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year AdCom held both a retreat and business meeting in Piscataway
and New Brunswick, New Jersey. The first half of our retreat was
held at IEEE Headquarters in Piscataway. This is a very useful experience
because not only do we get to connect the faces with the names we
hear of and work with, often closely, but it also gives us a chance
to hear from IEEE staff and learn of the breadth and range of IEEE
activities from those best able to tell us about them. We were also
able to take a tour of the facility and see the new state-of-the
art computer facilities.
New members attending their first AdCom meeting (some in a new capacity)
include Sandra Biedron, Class of 2006, and Dan Fleetwood, Tony Peratt,
Bob Reinovsky and Craig Woody, Class of 2009. We also welcomed Dick
Lanza (Radiation Instrumentation), Tom Lewellen (Nuclear Medical
and Imaging Sciences), and Mark Tillack (Fusion) as new TC chairs.
Their participation is appreciated by all.
Ed Lampo, our Society Treasurer, reiterates that conference treasurers
can close out their accounts and turn their books over to IEEE HQ
and outstanding bills will be paid by IEEE directly, thereby avoiding
late closing penalties which accrue rapidly after 12 months. If
you are a conference treasurer, discuss this option with Ed (e.lampo@ieee.org)
or Tony Lavietes (lavietes1@llnl.gov)
who is the associate treasurer with responsibility for conferences.
They will be glad to help you. Ed also reports that we are overall
financially healthy.
Bill Moses, the NPSS president, discussed the project begun last
year of scanning all the old issues, prior to 1988, of TNS and TPS
and having them available through Xplore. This work was to have
been completed in 2005, but completion is now projected to be the
autumn of 2006. Bill also discussed some Technical Activities Board
(TAB) finance issues including a change in the indirect infrastructure
cost allocation. Earlier, societies with high reserves such as ours
were hit quite hard. The new allocation is based on the income from
the All Society Periodical Package (ASPP) income, with 25% of the
infrastructure costs shared equally by all societies – those
are the indirect costs that have proven difficult to allocate. TAB
has also increased the amount allowable for new initiatives not
projected in the annual society budget to $100,000, effectively
doubling the amount. Budgeted initiatives may be as much as 3% of
the society’s reserves. To achieve better, earlier income
forecasting, conferences will be asked to submit data on accruals
on a regular basis. Conference Services will send conference chairs
a letter twice yearly asking for updates.
Publications are also getting more scrutiny. The goal is to publish
outstanding papers more quickly. While reviewers have deadlines,
authors do not. In future, if the authors can’t complete revisions
in a timely way, they will probably be asked to resubmit the paper.
Some journals do “sit” on papers to maintain their page
budgets within +/- 5% of projected to gain a bonus, but the algorithm
for income distribution is changing to one based on use or “hits.”
There is also, in formation, a Panel of Conference Organizers that
will help to train conference chairs and society committee chairs,
and will work bidirectionally with IEEE staff to ensure that conference
organizers are also getting the things they need. Other conference-related
issues include proper handling of credit cards and good contracts
with management companies to ensure that IEEE is not hit with charges
based on the company’s errors. NPSS has had experience here
and these contracts are to be entered into with due diligence and
the utmost caution.
The Computer Society, with 100,000 members and its own staff and
offices in Washington, DC, feels it is going broke and has asked
to pull out of TAB where it has three votes, including their president
and two Division Directors. FinCom is analyzing the situation.
Technical Committees
Computer Applications in Nuclear and Plasma Sciences are the sponsors
of the Real Time conference. The last conference, in June 2005 at
AlbaNova University in Stockholm was a great success. The number
of papers in areas other than high energy physics is increasing,
reflecting better the many areas of interest of our society. In
particular, the number of papers related to medical imaging has
increased. Ed Barsotti of Fermilab was recipient of the 2005 Real
Time award, which was presented at Fermilab this past February at
a small ceremony. Fermilab, with Margaret Votava as general chair,
will host the 2007 Real Time conference.
