| The first part of 2009 has been a busy time for NPSS, and for me as President. It started off with our Society Review, which I mentioned in the last Newsletter. This full-scale, bottoms-up review of our entire Society, carried out by IEEE every five years, took place on February 12th at the TAB Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The review certainly went very well, and we came out of it with a great deal of praise for how we run our Society. In particular, our conferences and publications got very high marks, as well as how we handle our finances. Our Society remains extremely healthy and viable, and we still have substantial reserves to carry us through these difficult economic times.
We are also doing well expanding our international activities by holding more conferences outside the US, opening new Chapters abroad, and increasing international representation on our various committees. Our membership has remained fairly constant over a number of years, hovering around 3000, but does have some year-to-year fluctuations. One thing we would like to do is to try and retain the new members that join IEEE and our Society at each of our conferences, but often seem to drop out after the first year. This is something our new Membership Chair, Uwe Bratzler, is going to be working on, along with Christoph Ilgner, who is our new GOLD Committee Chair. We will also be working on trying to improve on strategic and long-range planning for our Society. We actually do a great deal of this already with our AdCom and in our Technical Committees, but more coordination in this area is always beneficial.
One of the main topics of discussion at the TAB meeting was the consequence of the current economic turndown on IEEE’s reserves and finances. While the results of the economic situation have certainly had a negative impact, IEEE as a whole is still in good financial shape. However, IEEE’s reserves have fallen below the level that allows Societies to initiate new programs using their own reserves. We used this process last year to initiate our new Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award, and it was therefore fortunate that we were able to implement this and obtain all the necessary approvals when we did. However, the current financial restrictions mean that we cannot plan for any new projects in 2009 that use our reserves. Another development reported at the TAB meeting was that the IEEE Board of Directors approved taking the Eta Kappa Nu Student Engineering Honor Society into the IEEE organization. This will benefit many engineering students and will encourage young engineers to become long-term members of IEEE.
I would also like to report on the activities of our last AdCom retreat and meeting held in Baltimore on March 6th and 7th. One area that we are moving into is using IEEE Meetings and Conference Management to help us with planning and organizing some of our conferences. We have been using their services in a limited way during the past year, and the results have been extremely beneficial. We are therefore hoping to make more use of these professional conference management services for more of our conferences in the future.
We also discussed updating our Field of Interest, which describes the broad range of technical interests we have within NPSS. One area we would like to move into is so-called electromagnetic launch technology, which could naturally become a part of our Pulsed Power Technical Committee. However, changing our Field of Interest is a rather formal procedure within TAB, since it may require negotiations with other Societies. We are also planning to review our entire Constitution and Bylaws next year, which would include a more complete revision of our Field of Interest. Our newly elected Vice President, Bob Reinovsky, will be heading the Committee that will be carrying out this review and revision.
A motion was made at the AdCom meeting for NPSS to drop out of the Biometrics Council, which we are a member of along with 17 other Societies working in the field of biometrics. Our initial interest in this Council was from our NMISC Committee, but there appeared to be very little actual overlap between our interests and what the rest of the Council was doing. However, after some discussion at the AdCom meeting, it became apparent that there was some new interest in this area from the Plasma Sciences Technical Committee involving the use of terahertz technology for biomedical applications. I’m therefore pleased to report that we will remain a member of this Council, with Dave Abe serving as our new representative. I would also like to thank Randy Brill and Ron Jaszczak for their service on the Council for the past several years.
Another action that was taken during the AdCom meeting was for NPSS to Technically Co-Sponsor the Fifth International Summer School on Nuclear Physics Methods and Accelerators in Biology and Medicine, which will be held in Bratislava, Slovakia in July of this year. This is primarily a summer school for young students and scientists that are working on or are interested in nuclear physics applications for biology and medicine. More information on this meeting is given in this Newsletter. On a related subject, IEEE has now officially approved the new NPSS Chapter in Prague in the Czech Republic. We certainly welcome all of these new NPSS activities in this part of the world.
Finally, I would like to mention that if you haven’t yet received a new NPSS survey questionnaire that is distributed to all of our membership, you will soon. One of the main purposes of the questionnaire is to apportion our AdCom seats so that each technical area is represented appropriately. However, it is also used to provide important feedback to our Society’s leadership on how our members feel our Society is serving them. It is a valuable opportunity for everyone to let us know what they think about how we are doing and how we can improve our service to our community. I would encourage all of you to take a few moments and fill out this questionnaire to provide us with your valuable feedback.
Craig Woody. IEEE NPSS President, can be reached at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Physics Department Bldg 510C, Upton, NY 11973, USA; Phone: +1 631 344 2752; Fax: +1 631 344 3253; E-mail: woody@bnl.gov.
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