Minutes of the ICSOS ISC/IAC meeting held on Tuesday July 27, 1999 in
Vancouver, Canada, during ICSOS-6
Present (with proxies)
International Steering Committee: S.A. Chambers, K. Heinz (J.B. Pendry), P.
Jiang, K.A.R. Mitchell (P.R. Norton), W. Moritz, J. Osterwalder, P.V. Smith, P.
Soukiassian (G. Le Lay), S.Y. Tong, M.A. Van Hove (E. Bauer, X. Wang)
International Advisory Committee: I. Bartoš, C.S. Fadley, Y. Gauthier, V.
Henrich, A. Ichimiya, D.J. O'Connor, C. Sébenne, T.T. Tsong, M. Tsukada, D.P.
Woodruff
A quorum for voting was present.
Only ISC members have voting rights. It was however agreed that, in view of the
equal amount of effort put in by both committees for evaluating the Young
Scientist Prize candidates, both committees would have voting rights in the
selection of the YSP winner.
Young Scientist Prize Selection
A first vote narrowed down the 8 candidates to a short list of 3 candidates
(Adamcyk, Broekmann, Pelhos). A second vote unanimously selected
Broekmann as the winner.
Selection of location of ICSOS-7
Nagoya (Japan) and Newcastle (Australia) were offered by A. Ichimiya and J.
O'Connor, resp., as venues for ICSOS-7 in July/August 2002. After the two
presentations and questions and answers, a vote selected Newcastle.
Long-term evolution of ICSOS
The principle, started with ICSOS-6, of including one or more focus areas, was
endorsed. The general opinion was that one or more specific focus areas should
be selected for each conference, based on "hot topics" and local emphases,
rather than keep the same focus area(s) from conference to conference. There
was a consensus to interweave the focus area(s) between the regular sessions
of the conference rather than to form a separate symposium. It was thought that
it would be healthy to devote a total of 30-40% of the conference to such focus
areas.
The following possible hot topics for ICSOS-7 were proposed, to be refined later:
predictive theory, magnetism, interfaces, wide-band-gap semiconductors,
dynamics, strongly-correlated materials, polymers, glasses, biomaterials.
There was no enthusiasm for merging ICSOS with another existing conference
series, like STM.
Future of Proceedings
There was no consensus on the issue of whether to have Proceedings or what
form any Proceedings should take. It was pointed out that articles published in
Proceedings in many instances may not be counted for promotions, project
reviews and proposals. However, such articles are valuable for young scientists,
and Proceedings do count for conference sponsors. Also relevant is that half of
the attendees at ICSOS-5 and ICSOS-6 opted voluntarily to include an article in
the Proceedings. Web options were discussed, including a proposal by the
ICSOS-7 hosts to provide the abstracts on the web, with subsequent links to
corresponding articles published in the literature. It was also proposed that this
approach allows links to the authors' web sites and e-mail addresses for further
information. A decision on Proceedings was not made.
Election of new ISC members
A list of nominees to the ISC was assembled by D.P. Woodruff, Chair of the
Nominating Committee, and voted upon by e-mail, prior to ICSOS-6. It was
agreed that this list should be passed on to the next ISC Chairman to assemble
an ISC that best balances geographical, topical and institutional representation.
The same list will also be used by the next ISC Chairman to compose the new
IAC.
Election of new ISC Chairman
Candidates were: K.A.R. Mitchell and D.P. Woodruff. A vote elected K.A.R.
Mitchell as the next ISC Chairman.
Meeting adjournment
The meeting was adjourned.