This has been a very busy year with many activities for our Society. The 6th International Symposium on Underwater Technology in Wuxi, China held April 21–24 was very successful. The Symposium general Co-Chairs were Tamaki Ura, Robert Wernli, and Wei-Cheng Cui from the China Ship Scientific Research Center. This was our first major event in China and we were very pleased with the technical papers, the attendance, and the organization of the Symposium. The Offshore Technology Conference was held May 4–7 in Houston, Texas with OES as one of the sponsors. This year’s event coincided with the flu scare but 67,000 people attended with a sell-out of exhibit space. The Panel sessions as well as the technical papers were of particular interest. The OCEANS ’09 Bremen Conference was the following week and the local organizing committee presented an extremely well organized Conference. There were 1,172 participants in the Conference with 104 exhibitors. The Conference met our expectations and was extremely successful. One of the highlights was the ROV Competition for local high school students conducted in an aquarium just behind the exhibits. Throughout the day the aquarium and stage were used to demonstrate equipment and to brief new technology and new developments in oceanography. The ROV competition was broadcast live on local radio where the disc jockey referred to the OES members as the people that make the oceans “rock”. To the delight of the audience the winning team consisted of two 14-year old young ladies.

We have a number of lady OES members on our ADCOM and EXCOM who contribute significantly to our efforts. Pam Hurst is our representative to the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE), serves on our ADCOM, and has been very active in organizing conferences, symposia, and workshops. Diane DiMassa is our Treasurer and a professor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy which will be hosting the MAST Competition in late June. Marinna Martini is on our ADCOM and responsible for our electronic newsletter and will be helping Diane with the MAST Competition. Liz Creed is also a member of our ADCOM and responsible for organizing and manning our OES booth at various events. She now has the booth in modular form so that we can exhibit at multiple conferences at the same time. She was very successful in recruiting new members and at the Bremen conference recruiting over 60 new members. Barbara Fletcher, another member of our ADCOM, has taken over the job of Web Master from Todd Morison and is also helping organize the OCEANS Conference in San Diego in 2013. Milica Stojanovic is a member of the ADCOM, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Oceanic Engineering, and maintains the Society’s calendar. We also have one of our former ADCOM Members, Ferial El-Hawary, who was the Co-Chair for the OCEANS Conference in Quebec City and is the IEEE Regional Director for Canada. We are very pleased with
the participation of so many women engineers and scientists in OES.

OCEANS ’09 will be in Biloxi at the end of October and will be focused on education and student participation with several related activities. On the Saturday before the Conference there will be an “Educator’s Professional Development Program” for 6–12th grade teachers at Stennis Space Center. It is expected that IEEE will provide material for the program. There will also be a High School Outreach Class Program in which 8 classes will be brought to the conference for special training and other activities and OES will be sponsoring two of the classes. The Office of Naval Research is also sponsoring our student poster competition once again this year.

The IEEE TAB Strategic Planning Committee has developed an initial Strategic Plan which I will propose that OES adopt and follow. The objectives in the plan are those things that we are trying to achieve.

Jerry Carroll
OES President