The Administrative Committee of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society met on May 31, 2002 at the Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, following the highly successful ICOPS conference chaired by Dr. Robert Fedosejevs of the University of Alberta.

The Treasurer, Ed Lampo, reported that our reserves will be reduced by about $1.09 million to help pay for IEEE’s losses in 2001. This will reduce our reserves by about $500,000. The rest is offset by our earnings. However, we expect to earn much less in 2002 because of changes in the Book Broker program. It is anticipated that IEEE will require about another $600,000 of our reserves in 2003 to pay for 2002 losses, even though the Institute has signed on to a balanced budget for 2002. There is considerable speculation that the budget will not be met, and hence, our reserves will drop even further. Were the stock market to turn around and the reserves earn interest, we would see any gains over 4% added to our income stream. However, the market pundits seem to think that reversal is highly unlikely in this calendar year.

The Treasurer reiterated how important it is that conferences meet their budgets and increase their income to help cover some of our past losses as well as those foreseen in the future.

Peter Winokur, our President, reviewed a number of the issues discussed at our March retreat. Among these were the benefits of belonging to IEEE and NPSS: access at reasonable cost to our conferences and publications to remain technically up-to-date; access to Xplore to get articles and abstracts on-line; awards to recognize contributions either for technical work or for service to the community; receipt of an excellent newsletter (thank you, Ken); and, an opportunity to return something to the community by being of service to it. It was determined that, in addition to our handsome brochure, we needed a summary single page piece that described why one should join NPSS. The Communications Committee under Peter Clout, has produced this document and it is available on request to Peter (clout@vista-control.com), along with full brochures and posters, for use in conference packets.  Peter also pointed out that the web site was revamped and thanked our stalwart web meisters, Ken Connor of RPI and Dick Kouzes of the Pacific NW Lab.

Our President also discussed how to better integrate elected AdCom members into the activities of AdCom and assignments were made for assistance in a number of areas including finance, publications, and membership. There are many other opportunities to help and to learn how various parts of AdCom operate.

Peter Staecker, the Division IV Director was able to join us at this meeting. He, too, noted that the IEEE financial picture over the last couple of years has been difficult, and that 2002 will be a tough year. Although IEEE membership is growing (4% in 2001), that membership is subsidized Institute-wide, by almost $400k. Societies and the Institute have to adjust membership fees to make membership costs revenue neutral. NPSS has moved in that direction and all societies are being encouraged to do so, to make membership, now subsidized at an average of $15/member across societies, revenue neutral. Many societies are decoupling Transactions from their membership fees, as NPSS did last year. TAB is developing a membership business plan. There has also been a small drop in staff over the last year. However, reserves were hit hard, and core expenses, those costs associated with running the Institute, are expected to go way up, and there is huge pressure on the societies to support those increases. One method of cost containment is to simplify the way IEEE does business, to limit options and streamline processes such as membership renewal, where very large cost savings might be achieved. Peter is chair of a committee to work on business simplification, and Ed Lampo serves with him. Projected savings just from simplifying the membership renewal process are of order $2,700K.

Another issue is that of RAB, the Regional Activities Board, which does nothing to generate revenue, but sucks money out of IEEE, while having an equal voice with TAB in Institute decision-making. It, too, has reserves. Have these been tapped to offset IEEE’s operating deficits?

We also learned that Spectrum is selling mailing lists for presumed one-time only use.

CANPS is working hard to get the Real Time conference on a better footing, with a broader technical committee and a more international program committee. The Montreal conference in 2003 will be the first beneficiary of this improved organization. It has been very helpful to have Dr. Jean-Pierre Martin of L’Université de Montréal attend recent AdCom meetings. Sites for 2005 are being evaluated

Fusion Technology has successfully weathered the problems associated with moving the date of the19th Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SFE) following September 11. Their Conference Record has gone to press. At future meetings, both a CD-ROM and printed copies of the Conference Record will be available. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. will host the 2003 conference; Monterey and Pleasanton, CA are being considered as sites. The original hope, to hold the conference at the Claremont in Berkeley, had to be put aside because of the very high hotel costs in the Bay area. There are discussions under way to unite SFE with ICOPS, or perhaps at least to collocate, in 2005 and beyond.

The Nuclear Instruments and Detectors committee has released a wideband standard for vote. The release was delayed because IEEE originally insisted that all those allowed a vote must be members of the Standards board. IEEE finally backed off and allowed the standard to be sent to the field experts.