Mark Tillack of University of California at San Diego is the new
chair of the Fusion Technology technical committee, replacing Phil
Heitzenroeder of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, who had completed
his term. The 2005 SFE has closed, and the 2007 conference, the
22nd in the series, will be held in Albuquerque, NM, collocated
with ICOPS and PPS which have a joint conference in 2007. Craig
Olson is the general chair. There will be a single registration
for these conferences. In 2009, SFE will collocate with ICOPS in
San Diego.
Plans are going ahead vigorously for the Nuclear Science Symposium,
Medical Imaging Conference and Room Temperature Semiconductor Detector
Workshop, to be held in San Diego. Graham Smith, of Brookhaven National
Lab, is the general chair and was able to attend this AdCom meeting
and tell us in some detail about the ongoing planning. See the article
earlier in this Newsletter under CONFERENCES. The 2005 NSS/MIC had
bumper attendance and was a great success. It is closing its books.
The 2007 conference will be held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village,
and the 2008 conference will be held in Dresden, Germany. Plans
for both these conferences are going forward with committees pretty
well in place.
The Particle Accelerator Science and Technology committee, Plasma
Science and Applications and Pulsed Power Technical Committees are
also planning for 2007 and will meet in Albuquerque, with PAC07
the week following the SFE and PPPST conference. They are hoping
to use the intervening weekend for science programs and demonstrations
for local K-12 students and teachers. This should be a blockbuster
two weeks with four of our communities meeting over this time period.
The Pulsed Power TC is also cosponsoring this year’s Megagauss
Conference to be held at Bishop’s Lodge, New Mexico in early
November. Selected papers will appear in Transactions on Plasma
Science.
Radiation Effects is planning for its 2006 conference at Ponte Vedra
Beach, Florida. See the cover story. In 2007 they will meet at the
Hilton Hawaiian Village. Other meetings are scheduled through 2009.
The 2005 conference experienced problems with the production of
the December issue of TNS including its very late publication and
lack of inclusion of galley proof changes so there was considerable
disappointment. They also had a problem with the mailing of their
election ballots so in future all NPSS election mail will be sent
first class with the hopes that it is delivered more efficiently
and doesn’t get dumped in a mailroom trash bin, which has
happened at least once.
Functional Committees
The Transnational Committee continues to expand its membership and
is working toward true world-wide membership as well as complete
representation of all NPSS fields of interest. They use teleconferencing
to keep in good contact.
Remember AWARDS! See the several notices below requesting nominations,
and observe the deadlines. We all have colleagues worthy of special
recognition!
Recruiting new members continues as a challenge. Patrick LeDû,
the new Membership chair, and Jane Lehr, our Vice President, are
working hard to fill the gap left by Vern Price’s retirement.
If you can help at our IEEE NPSS booth at meetings, contact Jane
(jmlehr@sandia.gov) or Patrick (ledu@hep.saclay.cea.fr). If you
are a conference chair, make sure your web site links to the IEEE
NPSS member page, and talk up IEEE NPSS at your plenary sessions,
and use the video loops that are available during breaks between
sessions. A conference reception to welcome student members of IEEE
NPSS might also encourage student membership. Urge session chairs
to become members, or urge a conference policy requiring membership
to be a session chair!
The Distinguished Lecturer program has been revived and there is
now a list of Distinguished Lecturers and summaries of their proposed
talks posted on our web site, as well as a summary of procedures
to enlist a Distinguished Lecturer to be the speaker at Chapter
and other meetings.
Once again, NPSS did very well in the elevation of senior members
to Fellow status, with 42% of the candidates proposed through NPSS
chosen, as well as an additional three nominated from other societies.
It is not at all too early to think of preparing nominations for
2007 since the deadline is March 1, and getting all the detail and
ensuring high quality applications is not a trivial process. Contact
Peter Winokur (winokup@sandia.gov),
chair of the Fellow Nominations Evaluation Committee and look at
the Fellows page on the IEEE web site for more information. We also
have members who are Fellows who are willing to review nomination
packages before they are submitted. A good application will focus
on the individual’s single most important achievement in the
field.
In 2006 we have to elect four new AdCom members. They will come
from the Plasma Science, Particle Accelerator, Radiation Instrumentation,
and the Nuclear Medical and Imaging communities. AdCom will also
elect a new vice president/president-elect for the society from
among present elected AdCom members.
