| The
IEEE NPSS AdCom met in Santa Fe, NM with a retreat on Friday, February
29 and a meeting on Saturday, March 1. As this was our first meeting
of 2008 we were able to welcome in person our new AdCom Class of
2008 and new committee chairs, introduced to you in the March Newsletter.
Retreat topics included excellent discussion of IEEE Conference
Services and of the package developed by Bo Yu of BNL for our NSS/MIC
conferences to track registration, abstract submittal, paper receipt
and other details useful to the conference organizers. This software
has also been used with great success by a few of our other conferences.
Ed Lampo, our treasurer, reported that we are in good financial
shape. Our Finance Committee, chaired by Hal Flescher, the new IEEE
TAB Vice President-elect, will review maintaining membership dues
at $30 for 2009, and that will include electronic access to both
TNS and TPS, and to our conference records posted in Xplore. Paper
copies may continue at 2008 rates for 2009, but this is significantly
below printing and mailing cost, so members who wish paper are getting
a major benefit.
Conferences are closing a bit more reliably, but there is at least
one 2005 conference still open (as of March) and the message remains
the same: Books need to be closed as quickly as possible after a
conference is over, and it is possible to close without the last
bills being paid. IEEE can take care of that. Talk with Tony Lavietes
(lavietes1@llnl.gov) or
Ed Lampo (e.lampo@ieee.org)
to find out how! It’s pretty straightforward.
Jane Lehr, our president, had attended two TAB meetings since the
last AdCom meeting in Honolulu. TAB has now approved including access
to conference records in membership dues for ALL societies. Once
again, NPSS is a trend-setter! A Biometrics Council, of which NPSS
is a charter member, was approved at the November TAB meeting. Randy
Brill of Vanderbilt and Ron Jaszczak of Duke Medical School are
our two Council representatives. EMBS, who opposed this Council’s
format, is starting another New Directions group.
The IEEE Conferences Committee is interested in what drives conference
‘no shows.” For us the principal issues appear to be
ability to get visas in a timely way, especially for eastern European,
Indian and Chinese scientists, and the big cuts in funding. Making
the deadlines for abstract submittal and acceptance earlier helps
in allowing time to clear the visa hurdles. A well-written invitation
letter is also helpful. Great care is needed here, so ask help from
someone who has done this before or someone at IEEE Conference Services.
DOE has also made registration more difficult through changes in
travel requirements.
Time to publication for journal articles continues to be a TAB concern.
The Institute average is 65 weeks from submittal to publication.
The intermediate goal is 52 weeks and the ultimate goal is 45 weeks.
Both TPS and TNS are within the 45-week goal now, due in large part
to a huge effort by the editors for each journal that started several
years ago.
The costs for downloading articles from Xplore have decreased for
both members and nonmembers of IEEE. The IEEE Publications and Products
Board is also making changes, principally to let editors see article
reviews more readily. Also on the publications front, a new terahertz
journal is under consideration. Sandra Biedron of Argonne and Derek
Abbott of University of Adelaide are being considered for the editorial
staff.
The Regional Activities Board has changed its name to Members and
Geographic Activities (MGA) TAB and MGA will meet together, and
there is an effort to get conferences to invite local people to
participate in the meetings. An article in the April issue of The
Institute, available on line, discusses what the new organization
will look like.
The issue of a GOLD member on AdCom is something that came up at
TAB that we may consider in the future, as part of an Early Career
Support effort by TAB. Identifying early career scientists to lecture
for student groups and chapters has also been suggested.
Technical Committees
Reports from several of the Technical Committees appear below. The
Fusion TC has replaced long-time member Richard Callis with Bill
Cary who will be involved in the 2009 Symposium on Fusion Engineering.
The budget for 2009 has been approved. The conference, to be held
jointly with ICOPS in San Diego, also has its web site launched.
They are looking to raise grant money for several uses. They are
also working with Tony Lavietes and Bo Yu of BNL for networking,
AV and registration support. There will be program chairs from Europe
and Asia to help expand the paper base. Charles Neumeyer will chair
the 2011 conference at the Hyatt Regency, McCormick Place in Chicago,
June 25-30, 2011, again in conjunction with the 2011 ICOPS.
The Particle Accelerator Science and Technology TC has a new set
of bylaws and has formalized the TC membership. They have worked
with the PACOC and the international PAC Organizing Committee (EPAC,
APAC and IPAC) in establishing a new meeting cycle. The next PAC
will be in 2009 in Vancouver with Paul Schmor of TRIUMF as Chair.
The first North American IPAC under the new international two-year
cycle will be in New York City in 2011 with Bill Weng of BNL as
chair, and the first PAC under this cycle will be in New Orleans
in 2012. IEEE was introduced as a possible umbrella for the IPACs.
The Europeans will work under the Europhysics Conference. PAC has
been active in recruiting support from Women in Engineering and
will have a grant for its 2009 reception. An equivalent grant was
raised from ANL by Sandra Biedron.
The Plasma Science and Applications steering committee met in November.
