Marie-Geneviève
Barthés-Labrousse
President - IUVSTA
(2001-2004) Triennium
Dear
Colleagues,
This is my first opportunity to address you as the new President of the IUVSTA for the 2001-2004 triennium. I am very fortunate that, as I come into office, the activities of our Union are continuously expanding and flourishing and it gives me pleasure to start this message by expressing our thanks to my two predecessors for having devoted so much of their time and energy to the development of our Union. The hard work efficiently carried out by our Past president, Phil Woodruff, to improve the scientific activities and ensure the healthy state of the IUVSTA deserves our collective gratitude. As he will still be a member of the Executive Council for the next three years, I trust our Union will still greatly benefit from his positive contribution. John Robins, our President during the 1995-1998 triennium, has now formally left us. He worked as Councillor and Alternate Councillor for Australia, Recording Secretary, Welch Scholarship Trustee, before the final nine year presidential appointment. I am sure I express the appreciation of all of us when I say thank you for the untiring dedication and enthusiasm with which he always served the IUVSTA and the wisdom and efficiency he has shown during his leadership.
Of course, the strength and value of
IUVSTA results from the support and efforts of all the officers and individuals
who are working hard within the various Committees and Divisions of our Union
and they all deserve thanks.
The
new triennium formally started during the International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15)
which was held in San Francisco at the end of last October, in conjunction with
the American Vacuum Society’s symposium. The IVC (and its associated meeting
the ICSS – the International Conference on Solid Surfaces) is the largest
scientific event in IUVSTA. A full report on the conference will soon be
published on this Web site, but many people who worked very hard to successfully
run this set of conferences under very unusual and difficult circumstances merit
our special recognition: William Rogers as General Chair, Roger Stockbauer and
Richard Kurtz as Program Chair and Vice-Chair who, with the help of the
International Programme Committees, had to face an unusual number of last minute
modifications, and the staff of the AVS who were confronted with many logistical
problems and who solved them with exceptional dedication and tremendous
efficiency.
The
two IUVSTA Prizes were presented during the IVC at San Francisco: the IUVSTA
Science Prize was awarded to Kunio Takayanagi (of the Tokyo
Institute of Technology, Japan) and the IUVSTA
Technology Prize to Wolf-Dieter Münz (of Sheffield Hallam
University, Great Britain).
Electronic communication has considerably changed the operation of the Union and the last few years have seen continuing development of the IUVSTA activities. The scientific and educational activities have expanded due to the growing success of the IUVSTA Workshops, of the IUVSTA Schools and the up-dating of the Visual Aids program into electronic format. I trust all these activities will continue to grow in the coming years, in spite of our restricted budget. However, the future of the Union cannot solely be a simple increase in the number of workshops, schools or visual aids packages. We need to develop new activities and we will likely need to change some of our existing activities to move into new areas of science and technology. Establishing a structure to evaluate the relevance of our scientific activity, to identify and to allow the development of new emerging scientific or technical topics falling within the scope of our Union is a true challenge. As a first attempt, a review of the activities of the Divisions will be implemented by the Scientific and Technical Directorate, in conjunction with the Highlight Seminars.
During this triennium, I would also like to see our Union increase its activity in technology. This might be achieved in several ways: through the Scientific and Technical Directorate, by encouraging divisions to develop activities related to technology transfer; through the Education Committee, by developing training courses for technicians; through the Publication Committee working closely together with the Education Committee, by implementing technical information on the Web site.
The
members of the IUVSTA are not individuals, but national societies. As I stated
in my inaugural address,
this is one of the major strengths of the Union. By offering the opportunity to
representatives of our 31 member societies to meet twice a year, at the occasion
of the Executive Council Meetings, and share ideas and information, we can
readily promote international collaboration. However, to improve the
effectiveness of such a collaboration, we should have closer contact with our
members, improve communications between them, find ways to offer them better
support, in particular for Developing Countries, and help in promoting new
National Vacuum Societies.
We
are at the very beginning of the current (2001-2004) triennium and many
Councillors and Divisional Representatives, serving for their first term, are
not fully aware of the workings of the Union. To address this problem, I have
prepared a short introduction to
IUVSTA, which is a compilation of two documents previously
written by John Robins and Phil Woodruff. More complete information can be found
on the Procedure
Manual, which is accessible on the IUVSTA Web site.
Finally
I wish to emphasise that most of the information concerning our Union –both
new and archival- is readily accessible on our Web site. Although we recently
had to face problems with the server, due to its location in a building close to
the World Trade Center in New York, we are doing our best to maintain our site
up-to-date and I trust that you will find it extremely useful through regular
visits.
Marie-Geneviève
Barthés-Labrousse
December 2001