A significant event for our Publications people – the editors
of our journals - is that we have hired an assistant to handle some
of the administrative details that eat into the editors’ time.
Read about Alison Larkin below. A major goal is to get publications
out on time, which means getting manuscripts in, reviewed, revised
and as needed reviewed and revised again. This can be a very lengthy
process and some changes are coming soon to expedite the whole review
and revision process. The chair of the publications committee and
the editors in chief of our journals are also considering electronic
publication of papers as they are cleared for publication. Because
our papers are reviewed more rigorously than those published in
some other journals, time to publication can be long. Electronic
publishing would make paper availability more rapid in many cases.
The Communications Committee has literature, as well as the NPSS
booth (one in the US and one in Europe) available for conferences.
Contact Peter Clout (clout@vista_control.com)
well in advance of when you need these. Contact me (amlarsen@slac.stanford.edu)
if you would like Newsletters to distribute at your conferences.
I need about 6 weeks before the publication date of an issue (March
1, June 1, and September 1) to ensure that they are ordered with
the whole run.
A large number of our standards, over a dozen, have gone out for
review. One of these will have to be voted again. The germanium
standard is still in preparation.
Liaisons
Our Energy Policy liaisons, Charles Neumeyer and Dick Lanza, have
been keeping in touch with the IEEE-USA group that provides expert
advice to the US government on energy issues. The have been very
active in revising the white paper on fusion energy.
The TAB Awards and Recognition Committee, to which Igor Alexeff
is liaison, may be undergoing a new birth. We’re waiting to
hear more.
Hal Flescher has been joined by Ron Schrimpf as liaisons to RADECS,
the European Radiation Effects Conference that has worked closely
with NPSS for many years. Their papers are published in TNS, and
NPSS Radiation Effects people are involved heavily with the RADECS
conference. The 2006 meeting is in Greece, and the 2007 workshop
will be in Deauville, France. RADECS alternates between a large
conference in even years and a smaller workshop in odd years. In
2008 the conference will be held in Finland.
Other Business
Every five years our society Constitution and Bylaws are reviewed
by a committee appointed by the president. The committee presented
the revised Constitution and Bylaws to AdCom for approval, but there
are certain issues that remain to be cleared with IEEE. Therefore,
the revisions will not be presented to the community until the September
Newsletter, so watch for them. There are items that will have an
impact on the officers of conferences, guidelines for when amendments
to the C&B take effect and so on. These will be outlined in
detail in September.
AdCom Actions
• To increase the budget for NPSS journals to cover the salary
of a half-time assistant to the journal editors. This vote was taken
by e-mail and was reaffirmed by vote at this meeting.
• To provide full IEEE Sponsorship of the SCINT 2007 Conference
and Technical Co-Sponsorship of future SCINT Conferences under the
auspices of the Radiation Instrumentation Technical Committee. Moved,
seconded, passed
• It was moved, seconded and passed that both the Young Investigator
and the Edward J. Hoffman awards be given annually at the Medical
Imaging Conference rather than in alternate years.
• AdCom hereby authorizes expenditures of up to $20k per year
to cover the travel and living expenses of distinguished lecturers
in making presentations at NPSS Chapter meetings. This motion was
seconded and passed.
• $5000 of NPSS funds will be made available to each Technical
Committee to fund travel grants to their annual or biennial conference
held in 2006 for graduate students who are IEEE NPSS members. Each
Technical Committee participating in this program will appoint a
committee to evaluate the applications and to administer the grants.
Preference in granting the funds should be given to students who
are planning to present a paper, and to students with no other visible
means of support. The motion was moved, seconded and passed.
• Any Officer of NPSS AdCom with conference budget approval
authority may serve as a Conference Treasurer provided that he/she
recuses him/herself from participating in the AdCom Approval Process
for that conference’s budget. This motion was moved, seconded
and passed.
• The Transnational Committee Chair may nominate a Vice-Chair
to be appointed by the President, and approved by the AdCom. The
Vice-Chair may serve as an alternate for the Chair at AdCom meetings.
The Vice-Chair has the privilege of the floor and may vote on all
matters coming before AdCom.
The next meeting of AdCom will be on July 22, 2006 at the Sawgrass
Marriott Hotel, following the 2006 NSREC.
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