Minutes

2003 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS)

Nuclear and Medical Imaging Sciences Council (NMISC) Meeting

 

Date: Friday, October 24, 2003, Noon-2pm

Location: Umatilla Conference Room, Doubletree Hotel—Columbia River, Portland OR

 

Members Present: John Aarsvold, Magnus Dahlbom, Margaret Daube-Witherspoon, Lars Eriksson, Ron Huesman, Marijana Ivanovic, Tom Lewellen, Steven Meikle, Bradley Patt, Charles Stearns, Christopher Thompson, Larry Zeng, Ben Tsui, Sibylle Ziegler

Members Absent: Paul Mardsen, Gary Wong

Others Present:  Simon Cherry, Alberto Del Guerra, Edward Hoffman, Joel Karp, Ron Keyser, Paul Kinahan Michael King, Robert Miyaoka, Craig Levin, Ron Jaszczak

 

1.      Welcome by R. Jaszczak, NMISC Chair

2.      Introduction and roll call by Craig Levin, NMISC Secretary and Nominations Sub-Committee Chair – Current and newly elected members by.  All attendees introduced themselves.  5 new members are elected each year.  Committee members serve a three-year term.   The 2003 elected candidates were John Aarsvold, Ron Huesman, Tom Lewellen, Chris Thompson, and Benjamin Tsui.

3.      Review and adoption of Agenda, Craig Levin.

4.      Approval of the minutes of the meeting of November 15, 2002. The minutes from last year’s council meeting were approved unanimously.

5.      Announcement of NMISC election by Craig Levin.  The newly elected members of the council for 2004 are: Alberto Del Guerra, Jeff Fessler, Ronald Jaszczak, Joel Karp, and Paul Kinahan.

6.      2002 NSS/MIC – Norfolk, VA – final report, Paul Kinahan

Paul Kinahan reported on some of the key statistics of the 2002 MIC meeting.  Registrees: MIC;484; NSS:361.  This was the first year that MIC surpassed NSS in registrees.  Features: 5 presentations per oral session, 5 poster sessions; All posters were up during the entire duration;  Poster tours and parallel topic poster indexing were implemented;  35 regular oral session papers, 266 poster session papers;  Joint NSS/MIC Plenary Session;  Compton and Breast Imaging Workshops;  Educational Outreach (local high school physics teachers program at Jefferson Lab); 42 student travel awards; information booths (NIBIB, SNM, AMI); 32 short course student discounts; ~350 attendees to short courses; 162 student attendees (~1/3 were student members).

7.      2003 NSS/MIC – Portland, OR – report to date

Mike King reported on some of the key statistics of the 2002 NSS/MIC meeting.  Attendance total: 1362 as of Oct. 23, 2003 (compare to ~850 in 2002); Abstract submissions: 434 submitted (~322 in 2002); 52 MIC oral; 4 Joint NSS/MIC oral; 354 poster, 24 rejections (25 last year); Program:: Plenary 1: Roderick Pettigrew, Benjamin Tsui, Edward Hoffman; Joint Planary: William Moses, Harrsion Barett; Plenary 2: Steve Webb; NMSTC Awards: Ron Jaszczak; 4 short courses, 7 MIC oral sessions, 2 joint oral sessions, 6 poster sessions (up two days each); River cruise banquet; Industrial sponsorship of 21 student travel awards: 8 companies invited, $10,500 collected from 6 companies.

8.      2004 NSS/MIC – Rome – preview, Alberto Del Guerra

Features: All activities at the Ergife hotel; The hotel is just outside of Rome.  900 hotel rooms.  Enormous floor space for posters.  Events are planned for every night.  The goal is > 1200 attendees.  ~$500 conference registration fees are expected for contingencies; shuttle to Rome; recommends booking early for travel/hotel (hotel non-refundable once booked); In the process of generating student awards.

9.      2005 NSS/MIC – Puerto Rico – preview, Tom Lewellen

Tom Lewellen reported on the 2005 Puerto Rico NSS/MIC conference.  Conquistador Resort.  Simon Cherry is MIC chair, the budget is set: $475/person registration. Hotel has $52,00 sq. ft of exhibit space, 14,000 sq. ft for posters; $50,000 generated for student awards from DOE/NIH.

