| We
are coming up on another round of elections. I will have contacted
potential candidates in May with the goal of circulating the ballot
in late June. This year we elect 5 members at large and a new vice-chair.
Charles Watson will assume duties as chair after the 2007 NMISC
meeting at the IEEE NSS/MIC conference in Hawaii.
MIC 2007
This meeting will be held at the Hilton Hawaii Village, Honolulu,
Oct. 26-Nov 3, 2007. The general chair, Ben Tsui (Johns Hopkins)
and his team are in the midst of the ordered chaos that occurs as
we draw close to the meeting date. Our expectations are for abstract
submissions on par with the last two years and that may well require
some creative decisions by the program committee given space constraints
at the conference site. We again thank Eric Frey (the MIC chair),
and Magnus Dahlbom (deputy MIC chair) for their efforts for this
year’s meeting. By the time this newsletter is published,
the abstract deadline will have passed. But I do urge all who wish
to attend to make those reservations early and get ready for another
outstanding meeting.
MIC 2008
The 2008 committee and general chair Uwe Bratzler have also had
their share of work getting ready for the 2008 meeting to be held
at the conference center in Dresden. The committee is planning on
a large meeting based on the European response to the meetings in
Lyon and Rome. We look forward to the first IEEE NSS/MIC to be held
in Germany.
MIC 2009
The contract for 2009 has been signed and Richard Lanza (NSS chair
for 2005) has agreed to be the General Chair. I am happy to inform
you that Ramsey Badawi (deputy MIC chair in 2005) has signed on
as the MIC chair and (for better or for worse), your current NMISC
chair will take on the duties of local arrangement chair. The site
will be the Hilton at Walt Disney World. We will take over the entire
conference area at the hotel and expect to have enough room for
all of our functions (and avoid some of the problems we have faced
in recent years). The room rate will be $175 (in 2009 dollars),
but we also have commitments for a percentage of our room block
to be at federal per diem rates as well as a number of student rate
rooms (at $119/night). Keep your eyes on the NSS/MIC web site (www.nss-mic.org)
for more information.
MIC 2010
The runner up site for the 2009 selection was Knoxville. There were
several concerns that dropped Knoxville to the second place on the
site list for 2009. Continued discussions with the Knoxville convention
center and bureau have resolved the major issues and, pending successful
negotiation of a formal contract, will be recommended to the NMISC
as the 2010 site. We are breaking tradition with two east coast
sites in consecutive years, but the groundwork is almost complete
as a result of the 2009 site search and we have strong support from
ORNL, Ortec, and Siemens Knoxville to hold the meeting there. Ron
Keyser has volunteered to be the general chair and has the unanimous
support of the site selection committee. Part of the motivation
was to balance the meeting sites between high visibility tourist
areas (e.g., Hawaii, Orlando, Puerto Rico) and so-called second
tier cities. For those who have been to Knoxville, you know it is
a most pleasant city with a beautiful countryside. The facilities
are first rate and we will be able to offer hotel rooms at about
$120/night in 2010.
MIC 2011 and 2012
The site committee is now looking at options for 2011 and 2012.
There has been an ongoing discussion of how often the meeting should
be held in Europe with the current two options being every four
or every three years. This issue must be resolved before we can
finalize options for 2011 and 2012. The committee is also reviewing
proposals from an organizing group in Spain to hold the meeting
in Madrid. So far, this looks like a very strong option, but we
have not yet finalized whether it would be in 2011 or 2012. Whichever
of those two years we are in Europe, the other year will be a West
Coast region city. Several sites are now being investigated and
more details will be available by the NMISC meeting in October 2007.
Other issues
Besides the on-going discussion of where the NSS/MIC meeting should
be held, how to balance the need for a considerable space for the
exhibits and posters, and the always tough issue of room cost versus
site options, we also need to review once again the constitution.
We are a bit out of sync with the RISC constitution on our definition
of the executive committee that shares tasks between RISC and NMISC.
I will organize a small group to consider one more round of changes
during the summer, but if you have suggestions please send them
to me before the 2007 NSS/MIC meeting (tkldog@u.washington.edu).
Investigators, particularly in the United States, are facing difficult
financial times with the low percentiles needed to obtain NIH funding,
the cuts in the DOE funding for Nuclear Medicine, and the restrictions
in local institutions’ finances. In spite of these problems,
we do anticipate a strong turn out for the MIC meeting. It is still
a unique venue for frank discussion of technologies and goals for
the use of imaging in biomedical research and clinical applications.
Our membership and attendees are leaders in their fields and the
papers are always of the highest quality. But the success of the
meeting really depends on those who volunteer to assist in the organization
of the meeting and of NPSS general management. I urge those of you
who want to assure the continuation of the success of MIC to let
your NMISC chair know of your interest so that you can become more
involved.
Tom Lewellen, Chair of the NMISTC, can be reached at Radiology,
Nuclear Medicine, Room 200, Old Fisheries Science Center, University
of Washington, PO Box 357897, Seattle, WA 98195; Phone: +1 206 543
2365; E-mail: tkldog@u.washington.edu.
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