President's Report

The death of Ed Hoffman has been a big blow to the NPSS AdCom from both the personal and professional standpoints. Ed's intelligence, creativity, and sense of humor were wonderful additions to AdCom and will be sorely missed. Ed was actively involved in a lot of IEEE activities, and his efforts there will be difficult to replace. Ed was President of the NPSS, and I (the former NPSS Vice-President) have taken over as President. He was also the Transactions on Nuclear Science (TNS) Editor for those papers submitted to the Medical Imaging Conference (MIC) portion of the NSS/MIC Meeting. Paul Kinahan of the University of Washington (kinahan@u.washington.edu) is temporarily overseeing the review of the MIC papers, with considerable administrative support from Kimberly Eremic of UCLA (KEremic@mednet.ucla.edu). As Paul is an Assistant Editor for TNS and Kimberly provided similar support for Ed Hoffman for many years, I am confidant that the review of the MIC papers will not be interrupted, and perhaps more importantly, not delayed. Please note that all correspondence regarding MIC papers should now be addressed to Paul or Kimberly. Ed's death, coupled with John Valentine stepping down as the Editor for TNS manuscripts associated with the NSS, implies that we do not have Editors for approximately half of the papers that appear in TNS! We are actively searching for Editors for these papers - please let me know if you (or anybody that you know) is interested!
I have long appreciated how valuable our volunteers are. They generously donate a tremendous amount of time, effort, and intellect to advancing their professions and the status of IEEE. Ed's passing has also made me realize how vulnerable we are when we lose one. As the new President, I have given some thought to what I would like the "legacy" from my Presidency to be, and have decided that my goal is to provide more depth at some of the critical positions within the NPSS. The current vacuum in the Editorship of TNS is a prime example, but it is also an opportunity for NPSS to look at how we should be doing the editing of TNS. How many Editors should there be? What are their topic areas? How do manuscripts get assigned to the correct Editor? Can we streamline the editing process (such as by outsourcing some of the routine clerical tasks) to lighten the load on these valuable volunteers, and more importantly, to reduce the time to publication? Steve Gold (gold@ppdmail.nrl.navy.mil) has volunteered to chair a committee to look into these (and related) questions.
A similar "opportunity" exists in Membership and Recruitment. Vern Price has been working almost single-handedly in this area for many years, but is now cutting back his activities. Charlie Neumeyer (neumeyer@pppl.gov) has agreed to chair a committee to find ways to help Vern, as well as to consider a myriad of other membership issues. I believe that another opportunity exists in the Treasurer position, where Ed Lampo has performed yeoman's service for well over a decade - I shudder to think of the trouble that we would be in without Ed. I have not yet attacked this problem, but plan to soon!
If you have any thoughts on these or any other issues, please feel free to contact me.
Bill Moses can be reached at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, MS55-121, Berkeley, CA 94720-8099, E-mail: wwmoses@lbl.gov.