President's Message

Serving as President of the IEEE EMC Society has been a great experience. The past two years have been exciting and challenging. Despite the economy, world politics and changes within IEEE, our Society has managed to remain strong and focused on our primary objectives.

In January, Kimball Williams will take over as our fearless leader and “receiver of 10,000 emails.” I, on the other hand, will assume the enviable title of Immediate Past President or “forwarder of IEEE email to the President.”

Since this is my last President’s Message for the EMC Newsletter, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the important accomplishments of our Society over the past two years. Among the most significant accomplishments have been the improvements to the IEEE Transactions on EMC instituted by Professor Marcello D’Amore as Editor-in-Chief. During his term as editor, Professor D’Amore significantly restructured the Transactions editorial staff, set clear goals for the publication, improved the efficiency of the review process, solicited high quality papers and made the IEEE Transactions on EMC one of the most highly regarded publications on electromagnetics in the world. Professor D’Amore’s term is nearly over, but his contributions have significantly enhanced the technical reputation of our Society.

Starting in January, Professor Flavio Canavero will be the new Editor-in-Chief of the Transactions. Professor Canavero has been the Managing Editor for the past three years and I expect that the excellence that we have come to expect from our Transactions will continue under his leadership.

Another leap forward for the technical focus of our Society is the much improved and greatly expanded technical content of our Newsletter. Professor Robert Olsen, the Newsletter’s Technical Editor, has invested a significant amount of time and effort over the past couple of years to solicit good papers, obtain thoughtful reviews and provide technical assistance to authors. As a result, our Newsletter has become a respected source of technical information related to EMC. The Newsletter also contains expanded coverage of EMC technical meetings and events thanks to the tireless work and skillful leadership of Janet O’Neil, the Newsletter Editor.

Of course, the Transactions and the Newsletter are not the only technical publications of the Society. IEEE Press also publishes books and courses linked to our Society. The Board recently implemented a procedure for reviewing and approving any new IEEE Press publications that bear our logo. Mark Montrose and Ghery Pettit played key roles in setting up this procedure, which should ensure that future EMC publications coming out of IEEE Press are subject to the same peer review as our quarterly publications.

You may have noticed that the technical content and quality of our symposia continues to rise. This is due, in part, to renewed efforts to emphasize the technical aspects of our symposia. More guidance is being provided to symposia organizing committees to ensure that technical quality is not sacrificed in order to achieve other goals. Better communication between the Board, the symposium committee, authors, reviewers and exhibitors is helping to ensure that our symposium retains its technical focus. Our Society has also been working with symposia outside the U.S. to provide technical support and has assumed more responsibility for the technical content of co-sponsored symposia that display our Society logo.

Of course, the Society has also accomplished many things over the past two years that are not directly related to our technical focus. For example, we held our first Board meeting ever in South America (São Paulo, Brazil). We enlisted several Board members to participate as speakers in a one-day technical colloquium and exhibition we organized with the South Brazil Chapter during the time we were there. The Society co-sponsored a symposium in Istanbul, Turkey. The Board decided to make the paper version of the EMC Transactions optional for members. And last, but not least, we scheduled our 50th Anniversary symposium to take place in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2007.

All in all, it’s been a productive two years and I believe the Society is well positioned to accomplish even greater things in the coming years. If you have any suggestions for improving the products or services of the Society, send me an email. If you have ten suggestions, send me 10 emails. I’ll be happy to forward them to Kimball. EMC