Europe with a decision to be made at about the deadline for this newsletter. Hopefully, the next meeting will not suffer the equivalent of the SARS scare. Christian Boulin also reported that he will be updating the CANAPS web site.

Phil Heitzenroeder, the chairman of the Fusion Technology Technical Committee reported on the 20th SOFE meeting and the plans of the next meeting in 2005. At the time of the AdCom, the Proceedings of the last meeting were in final review. The next meeting will be held in September 2005 in Knoxville, TN, but the hotel has not yet been chosen. The Chairman of this meeting is Nermin Uckan and David Rasmussen is the Program Chair. There is a discussion underway to co-locate the 2007 meeting with ICOPS as has been done before. This meeting will be held in Albuquerque at the Convention Center.

Ron Keyser, the chairman of Nuclear Instrument and Detector Standards Committee reported that work on reviewing the membership has begun as well as the search for new members. In the future expanded role of the committee as a standards functional committee, more members are needed with expertise in the other technical committee areas. The review of several standards for reaffirmation is underway. No new standards have been started.

Magnus Dahlbom, the chairman of the Nuclear and Medical Imaging Sciences Committee, reported that the 2003 NSS/MIC had an attendance of over 1350, a very significant increase in attendance over the previous meeting. Arrangements are well in hand for the Rome meeting in October and the following two meetings. There is consideration being given to holding later meetings in Germany and Australia.

Bruce Brown, the chairman of the Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Committee, reported that the arrangements for the 2005 PAC in Knoxville are well under way under the chairmanship of Norbert Holtkamp who has recruited Swapan Chattopadhyay from Jefferson Lab to serve as Program Chair. The 2007 PAC will be held in Albuquerque chaired by Stan Schriber and the 2009 PAC will be held in Vancouver, May 4-8 chaired by Paul Schmor. PAC continues to post the proceedings of the PAC openly on the web with the agreement of NPSS and the IEEE. Bruce and others are active in nominating members of the PAC community to Senior and Fellow level with success.

Bob Reinovsky, the chairman of the Pulsed Power R&D Committee, reported that the next Pulsed Power Conference will be in Monterey, June 14-17, 2005. This will be co-located with ICOPS and held at the end of the week before the ICOPS meeting. The meeting is chaired by John Maenchen. In 2007 the Pulsed Power Conference will be held combined with the ICOPS meeting and with the same general chair. This will be held in Albuquerque, NM, June 17-22, 2007 and interestingly, the PAC will be held in the same convention center the following week. The Pulsed Power Committee has been continuing its dialog with several independent conferences whose field of interest includes pulsed power with a view to cooperation. Dave Stoudt has agreed to chair the 2009 meeting.

Ron Schrimpf, the chairman of the Radiation Effects Committee, reported that the 2005 NSREC will be held in Seattle, July 11-15 and the 2006 meeting will be held near Jacksonville, FL. Ron reported that the delay in the December NSREC issue of TNS caused problems for reviewers of the 2004 meeting abstracts as the previous year's papers were not available for consultation.

Radiation Instrumentation: Craig Woody, the chairman of the Radiation Instrumentation Committee, reported on NSS meetings from three years ago to over three years ahead. Upcoming NSS meetings are in Rome (this year), St Juan, PR (2005) chaired by Tom Lewellen, San Diego, CA (2006), chaired by Graham Smith and for 2007 the site selection is underway under the chairmanship of Ron Keyser as reported above.

Erik Heijne, the chairman of the Transnational Committee, reported that the committee has expanded with new members so that all regions of the world are represented except Africa. Several members of the committee are active in the support of the Rome MIC/NSS with monthly meetings. The committee has also been active in supporting local chapters. Patrick Le Dû then presented his data and analysis of holding NPSS meetings outside North America. There are differences that need to be taken into account, business culture, tax law and the additional costs of convention centers rather than large hotels with convention facilities. The changed attendance when moving an established meeting to a new continent can also present challenges of success. All the recent numbers have been impacted by the events of 9/11 and the SARS epidemic.

This concluded the reports from the technical committees and the transnational committee. All the chairs of these committees have a vote on AdCom as a result of this office. The functional chairs and liaison representatives, whose reports made up the remainder of the oral reports, do not have a vote and are thus, presumably, motivated to do the job for reasons other than the power of the AdCom vote. Most of the information in these reports is also presented to the membership in articles on issues of this newsletter and so I will not repeat them here.

Under new business, there was a proposal from Tony Lavietes that the NPSS should purchase computers, wireless networking equipment, projectors and shipping containers for the MIC/NSS and other meetings that would like to use them. The motivation is the large cost of local rental (often a 5-day rental equals the cost of purchase). Tony and his volunteers would maintain the equipment and set it up for each meeting. This expenditure was approved and it was decided to expedite the purchase. A proposal to generalize the MIC/NSS web registration software was tabled as it was not clear that there would be sufficient use by other meetings to justify the cost.

The final part of the AdCom was to finish consideration and vote on motions that had come forward in the meeting. Significant motions passed were those to endorse, “in cooperation with,” the 4th World Congress on Microwave and Radio Frequency Applications, Austin, TX, 7-12 November 2004, to co-sponsor the not-for-profit Megagauss Institute Inc. International Conference on Megagauss Magnetic Fields and Application in Santa Fe, sponsor the Beams Conference when it is organized in the US and to “technically co-sponsor” the Beam Conference when held outside the US, that, until withdrawn, the IEEE-NPSS is a continuing technical co-sponsor of ICALEPCS, and that the IEEE-NPSS shall be a continuing sponsor of RADECS as Technical Co-Sponsor.

The changes to the bylaws were passed unanimously.

It was also voted that there should be another member interest survey to assign the AdCom voting member allocation among the fields of interest. This survey is important in the operation of the society and some of our larger activities are under represented on AdCom because of low NPSS membership in that community or lack of ballot returns.

The meeting finally adjourned at 5:30 pm, 30 minutes behind schedule.

Peter Clout, Secretary Pro Tempore of NPSS, can be reached at Vista Control Systems, Inc., 176 Central Park Square, Los Alamos, NM 87544-4031, Phone: 1+505 662-2484; Fax: +1 505 662-3956; E-mail: clout@vista-control.com.