They formed a subcommittee to look at the terahertz journal’s
possibilities, which was presented to AdCom. The 2008 meeting in
Karlsruhe will have 4-5 parallel sessions to accommodate the very
large number of abstracts (>600) received. Almost 300 authors
requested oral presentations. The 2010 ICOPS will be held in Hampton
Roads, VA with Mounir Laroussi as general chair. The 2012 conference
will be in the UK with the final site yet to be decided. In 2007,
at the PPPS conference, four Plasma Sciences student paper awards
were given. Their proposal for an Outstanding Student award was
approved by AdCom. See AdCom actions below.
Pulsed Power Science and Technology has both a new chair, Edl Schamiloglu,
and a new elected AdCom member, Dillon McDaniel, who joins Bob Reinovsky.
The TC also has three new members, and three Distinguished Lecturers,
Peter Turchi, Charles Stallings and Brian Oliver.
The Megagauss 2006 conference that we sponsored is closed. The 2008
Megagauss conference will be held in Novosibirsk, Russia. A good
contingent of US scientists is expected to attend. The 2007 PPST
is also close to closing. The 2009 Pulsed Power conference will
be chaired by Frank Peterkin at the Mayflower Hotel, Washington,
DC. Its dates allow for spending the Fourth of July in Washington
and experiencing all the celebrations on the mall! The 2011 conference
will be in Chicago, contingent to the ICOPS and SFE meetings.
The Radiation Effects committee has also appointed three Distinguished
Lecturers: Ron Schrimpf, Allan Johnston, and Paul Dressendorfer.
A request has been made to change the Radiation Effects TC chair’s
term so that it is in alignment with the other TC chairs whose terms
start on January 1. At present the Radiation Effects chair starts
his or her two-year term following the NSREC. This will require
a Radiation Effects Bylaws change, which will be discussed at the
next committee meeting. The 2009 NSREC will be held at the Quebec
Hilton, Quebec, Canada; the 2010 meeting will be at the Sheraton
Denver, and the 2011 meeting will be in St. Paul.
The Radiation Instrumentation TC has elected five new members. The
Honolulu conference was a huge success with about 1800 registrants
and the desired increase in Asian participants. The concern that
European attendance would drop was not realized. Plans for 2009
and 2010 are well in hand. The site for 2011 is being finalized.
Preliminary proposals have been received from several Asian sites
for a future Asian conference. The 2008 conference is discussed
in detail above.
The SCINT conference, sponsored by NPSS, has been closed.
Functional Committees
The Awards committee reviewed 2008 applications for Society awards
and the results of their work is seen in the Awards section below.
These will be presented at the conference of the recipient’s
choice or, for the students, at their institution if they wish.
All our awards have been updated in the IEEE Awards and Recognition
Manual, available on line at http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs_
iportals/iportals/volunteers/tab/TAB_Awards_and_Recognition_Manual.pdf.
Take a look and see which of your colleagues might be worthy of
recognition. The next deadline is early in 2009. The Particle Accelerator
Graduate Student award has gone to TABARC for approval in the summer
meetings. The Phelps Grant description has been rewritten.
See the report by Steve Gold for information on the Distinguished
Lecturers program. There are now 10 active chapters, six of which
are in the USA and 4 in Europe. A chapter in Russia is beginning
the process to add affiliation with us. Uwe Bratzler represents
Division IV in coordinating Region 8 chapters.
Fellow applications are in the hands of the Fellows Evaluation Committee.
The recommendations will go to IEEE in mid-June. In 2007 we had
6 of 14 applicants elevated to Fellow. Well-written, focused applications
help. Technical Committees should be working now to think about
nominees for 2009!
See Bill Moses’ article requesting nominees for the AdCom
seats to be filled for the Class of 2012 that will be seated in
January 2009.
This June our publications – the Transactions on Nuclear Science,
the Transactions on Plasma Science and this Newsletter – will
be reviewed by the IEEE TAB Periodicals Review board. This happens
every five years. Your thoughts on improving the newsletter and
making it more useful to you would be appreciated by the editor.
What don’t we include? What sorts of stories would be interesting?
Let me know! (amlarsen@slac.stanford.edu).
Our journals have made huge strides in revamping their editorial
staffs and we now have a publications assistant at HQ who has been
an enormous asset.
Open Access to publications continues to be an item of discussion.
TNS will be among the first journals to participate in an experiment
with the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing (SCOAP)
that represents about 60 organizations internationally. TNS has
also reapplied to be included in the MedLine Index, which would
then include the medical imaging papers published in TNS. Authors
in this area should be encouraged to use key words recognized by
MedLine.
The Transactions on Plasma Sciences will, beginning in 2009, be
able to publish 12 issues a year. Both TPS and TNS are now appearing
in their cover date month. This has taken considerable effort and
several years to achieve consistently.
The Standards Committee notes that work continues on the new germanium
standard’s graphics. Several other NPSS standards will be
up for review in the next few years. Obsolete software posed a problem
in updating the germanium standard and may well have to be addressed
for these other standards.
The International Conferences liaison, Patrick LeDû, has been
working with the 2008 NSS/MIC/RTSD and ICOPS meetings as an advisor.
