CPMT PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

The 49th Electronics Component and Technology Conference (ECTC) held June 1-4, 1999 in San Diego was one of the most successful ECTCs held to date. Some 386 persons attended the ECTC Short Courses held prior to the conference on June 1, 1999 and over 900 persons attended the ECTC.
All who attended the conference agreed that the papers presented were of a very high quality. A new feature of the conference was a plenary session on "Emerging Technologies," Chaired by Rao Tummala our Technical VP, which was held the evening of June 1, 1999 and was attended by over 250 persons. The 8th annual Motorola-IEEE/CPMT Society Graduate Student Fellowship for Research in Electronic Packaging was won by Daoqiang Lu from the Georgia Institute of Technology, his paper was "Mechanisms Underlying the Unstable Contact Resistance of Conductive Adhesives". He was one of 8 finalists who presented their papers at the ECTC.
The 50th Electronics Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) will be held May 21-24, 2000 in Las Vegas, Nevada and which time the 50th anniversary of ECTC will also be celebrated. The year 2000 will also
mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the CPMT.
At the CPMT luncheon held during the 49th ECTC I reported on the status of our society. The financial position of your CPMT society is strong. Compared to 1997 the CPMT membership grew 2.7% in 1998. CPMT has some 12 chapters in North America, 11 chapters in Europe and 7 in Asia/Pacific. Compared to 1997 CPMT chapters grew by 2. At the 49th ECTC the Santa Clara Valley CPMT chapter was awarded the "Chapter of the Year Award," an award initiated by the CPMT to foster chapter growth. R. Sacks the IEEE New Technology Directions Committee Chair recently noted that the CPMT TC- 15 New Technology Directions Committee headed by Ephrain Suhir is ahead of most other IEEE entities in determining the emerging technologies of interest to its society members. In this issue of the newsletter you will find an article by Paul Wesling concerning online education courses (whose development was partially funded by CPMT) which will shortly be made available our membership to help you keep up to date in these changing times.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Ralph Wyndrum, CPMT President from 1997-1998, will be running this year for Director-Division 1. I would ask our CPMT membership to consider supporting his candidacy for this important IEEE position.
Finally I would again like to urge our membership to participate in your CPMT chapters as an excellent way to locally network with your peers. Either Marsha Tickman or Ralph Russell can assist you in identifying a chapter near you.

-- CPMT President John Stafford, Motorola