News

IEEE-UFFC Ferroelectrics Standing Committee – first meeting in 2021

January 21, 2021 | Contributed By - Julia Glaum, Ferroelectrics Newsletter Editor
4 years 4 months ago
Share on:

The first meeting of the IEEE-UFFC Society Ferroelectrics Standing Committee (FerroCom) in 2021was held on January 14th/15th, 2021. It was the first time that the meeting was held asynchronously at two different times to make it possible for members from all time zones to join. Both meetings were chaired by Jacob L. Jones, the Vice President for Ferroelectrics in the UFFC Society. Holding the meetings online allowed the President of the UFFC Society, Paul Reynolds, as well as the President-Elect, Mark Schafer, to attend the FerroCom meeting together for the first time. It was a very positive experience for the participants to run the meeting in two rounds asynchronously and to be able to meet and discuss with colleagues around the world.   The main points of the meeting were the following:

  • The attendees congratulated our new IEEE Fellows, Shujun Zhang and Hong Wang
  • Some responsibilities have changed:
    • Newsletter Editor for Ferroelectrics: Julia Glaum (previously Marco Deluca)
    • Tutorials and Education Chair for Ferroelectrics: Neus Domingo (previously Kyle Webber)
    • Publications Chair for Ferroelectrics: Marco Deluca (previously Alp Sehirlioglu)
  • ISAF-ISIF-PFM 2021(General Chairs: John Daniels & Shujun Zhang)
    • ISAF-ISIF-PFM 2021 in Sydney will be fully virtual. The organizers assessed what reasonable conference fees for an online conference could be and settled at half the on-site conference fee for IEEE members (300 US$) and significantly lower IEEE student member registration rates (100 US$) to encourage student participation.
    • The Women in Engineering event at the ISAF 2021 is set. Prof. Susan Trolier-McKinstry will deliver a keynote on “Crafting a Scientific Career from Successes and Failures”.
  • ISAF 2022 (General Chair: Antoine Ruyter)
    • No final decision about the form of the conference (virtual, hybrid or on-site) has been made yet. It was pointed out that hybrid versions tend to be the most expensive.
    • UFFC Society Vice President for Symposia, Sandy Cochran, was also in attendance and provided perspectives from other meetings and the UFFC Society.
  • The TUFFC Special Issue on Contributions of Women to Ferroelectrics Research and Development: Publication of the Special Issue is presently being finalized by the journal and will be published in February of 2021.
  • The FerroTalks series have been a great success. All presentations can now be viewed online through the Youtube channel of the UFFC
  • A general debate about the pros and cons of the conference proceedings has started and the topic will be discussed further in the upcoming meetings.