The 2009 and 2011 Real Time conferences will also have supervision.
The 2011 Real Time conference will be chaired by a member of the
ITER fusion community, which is a first. There is other activity
in which NPSS might play a role including the EUROMEDIM2 conference
in Nice in 2009 which will have large Middle Eastern representation
and new developments in the fields of nuclear power generation and
in photo detectors. The latter will be a rebirth of the Beaune conference.
The next challenge will be Asia. In 2008 there were 12 IEEE meetings
in China. There are plans for a SCINT conference on Jeju Island,
Korea as well.
The Transnational Committee is working with the Membership and Chapters
chairs to identify potential chapter locations. There was a successful
IEEE at CERN meeting.
Liaisons
Sandra Biedron, the R&D Policy liaison, reports that the group
meets five times a year and that attendance by teleconference works.
She has attended one meeting in person to date. This is principally
an information and lobbying group that tracks new technologies and
introduces them to Congress through policy statements and white
papers. Bill Williams, an IEEE-USA staff member supports these activities.
IEEE does not seem to have the same liaison visiting strategy as
APS where many scientists visit Congressmen and staffers each year
to talk about important work. APS also supports large letter-writing
campaigns to Congress related to the science budget and related
issues. Should we?
Peter Winokur is our corresponding liaison to TABARC, and is also
on the IEEE-USA Congressional Fellows board.
Allan Johnston continues to represent us actively with the Women
In Engineering group. The IEEE Executive Committee supports 7 of
the group’s 11 voting members. There are now 136 affinity
groups and the number is growing. The number of societies and councils
with liaisons has grown from 8 in 2007 to 17 in 2008. Most months,
they hold hour-long teleconferences that are very cumbersome. It
is hard to get initiatives before the group. We need to support
WIE through our own activities such as encouraging eligible women
to seek higher grade memberships and to make women more visible
at conferences and chapter meetings. Of the 12,000 members of WIE,
about 2/3 are students. NPSS is encouraged to seek WIE funding for
conference events. It is possible to supplement this with NPSS funds
(see Actions below). An NPSS network, perhaps initiated through
our conferences, would be valuable, and something to keep networking
alive between conferences. This needs more thought and development.
AdCom Actions
• The Computer Applications in Nuclear and Plasma Sciences
TC moves to provide technical co-sponsorship of the 6th American
Nuclear Society International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Plant Instrumentation,
Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technologies (2009 NPIC&HMIT),
to be held April 5-9, 2009, in Knoxville, Tennessee.
This motion was passed by e-mail vote subsequent to the meeting
• The Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society approves the establishment
of a new Outstanding Student in Plasma Science Award. The prize
will consist of US $1,000 and a certificate, to be funded by the
IEEE NPSS International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS). Any
full time undergraduate or graduate university student in plasma
science will be eligible for the award, which will be presented
annually at the ICOPS. The judging will be carried out by the PSAC
ExCom based on research contributions, educational accomplishments,
publications and patents. This motion was passed and forwarded to
TABARC for review and TAB consent.
• AdCom hereby rescinds all previous motions for the direct
funding of NPSS Chapters and substitutes the following motion:
“AdCom authorizes the awarding of grants to NPSS Chapters
as follows:
1. New NPSS Chapters may apply to the NPSS President, through the
NPSS Chapter Coordinator, for authorization of a grant of up to
$1,000 from NPSS funds. Chapters applying for these funds must submit
a detailed budget with their request.
2. All NPSS Chapters may apply to the NPSS President, through the
NPSS Chapter Coordinator, for authorization of a grant of up to
$500 per annum from NPSS funds. Chapters applying for these funds
must have current Chapter reports and must submit a budget with
their request.”
• Field Award: NPSS AdCom approves the establishment of a
fully endowed IEEE Technical Field Award to recognize outstanding
contributions to the fields of Nuclear and Plasma Sciences.
• NPSS AdCom approves the formation of an NPSS Field-Award
Committee to establish an IEEE Technical Field Award, whose membership
will be determined by the NPSS Awards Chair in consultation with
the NPSS President and Vice President.
• To increase the monetary value of NPSS Society-level awards
as follows:
Merit: $2000 to $5000
Shea Distinguished Member: $2000 to $5000
Early Achievement: $1800 to $3000
Graduate Scholarship (4): $2000 to $3000
• AdCom suggests that the monetary value of NPSS Technical
Committee awards be increased from $2000 to $3000, with the following
exceptions:
Young Investigator Medical Imaging Award increases from $1000 to
$2000.
Radiation Instrumentation Early Achievement Award increases from
$1000 to $2000.
Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Doctoral Student Award
remains at $2000.
NPSS Student Paper Awards remain at $500.
Paul Phelps Continuing Education Grants remain at $8000 total.
• Funding up to a maximum of $1,000 can be approved by the
NPSS President for WIE-related functions at each NPSS technical
conference.
• AdCom authorizes a one time payment of up to $20K, to be
paid through the NPSS Network Shop, for updating and packaging of
the NSS/MIC conference management software for use and portability
to other NPSS conferences.
|
