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IEEE-UFFC Ferroelectrics Standing Committee – first meeting in 2020

May 11, 2020 | Contributed By - Marco Deluca, Ferroelectrics Newsletter Editor
4 years 10 months ago
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The first 2020 meeting of the IEEE-UFFC Society Ferroelectrics Standing Committee (FerroCom) was held in Orlando, FL, on January 22nd, 2020, aside the Electronic Materials and Applications Conference. The meeting took place at the Doubletree by Hilton Orlando Hotel at Seaworld, and saw the participation of 16 voting members (four of them remote-connected), one non-voting member, and six guests. The meeting was chaired by Jacob L. Jones, the Vice President for Ferroelectrics in the UFFC Society; also the Secretary (Jon Ihlefeld, remote-connected), the Women in Engineering (WIE) Chair (Michelle Dolgos), the Publications Chair (Alp Sehirlioglu) and the Tutorials and Education Chair (Kyle Webber) were present. Paul Reynolds (UFFC Society President) and Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb (UFFC Society Junior Past President) also attended the meeting. Technical support was provided by Chris Dyer and Zully Davis of Conference Catalysts.

The main outcomes of the meeting were the following:

  • The new President of UFFC, Paul Reynolds, greeted the committee and explained the key topics and challenges with which the UFFC Society is currently confronted: this includes maintaining financial stability; the development of diversity and inclusiveness concepts, while at the same time fighting harassment; improving access to the President’s office. The UFFC Society has considerable revenue, which calls for the involvement of professional management and implementing strategies including the professionalization of key responsibilities.
     
  • Jacob Jones updated the committee on FerroCom membership and appointments. The FerroCom currently consists of 43 members; Tom Shrout and Jürgen Rödel recently gracefully retired from the committee, and at the same time two European candidates were presented for election: Jesus Ricote (from Madrid) and Neus Domingo (from Barcelona). Further changes in the committee include Michelle Dolgos stepping down as WIE Chair and being appointed as vice-Chair for Finance, and Roger Whatmore being appointed as Awards Chair. 
     
  • Susan Trolier-McKinstry as Associate Chair of the Fellows Committee reported that four members of the UFFC Society were elevated to IEEE Fellow status. These are Andrew Bell, Stanislav Emelianov, Kurt Gibble, Jacob L. Jones.
     
  • Geoff Brennecka reported on the UFFC Oral History, saying that milestone discussions are ongoing with the University of Minnesota. Big activities are planned this year for the 100-year Ferroelectricity anniversary.
     
  • The Standards Committee, chaired by Zuo-Guang Ye, reported the insertion of new binary and ternary materials data in the standards database and welcomed everyone to the next meeting to be organized at Penn State.
     
  • The first Ferroelectrics School took place in December 2019 at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, chaired by Ke Wang. A total of 42 students attended, one third of whom were from outside China (mainly Europe). The students followed a total of 40 lectures that included aspects of ferroelectricity, complemented by a lecture on Chinese culture. The UFFC President praised such schools and said that IEEE strongly supports such events. At the time of the January 2020 committee meeting, the 2020 School was scheduled to be hosted by INSA Lyon, in France, and the 2021 School was to be held in North America. Please follow the Editorial Note about the postponement of the Lyon school to 2021.
     
  • Kyle Webber presented the opportunities and challenges related to the filming of tutorials during ISAF Conferences.
     
  • Starting from the ISAF 2025 bid, the bidding procedures for ISAF will be standardized and will need to follow a specific format. Shujun Zhang (Chair of the Symposia Committee) presented a list of criteria that was defined over the years by the Symposia Committee. It is also necessary for bid presenters to give a presentation at a FerroCom meeting.
     
  • Geoff Brennecka, organizer of the next ISAF 2020 in Keystone, CO, updated the FerroCom on the organization procedures, including the meeting schedule and the choice of the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (Clive Randall) as plenary speaker for this Conference.
     
  • Finally, an outlook to the future ISAF meetings was presented. The 2021 ISAF will be held in the UNSW Campus in Sydney, Australia. The 2022 ISAF in Tours, France. The 2023 ISAF in Cleveland, OH (USA).