Dan Hoolihan
President, EMC Society
This is the final President's Column I will be writing as the end of my two-year term is imminent. It has been an honor to serve as the Electromagnetic Compatibility Society's President for the calendar years 1998 and 1999. I have appreciated the many opportunities that have come my way the last two years and it has been great to meet fellow EMC Society members all over the world at conferences and other social and technical occasions.
The President for the next two years will be Joe Butler and we are already communicating daily to make a smooth transition between our administrations. Joe has been a long-time member of the EMCS Board of Directors and is familiar with our history and procedures. He will do an excellent job for us, I am sure.
Joe will have his strategies and favorite topics to stress. I have tried to emphasize our growing international strength and have tried to grow chapters around the world. We have managed to have Board meetings outside the United States once each year (Italy - 1998 and Japan - 1999) and we have encouraged new chapters to be formed worldwide.
We have more work to do in both areas. We need to have representation on the Board from Region 9 (Mexico, Latin America, and South America); I have urged the Board to consider a change in the bylaws of the Society to help make this happen. We have representation from Regions 7, 8 and 10 plus United States representatives but we need to have a member from our neighbors to the South of the United States.
I would like to congratulate the newly elected members of the Board as they look forward to their three-year terms of serving the Society in their special roles. Congratulations to Andy Drozd (reelected board member), Andrew Podgorski (past board member from Region 7 who joins us on the board again), and Larry Cohen, Fred Heather, Moto Kanda, and Jose Perini (all elected to the Board for the first time).
One of my last duties as President is to prepare a report for the IEEE summarizing our accomplishments over the last five years. (Each of the 36 Societies in the IEEE must do this once every five years on a rotating basis.) In short, our last five years has been quite good:
Our total Society membership has grown from around 4400 to approximately 5200 members (18% increase) since 1994.
We have produced an IEEE International Symposium on EMC every year in the last five years and they have all been both technical and financial successes.
We continue to produce IEEE Standards in the area of EMC at a rate equal to IEEE Societies many times our size.
Our Transactions and Newsletter continue to be published on a timely basis and offer technically outstanding articles.
Our educational and technical service activities continue at a high level.
Our website (https://www.emcs.org) was developed to service our membership and provide information about EMC to the public.
I hope that the 20% of our Society members that went to the 1999 Seattle Symposium on EMC had an interesting and educational experience. The technical papers were excellent as well as the workshops and tutorials offered during the week. The social activities were outstanding and the Seattle weather cooperated with our interests for most of the week (there was this unusual lightning storm one night!). My sincere congratulations again to the local organizing committee (chaired by Bill Gjertson) for a great EMC symposium!
I look forward to enjoying the 2000 EMC Symposium in Washington, DC; I know that Bill
Duff and his committee are working hard to make it happen next August.
I would like to close with a thank you to the Executive Committee of the Board of
Directors for all their support over the past two years; they made my job go very
smoothly. My thanks also to the board members who served with me in 1998 and 1999; I
appreciated your time and efforts to continue to make the EMC Society one of the premier
Societies in the IEEE.
To the regular members of the Society, I thank you for your support also. I anticipate meeting many more of you over the next few years and keep those phone calls, faxes and e-mails coming to me at 651-638-0250, 651-638-0285, and dhoolihan@tuvps.com, respectively.