Nuclear and Medical Imaging Sciences have formed a committee, chaired by Bill Moses, to do a 5-year review of their constitution and bylaws. TMI has announced a member subscription price jump from $24 to $36 a year. It is still a huge bargain. In 2003, Max Vergiever of Utrecht University will become the TMI Editor in Chief, replacing Michael Vannier who has served for 3 terms.

Particle Accelerator Science and Technology reported that the PAC03 Organizing Committee met in Albuquerque to discuss the upcoming meeting. For the first time in many years, the conference chair, Bob Siemann of SLAC, is a member of IEEE NPSS as well as of APS DPB. They are looking at how to get all the back conference records and transactions scanned for posting on the web, now that IEEE has given its permission for that project.

Plasma Science and Applications reported a meeting with the organizers of the 2003 ICOPS meeting in Korea. The venue has been changed from downtown Seoul to the resort island of Jeju. The pace of organization has picked up, and it looks positive that the 2003 meeting will be a success. The ICOPS ExCom is watching the planning closely. There is an Asian Pacific Conference on Plasma Science held in even years that might help in increasing the Asian base of ICOPS. Osamu Ishihara and Andrew Ng will attend that conference. The work in plasmas in Asia is focused more heavily on fusion, plasma processing and plasma displays, and should add new topics for the 2003 conference. It was noted that ICOPS was once a part of the APS DPP conference, which has become fusion dominated. The Korean fusion program does indeed invest some money in the US fusion program through the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Future ICOPS Conferences: 2004 – Baltimore, MD; 2005 – Monterey, CA; 2006 – Traverse City, MI; 2007 (joint with Pulsed Power) – TBD. The ExCom also had a Human Rights discussion led by Wally Mannheimer and Victor Granatstein concerning a personnel situation at Physics Today. While the motion put forward was vetoed, there was considerable private action and contact with APS DPP management.

The Pulsed Power Committee, chaired by Bob Reinovsky, reported that the 2001 PPPS conference is now in audit, with a good return to NPSS. However there are still some Book Broker issues to be resolved. The special issue of TNS for October 2002 is moving forward successfully. The 2003 Pulsed Power conference will be held in Dallas from June 16-19, with Mike Giesselmann of Texas Tech as the chair. All arrangements are complete, and many activities, including abstract processing, have been outsourced. In 2005 Pulsed Power will again meet contiguously with ICOPS. And there may be a few combined events, but this will not be a joint conference. It is possible that the megagauss conference will be held jointly with Pulsed Power in 2005. The steering committee is also looking at other areas and conferences with which to coordinate. They have also revised their student award plan so that nominations for student awards will be submitted yearly rather than biennially enabling students who graduate in the between years to be included in award opportunities. Gerry Cooperstein is chairing a subcommittee that will propose a scheme to make this effective.

The Radiation Effects steering group, chaired by Dale Platteter, have returned 10.4% on the Vancouver conference. The 2002 conference will have been held in Phoenix, AZ in July. They advertised it with a large brochure with many photos. Their web site is active and registration was on-line. There were over 100 overseas registrants at the end of May, and of the 162 summaries submitted, 102 were accepted for presentation in Phoenix.  They are preparing an updated CD-ROM of the notes from all their short courses held to date. These will be available to purchase from IEEE. They have also prepared a QuickTime video of  one of the 2001 short courses that will be given to NPSS members attending this year’s short course. They have added a new conference topic, Radiation Effects in High Energy Physics, in an effort to broaden the community served by the conference. In 2003, the 40^th NSREC will be held at the Monterey DoubleTree Hotel, with Alan Johnston of JPL as the chair. There will be a special issue of TNS reviewing their 40-year history and accomplishments in radiation hardening. There will also be a new session, this on Terrestrial Radiation Effects. In 2004, Dan Fleetwood will chair the conference to be held at the Atlanta Renaissance Waverly hotel, and in 2005, Fred Sexton of Sandia will be the chair, but the venue has not been chosen.

The Radiation Instrumentation Steering Group, chaired by Ron Keyser, noted that they are electing new members to the steering group. At this year’s NSS in Norfolk, VA, they will give the first Early Achievement award. Short courses will be held November 10-12, exhibits will be open November 12 –14, and MIC will run from November 13-16. The AdCom meeting will be held prior to the short courses. Tom Lewellen has been selected as general chair for the 2005 NSS/MIC, with Dick Lanza and Tom Cherry as NSS and MIC program chairs, respectively. They are closing in on a site.

