2016 IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium (IFCS) Highlights
The 2016 IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium (IFCS) was held at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, US, from May 9-12. The IEEE UFFC Society President, Prof. Clark Nguyen, and General Chair, Dr. Lute Maleki, welcomed participants to this exciting 70th Anniversary meeting to exchange through 110 lectures (28 invited), 145 posters and other events with a special New Orleans' style. A wine glass marked with the IFCS logo was given to all attendees as a special souvenir.
Prof. Joseph Taylor[/caption]Among the highlights was the plenary presentation "Reflections on an Astrophysical Clock-Comparison Experiment" by Nobel Laureate, Joseph Taylor. Prof. Taylor received the 1993 Nobel Prize for Physics - for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation. His talk introduced the details of the study on Pulsars with activities sometimes described as nature' most precise clocks. His clock-comparison experiment firmly established the existence of gravitational waves as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Memorials were given to honor Michael Mirarchi (1922-2015), Andre Clairon (1947-2015), and Gernot Winkler (1922-2016).
A special luncheon session event titled "Career Opportunities for Postdocs and Students" was arranged for students and young members of the IFCS community. Representatives from government labs, university, and industry discussed career opportunities in their respective institutions in a panel setting.
The President's Reception was hosted by Prof. Clark Nguyen, IEEE UFFC President to thank organizers of the 2016 IFCS.
Student paper competition winners were announced during the Exhibitor's Reception.
The Women in Engineering event was held immediately prior to the symposium banquet to provide networking opportunities.
The 2016 IEEE UFFC Achievement Award recipient is David Allan for his seminal work to the UFFC community regarding time determination, time prediction, time dissemination, and timekeeping. The widely-used Allan variance, a measure of frequency stability in clocks, oscillators and other applications, is named for him.
The 2015 UFFC Distinguished Service Award was awarded to Jackie Hines for her administration, finance and governance from Section Chair to UFFC President.
The I. I. Rabi Award was presented to John Kitching for his pioneering work on Chip-Scale Atomic Devices.
The 2016 W. G. Cady Award was presented to Bernd Neubig for 40 years of contributions in the area of piezoelectric frequency control devices as a researcher, educator, and entrepreneur and contributions in the international standardization of piezoelectric devices.
The 2016 C. B. Sawyer Award was presented to Paul Muralt for outstanding contributions to understand growing mechanism of piezoelectric thin films and materials, the development of innovative structures for acoustic-wave-based resonators and transducers and the promotion of their use for effective time-and-frequency applications.
We look forward to seeing all of you at the 2017 IFCS-EFTF at Besancon, France from July 9-13!