CPMT PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

I would like to welcome the following newly formed CPMT Chapters. The new CPMT Chapters are the Finland Chapter, the Hong Kong Chapter, the West Ukraine Chapter, the Central Ukraine Chapter, Nizhny Novgorod Chapter, and the Novosibirsk Chapter. I would like to thank Ralph Russell, our Membership & Chapter Development Chair, for his continuing efforts in helping new chapters to form worldwide.
Ralph Wyndrum will be representing CPMT at the Division I & IV, Region 8 meeting to be held October 4, 1998, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I would like to thank Ralph for offering to represent CPMT. Many of our European CPMT Chapter Chairs will also be attending. We look forward to Ralph's report.
The CPMT has disbursed its portion of the Georgia Tech/NSF/CPMT grants to Sushil Bhavnani of Auburn University, Yogendra Joshi of the University of Maryland, Avram Bar-Cohen of University of Minnesota, Gary May of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Jose Shutt-Aine of the University of Illinois to support the development of new courses and curricula for packaging in the 21st Century. The selection of the awards was based on presentations made at the 48th ECTC Conference held in Seattle, Washington in May 1998. We will look forward to hearing the results of this outreach effort.
Also at the 48th ECTC, Lejun Wang of Georgia Tech was awarded the 7th Annual Motorola/CPMT Graduate Fellowship for his presentation, "Novel Thermally Reworkable Underfill Encapsulants for Flip Chip Applications." Congratulations!
In a separate article in this issue of the Newsletter, you will learn more about the results of the recent Technical Strategy Workshop chaired by our Vice President of Technology, Rao Tummala. This effort will result in an updated plan which will insure that our membership can be kept abreast of the dramatic changes which are occurring and will occur in packaging, physical design, materials, and process technology in the electronics industry.
In addition to the technical side, radical changes are also occurring on the professional side. The emergence of both backend foundries as major development and manufacturing entities and market globalization will also have a profound impact on the way we work. I was able to attend the IEEE-USA Professional Activities Conference held September 4-7 in Phoenix, Arizona. The theme was "Preparing for the New Millennium" and I am now more aware of the growing importance of supporting the professional development of our membership. I will talk to this issue in future reports. --John W. Stafford, President CPMT Society.