President's Message
On January 1, 2008 when I became President I had the feeling that there was ample time to steer the Society in the appropriate direction to face the new challenges that were coming ahead. Now that I have to report on the status of the Society I realize that time is passing very quickly. However, good progress has been made and there is a clear view on the direction to go to make our Society stronger and highly visible within the IEEE. Crucial elements are the continuous increase in membership benefits and the strong active involvement of our total pool of volunteers. The Strategic Committee, consisting out of the President, President-Elect, Junior and Senior Past Presidents and the Executive Director, is responsible for the overall vision and strategy of the Society, for lining up with the general IEEE goals and to determine possible initiatives and tools to enable the implementation of the strategy. However, the real implementation is based on the support of administrative bodies such as the ExCom and AdCom and the help of the volunteers. The AdCom meetings are therefore considered as important meetings for the efficient operation of the Society and the right forum where the members can have their impact. A volunteer is not somebody willing to work for the Society but rather being part of it. The large variety of society driven application fields (e.g. health and wellness, infotainment, transport and mobility, ambient intelligence, energy and environment, communication) need engineers with a strong multidisciplinary training mastering besides electronics, with such fields like bioengineering, chemistry, material science, etc. The updated field of interest of the Society has broadened the scope of the Society so that more professionals should be able to consider Electron Devices as their home Society. However, this is not reflected in the membership where compared to 2007 we have experienced a growth in 2008 of only 2%. A main reason is of course the economical situation making IEEE membership expensive, especially in non US-Regions like South-America, Asia and East-Europe. Semiconductor industry is still in the down cycle and even academic institutions are facing a reduction of their budgets. It is therefore essential to come up with new ideas for membership benefits. Last year, EDS initiated QuestED, the on-line feedback system allowing members to ask technical questions. However, we have the impression that not sufficient people are aware of it. The fact that even IEEE is considering a similar initiative is a strong indication that we are taking the right type of actions. EDS is very open to and welcomes new initiatives and suggestions from individual members. The Globalization strategy, initiated several years ago, resulted in the active participation of more non-USA members in the different administrative and technical committees. The midterm executive and administrative committee meeting is always organized outside the US. In 2008 the meeting was organized in Athens, Greece. This year it was held at the end of May in Mumbai, along with a Region 10 (Asia & Pacific) Chapters meeting and a number of Mini-Colloquia organized in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. There has been a strong chapter growth in Region 10, especially in countries like China and India. Both countries are important because of their increasing activities in the field of semiconductor research and manufacturing. There is also strong focus on forming new Chapters in Region 9 (Latin America). In 2008, a chapter was formed in Colombia and this year the action is in Argentina. The Region 9 Chapters Meeting is scheduled to take place in November 2009 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Additional initiatives are taking place in the other Regions. It is very positive that amongst the new chapters there are also several EDS Student Chapters. Students are the potential for the future and the source of innovative ideas. We all know that not only the number of Chapters is important, but more essential is the degree to which these Chapters are active and serving the members. The Chapters are the heart of the Society and drive membership growth. In 2008, the EDS Chapter of the Year Award, for an outstanding record of sustained chapter activities that contribute substantially to the vitality of the Electron Devices Society, was given to the ED Orlando Chapter. Last year the initiative was initiated that on request all chapters can receive an EDS banner. In 2008, there was also again a strong increase in the use of the Distinguished Lecture (DL) program and 20 Mini-Colloquia (MQ) were organized in different parts of the world. With a potential of 123 DLs, there are about 200 presentations given annually. Although for 2009 the budgets for DLs, MQs and chapter subsidies have been increased, the request for support is much larger than expected. Within the Society, the Conferences and Workshops have always been one of the success stories. In 2008, EDS supported 134 conferences, including 23 financially sponsored ones. The Vice Presidents of Meetings and Technical Activities are continuing efforts to obtain and make better use of the IEEE Conference data base to get to a better view on the topics covered, the geographical distribution, the meeting calendars and the success of the meetings. An important tool will be the questionnaire that have been organized in 2008 and which is not under study by all Vice-Presidents. They will work out a strategy to optimize the offer of conferences and to avoid too much overlap and/or overkill. Since late 2008, we are facing the economical downturn, also impacting the number of attendees at the conferences and their finances. This is a general trend, not only influencing EDS. The need for the mentioned conference data is therefore becoming even more important. The importance of education within the Society is illustrated by the Fellowship Programs, available to both Graduate and Master Students, and the Education Award. We strongly encourage more students to apply for fellowships. The Society also has to establish strong interactions with the industrial community and the engineers in the field. Initiatives are therefore initiated to also better serve these members by organizing the appropriate type of events, to have them well represented in the different committees and to better inform them on their eligibility to be nominated for several of the existing awards. Recent interactions with industry have clearly pointed out that several of the Society benefits are very relevant to them, but not always well known. Actions have been taken to increase the awareness of membership benefits. There has been a strong focus towards the Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD) members, and IEEE EDS is playing a leading role. Initiatives have been started up to increase the representation and visibility of GOLD members in all the Society committees. The GOLD committee will have 20 members in total. The successful start at IEDM in 2007 of a GOLD Lecture linked to an EDS conference, has been repeated in 2008 and will be continued. For 2009, there was a special GOLD event during the midterm meeting in Mumbai and a GOLD lecture is scheduled during IEDM in Baltimore. This year the new Early Career Award for GOLD members will be given for the first time. To increase the involvement of GOLD members in the DL program, actions are on going to appoint GOLD Ambassadors in the different regions. At the publication level, our flagship publications, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices (TED), and IEEE Electron Device Letters (EDL), are doing very well and have good turnaround times. The complete review process from ‘submission to publication’ is happening electronically for EDL and the plans are in place to do the same for T-ED. More proceedings of EDS sponsored conferences have become accessible via IEEE Xplore and an effort is being taken to also have proceedings from previous years electronically accessible. In 2009, Samar Sahar became the Vice-President for Publications and will together with his team continue to optimize procedures and to work out new initiatives. Electron Devices is a great Society with enthusiastic volunteers and professional staff members and I am very confident that all together we will achieve our goals and be able to face the coming challenges. As reported in another contribution in this Newsletter, our Executive Director, Bill Van Der Vort, retired at the end of June and is replaced by Chris Jannuzzi. We will do whatever possible to make this transition as smooth as possible with a minor impact on the volunteers. Although the Society lost money in 2008 due to the situation on the stock market reducing it reserves, it is still in a healthy financial condition. However, a serious challenge will be the budget control for 2010 where we have to follow the general IEEE financial rules. This implies of course for all societies. As already mentioned a year ago, the Society is there for its members and all possible comments and suggestions that you may have will be discussed and taken into consideration. We are looking towards your active involvement to make EDS stronger and even more unique. Let’s go jointly for the changes to pave the future. Cor L. Claeys EDS President IMEC Leuven, Belgium |