10.  2006 NSS/MIC – San Diego, CA –preview, Gram Smith

Town and Country Resort, October 29-Nov. 5; Hotel contract finalized; RTSD will be held jointly with NSS/MIC; Bo Yu will work again as web-master.  Key administrative positions on the organizing committee such as Treasurer and Local Arrangements are committed to by previous committee members.  MIC Program Chair: John Aarsvold.

11.  2007 NSS/MIC (Europe?) by Uwe Bratzler.

The case for a location in Germany presented.  Possible areas: Hamburg or Berlin area, Aachen-Juelich-Bonn area,  or Munich area; all areas have universities and/or national labs nearbye that are interested in hosting/helping. Germany represented the largest group of all international attendees for the 2003 Portland meeting and has the 2nd largest European IEEE membership.  Informal NMISC vote: 8 for 6 against Europe.  Site selection committee chair must be decided upon.

12.  NSS/MIC in Australia, by Steven Meikle

It is clear that we would lose in US attendance numbers but what about increases in attendance from SE Asia (including Australia)?  Of approximately 110 people polled from Japan that don’t normally go to this meeting there was a favorable response. For the key question: “Would you be more or less likely to attend if the conference was held in Australia?” roughly 2/3 said either more likely or it didn’t matter, the other 1/3 said less likely.  Japan was preferred over Australia (no surprise). 

13.  Report by Chair of NMISC Communications (Web) Sub-Committee, by Magnus Dahlbom  Nothing to report.

14.  Report by Chair of NMISC Awards-Fellow Sub-Committee, by Margaret Daube-Witherspoon

Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award went to Dr. Habib Zaidi.  Nominations are solicited for IEEE Fellow (due March 15, 2004) and NPSS awards (due May 15, 2004).  Info for these awards may be found at www.ieee.org/npss under “Awards”.

15.  Discussion of TNS-B proposal, by Edward Hoffman.  Bypassed due to time constraints.

A motion to accept changes was seconded and carried unanimously by the committee.  There was some brief discussion of last point on report regarding requirement for no more than two NMISC members from the same institution.

16.  NSS/MIC short courses, Ron Jaszczak.  Steve Derenzo’s first year as short course Chair to date has been successful.   Truncated due to time constraints.

17.  Discussion of Joint NMIS/RISC roles in NSS/MIC, by Ron Keyser.  Truncated due to time.

18.  Attracting commercial exhibitors at NSS/MIC, by Ron Keyser.  Truncated due to time.

19.  Extramural funding for MIC, by Craig Levin.  Brief discussion of NIBIB and NCI conference funding program announcement (PAR-03-176).  Up to $50k/year and multiple years allowed.

20.  Report on 2002 Breast Imaging Workshop, by Craig Levin.  Funded by NIH and Susan Komen Foundation.  88 registered participants, ~25 walk-ins. 25 speakers (biologists, chemists, physicians, physicists, NIH and Komen grant administrators). Favorable evaluation results (Good: 3%, Very good: 57%, Outstanding: 40%).  Based upon the evaluations we will be doing it again in 2004 in Rome.

21.  Election results for new NMISC Vice-Chair, by Ron J.. Tom Lewellen was elected as the new vice-Chair to serve under Magnus Dahlbom who will be NMISC Chair starting 2004.

22.  Confirmation/ratification of Magnus Dahlbom as incoming NMISC Chair for 2004. Confirmed/ratified.  Larry Zang will take Magus’ place as NMISC web master.

23.  Re-appointment or selection of new Secretary of NMISC, by Magnus Dahlbom;  Steven Meikle was selected and voted in as new NMISC Secretary starting in 2004.

24.  Re-appointment or selection of Chair, Nominations Sub-committee, by Magnus Dahlbom.  Steven Meikle will also take on this role starting in 2004.

25.  Other Business.  None

 

 

Respectfully Submitted 01/14/04,

Craig Levin