Minutes

2007 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS)
Nuclear and Medical Imaging Sciences Council (NMISC) Meeting


Meeting Commenced: 12:10 pm, Thursday November 2, 2007

Meeting Location: Sea Pearl Suites 5-6, Hilton Hawaiian Beach Resort & Spa, Waikiki

Attendees: Tom Lewellen, Ramsey Badawi, Christian Morel, Dimitris Visvikis, Robert Miyaoka, Paul Kinahan, Magnus Dahlbom, Roger Fulton, Charles Watson, Ed Lampo, Eric Frey, Anna Celler, Yuan-Chuan Tai, John Aarsvold, Joel Karp, Ron Huesman, Todd Peterson, Ron Jaszczak, Zhenghong Lee, Ben Tsui, Lukas Pichl, M’hamed Bentourkia, Yiping Shao


  1. Welcome and preliminary business

    • Tom Lewellen opened the meeting and introduced the agenda.

    • A motion was made to accept the 2006 minutes without correction - carried unanimously.

  2. Report on 2006 MIC - San Diego (John Aarsvold, MIC Chair)

  3. Report on 2007 MIC - Honolulu (Eric Frey, MIC Deputy Chair)

    • 670 papers submitted, approx 14% rejection rate. Breakdown was 46% North America, 35% Europe, 21% Asia-Pacific.

    • The increased number of accepted papers required extra poster space and parallel sessions.

    • Refresher courses introduced for the first time and were well attended.

    • Approx $40k raised from company sponsorship.

    • 140 student award applications which resulted in a huge workload, 116 were awarded.

    • appointed 9 assistant chairs to ease the workload for abstract review process. Suggested to use larger number of topics and assistant chairs in future meetings.

    • Discussion ensued about how to cope with growth of MIC and whether to continue having parallel sessions; Dimitris suggested we obtain stats from past meetings; Anna finds parallel sessions result in information overload; Alternative is to shrink the meeting but John asked which 20 posters would you reject? Past MIC Chairs have found that bottom 10-15% are easy to reject but after that it gets very hard. Connsensus seems to be that meeting needs to grow and Tom suggested that each Chair needs to find appropriate rejection threshold o ensure quality of science is maintained.

  4. 2008 NSS/MIC - Dresden (Tom Lewellen)

    • Still a little in flux but the committee is working hard.

    • Sybile Ziegler and Wolfgandg Enghardt will be MIC Chairs.

    • Ron Jaszczak mentioned that the committee is seeking assistance with raising sponsorship money.

  5. 2009 NSS/MIC - Orlando (Tom Lewellen)

    • NSS/MIC will occupy entire conference space of hotel.

    • A full committee has been formed.

    • Ramsey Badawi will be MIC Chair, Dick Lanza General Chair.

  6. 2010 NSS/MIC - ?Knoxville (Tom Lewellen)

    • Some US government labs are complaining about the use of tourist destinations as scientific conference sites, e.g. Hawaii, and want to return to non-tourist sites. Knoxville was runner up in 2009 and relatively cheap at $120 flat rate.

    • General Chair will be Ron Keyser.

    • A motion was put for this committee to accept Knoxville as the 2010 site - carried unanimously.

  7. 2011 NSS/MIC site selection (Tom Lewellen, Tony Lavietes)

    • Tom asked committee for views on frequency of non-US conferences, currently every 3-4 years. Current proposals include Spain and South Korea. Potential US west coast sites include Anchorage, Vancouver, San Diego, Reno and others. Tony reviewed the Anchorage site; they have a new convention centre surrounded by hotels with more than enough convention space and hotel room nights; suggestion would be to hold NSS/MIC earlier than usual, e.g. early October; room rate $69-150 per night.

  8. Election of Vice-Chair

    • A ballot was held and Robert Miyaoka was duly elected as the incoming Vice-Chair of NMISC.

  9. Phelps Award

    • A draft proposal to AdCom was distributed electronically prior to the meeting for the Phelps Award to be opened up to post docs and research associates (<5 years post graduation) in addition to grad students and to increase the funding from $4k to $8k per annum.

    • Ron Jaszczak clarified that NSS/MIC gets approx half of the $4k from NPSS for short courses, the remainder is funded by the MIC.

    • The draft proposal was approved by a majority of NMISC members prior to the meeting and forwarded to AdCom.

  10. Awards Sub-Committee Report (Paul Kinahan)

    • This is the second year of giving the MIC awards every year (previously MIC awards were given in alternating years).

    • Not as many nominations received this year as was hoped but all were very deserving candidates. Paul asked for suggestions on how to increase the number of nominations and then went on to briefly describe how the awards sub-committee reviews nominations. Paul chooses evaluation committee based on experience and continuity of service (on this committee) while ensuring that at least someone on the committee knows the work of each candidate.

    • This year's award winners were: Ron Huesman (Edward J Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist Award) and Paul Segars (IEEE Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award). The NMISC committee warmly congratulated Ron Huesman on his award.

  11. Communications (Web) Sub-Committee Report (Ron Huesman, Chair)

    • Ron gave a brief report and indicated that he is happy to continue in the role and requested feedback, particularly on the web site.

  12. Other Business

    • Dimitris requested greater role for committee members; he feels that the current role of members is to endorse decisions made outside the committee rather than playing an active role in the decision-making. Discussion ensued; John felt that members need to be proactive in seeking roles within the committee, i.e. look for tasks that need to be undertaken; Paul suggested a need to form an awards nominations sub-committee.

    • Ron Jaszczak mentioned recent initiative of EMBS to form a SIG for all those in NPSS with a common interest in biological and health sciences. Further information will follow.

  13. Meeting adjourned at 1:00 pm.