EDS Technical Committees & Other Technically Related Groups

Report from the Vice-President of Technical Activities

The Electron Devices Society has set-up technical committees to help make sure the society is serving the right technical areas. The committees coordinate with meetings and publications to help insure that the technical information IEEE is rightly proud of remains on target and covers all the areas the members of the EDS are interested in.

There are 14 technical committees ranging across a wide spectrum of topics. They range from mainstream silicon technologies (VLSI Technology and Circuits) to more exotic materials (Organic Electronics) and emerging areas (Nanotechnology). This is the complete list of committees and their chairs:

The primary reason that committees exist is to make sure the EDS is responsive to new trends. The EDS, as an active technical society, needs to make sure that the technical offerings of the society are in tune with emerging trends. The society needs to be nimble enough to make sure it helps get meetings started or expanded to include new topical areas.

Technical committees will begin to review meetings on a regular basis. Technical committees will give advice to the meetings committee chaired by Jon Candelaria. Over 140 conferences currently get either technical or financial sponsorship from the Electron Devices Society. Most of the arrangements have not been reviewed since the initial application. We will now review meetings on a five-year cycle to make sure they are offering value to society members.

Technical co-sponsorship of a meeting will require the meeting to meet several objectives. The meeting should serve a well-defined audience. It should be unique either in time, technical content, or geographically. We really do not want to sponsor meetings that are in competition with one another. This does not preclude regional meetings, serving a particular region is a goal we encourage for smaller workshops and conferences. Clearly, the technical content of the conference should be relevant to the scope of electron devices.  Members of the society should receive a break on the registration fee.

Financial sponsorship or co-sponsorship entails greater risk for the society; and as a result, meetings should be held to a higher standard. In addition to the criteria for technical co-sponsorship, a financially supported conference should have limited competition from other EDS meetings and should have a flat or growing attendance. It should be financially successful. If the conference has a digest, it should be included in the IEEE Conference Publication Program (formerly called Book Broker Program).

There should be policies that ensure regular turnover in the technical committee so that new people participate in the meeting’s success. At the same time, there should be a provision for a mechanism to provide some long-term stability over the management of the conference. Many successful conferences have a changing technical committee and a more stable steering committee. The steering committee has little influence on paper selection, but can advise on directions, logistics, and budgeting.

Through these reviews, we hope to help conferences get better and to serve the technical community of the EDS better and more efficiently.

Mark E. Law
EDS Vice-President of Technical Activities
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, USA