The report for the Transnational committee was given by Patrick Le Dû for Erik Heinje. The committee has added two new members, one from India, the other from Czechoslovakia. They are concerned about NSS attendance, especially in 2004 for the Rome conference. There are some conflicting workshops, and CERN’s tight budget and limited travel may also pose difficulties. They are working to elevate more international members to senior member and Fellow status, A third of NPSS members come from outside North America. They will try also to profile their areas of activities.

The Members, Chapters and Distinguished Lecturers Committee, chaired by Vernon Price, reported that at ICOPS they added 35 new members, over half of whom were not from North America. Our total membership grew by 7.2% from April 2001 to April 2002. Increased membership may be attributable to a new method of contacting lapsed members, and to the new brochures and exhibit, plus recruiting efforts at conferences, and to the appeal of our journals. Check with Vern to see if you are eligible for elevation to senior member (v.price@ieee.org).

Paul Dressendorfer, chair of the Publications Committee and NPSS Editor-in-Chief reminded us that we should be working to expand our publications and other intellectual property, while still maintaining the highest of standards. We should be working to encourage all those whose work is appropriate to our journals to publish in them. We also need to work more on minicourse materials.  Also papers need to be made available earlier, especially from conferences. Password protected web sites should be encouraged, and these should be removed once the print or CD-ROM versions are available. More materials, especially conference records, might be made available through Xplore. This will take some time and head scratching by the AdCom at some point in the future.

Probably the biggest issue for the Publications Committee is the late appearance of our journals. Both TNS and TPS are behind schedule and it seems that year after year IEEE Pubs promises that they will do better, but it doesn’t happen. IEEE Pubs have also introduced a new policy that a journal issue that is presented to them even a day or two late, will now go to the end of the publications queue, so issues will be even later. In some instances, such as planning NSREC, not having the journal issue with papers from the past conference, causes serious problems in trying to select papers and plan for the next conference. Can we, as members, help to solve this problem? It has existed for all of the close to twenty years that I have been associated with IEEE Pubs.

Our Newsletter editor made an excellent suggestion, that every four years each technical committee plan a special issue that would be a state-of-the art review of their particular field. Such issues tend to become treasures when they are well planned and executed.

IEEE now requires that abstracts be submitted with copyright forms. Starting in 2003 abstracts will be posted on the web prior to manuscript publication.

The Communications Committee, chaired by Peter Clout, has produced a new flyer called “What is IEEE NPSS.” Again, copies of these and of the NPSS brochure, which will be revised for 2003, are available from Peter (clout@vista-control.com) for inclusion in conference briefcases. Just let him know how many you will need, and by what date. The booth materials that went astray (thanks, UPS) after the 2001 NSS/MIC have been replaced so we are now able to accommodate desktop exhibits at two conferences simultaneously. The NPSS poster is also available from Peter, or it may be downloaded from the NPSS web site, where it is available in pdf format.

Now that our web site has been transferred to IEEE and upgraded, it is time for many of the Technical Committees to get busy and work on their own pages. Perhaps each TC and Functional Committee could appoint a web person who would be responsible for keeping pages up to date and for getting correct link information to Dick Kouzes (RKouzes@pnl.gov). Our best face should not show us years behind the times.

Ron Jaszczak, chair of the Awards Committee, noted that May 15 was the deadline for nominations. There were 5 candidates for the Merit award and 4 for the Shea award. Other awards are Early Achievement, and graduate scholarships. Phelps travel grant recipients are chosen by the conferences that run short courses.

Osamu Ishihara reported that in 2002 there were 13 Fellow nominations, down from 18 in 2001. Of those 18, 11 were elevated to fellow status. Technical Committee chairmen should be alert to possible nominees from their fields since certain NPSS areas of interest are underrepresented by Fellows. Requirements for nomination – senior member of IEEE and outstanding technical contributions to field. Details and forms can be obtained from the IEEE web site.

Ed Lampo reported for the Finance Committee. He noted that we are solvent, but in the current scheme of things, we are unable to grow our reserves and will not be able to without some changes. Our conference registration fees are low by most standards and could easily be increased by a small amount until they approach the industry norm. Indeed, TAB may ask in future for higher conference returns. For reserves to grow, we must have growth in two of three budget areas including interest on reserves, revenues from publications and conferences, and dues. Each member costs the society money. This is a situation that is not unique to NPSS, but true for many IEEE societies. We have to strive for revenue neutrality in our membership fees. There is no interest income return expected for 2002, and IEEE gets the first 4%, if there is a return.

The Transactions Assessment was a key issue of discussion since its history is murky and its calculation complex. It was originally established to pay for Transaction issues that contained papers from conferences, with one issue devoted to one conference. In recent years, these papers have been published over several journal issues, so the costs are unclear.

The Coalition for Plasma Science, chaired by Gerry Rogoff, who is also our liaison, continues to do its excellent job in teaching folks what plasmas are, where and how they are used, and what benefits accrue from them. They focus on the government, media, K-12 students, and teacher training. Their web site is up and has informational material. They have held panel discussions at various conferences, and held a reception at the Banff ICOPS meeting.

• A motion was introduced that had been presented at the March AdCom meeting to provide the request notice period to change Bylaw 8.9 to read:

8.9 Conference Policy Committee (note name change): Responsible for recommending policies and procedures to AdCom for all conferences and symposia for which the NPSS takes full or partial responsibility and for ensuring compliance with IEEE conference policies as stated in the IEEE Meetings Organization Manual. Note that conference officers with fiduciary responsibility are to be members in good standing of the IEEE NPSS or of a cosponsoring society. The motion was seconded and passed unanimously.

• It was moved, seconded and passed that the Space Technology and Information Forum (STAIF) be held in cooperation with IEEE NPSS.

• The Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Committee introduced two motions.

1) The IEEE/NPSS authorizes the expenditure of $3000 to defray in part the costs of a reception to be held in conjunction with the IEEE Particle Accelerator Awards ceremony at PAC 03 in honor of the 2003 Awardees.

2) The IEEE/NPSS authorizes the contribution of $3000 to support student travel to PAC ‘03.

The motions were seconded, discussed and then withdrawn. Following the meeting, they were resubmitted for e-mail discussion and vote, and carried.

• A motion to increase the graduate scholarship awards was defeated. However, the Awards Committee will look at this award and all similar awards across IEEE societies to ensure that we are in agreement with the standard.

• A motion to eliminate the transactions assessment and increase conference fees to maintain revenue neutrality was seconded and passed.

• A motion was moved, seconded and passed to change our support of the Dusty Plasma Conference to technical support, since Osamu Ishihara is now on the program committee.

The meeting closed with a lengthy discussion of an action taken by the IEEE Board of Directors that disenfranchises our members in Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan, purportedly to remain in compliance with the laws of both New York State, where IEEE is incorporated, and the laws of the U.S. government. The Board’s action was learned of through the back door, when a request to sign a petition came from IEEE members in the Middle East. It was suggested that, until full member services could be restored to these individuals, their dues be refunded, and that they continue to be supplied with what limited services were supposedly still available to them. Letters to the IEEE president, to the TAB Executive Director and to other individuals in IEEE leadership positions have produced no satisfying results, only an indication that “this is being looked into,” and that a letter had been sent sometime well after the fact, to the U.S. IEEE student chapters. Why this action was not presented up front to all membership through the Institute is unclear and a matter of grave concern. Are we not a professional technical society that is meant to be transnational and nonpolitical? Why was this clandestine action not presented up front in the Institute, the global voice of IEEE? And why have letters to the editor of  the Institute concerning this action been denied publication? Just what is our Board trying to hide? AdCom passed a resolution that our concerns be taken by Peter Staecker to Ray Findlay, IEEE President, Mike Lightner, TAB Vice President, and Mary Ward-Callan, TAB Executive Director.

The next meeting of the Administrative Committee of NPSS will be held on Saturday, November 9, 2002, at the Sheraton Norfolk Waterside, Norfolk, VA, prior to the start of the NSS/MIC meeting.

Albe Larsen, the NPSS Secretary, can be reached at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, P.O. Box 4939, Stanford, CA  94039; Phone +1 650 926-2748; Fax: +1 650 926-5124; E-mail: amlarsen@slac.stanford.edu

Editor’s Note: Since the time of the AdCom meeting there have been developments on the disenfranchisement issue. My letter to The Institute, while initially not accepted, was printed without an important phrase in the August issue along with a longer letter applauding the withdrawal of service. I have also learned that in early January a well-written letter over the IEEE President’s signature went to all members affected by current US trade restrictions. It contained an offer to remit any dues paid. Why we, the general membership, were not informed of this is worrisome. What was there to hide? Nothing shameful here.