2006 AAAS Engineering Section Meeting
Renaissance Grand Hotel,
Majestic G Room
MINUTES
1. Cristina
Amon, Section Chair, called the meeting to order at
2. Dr. Amon
asked for comments and possible changes to the Draft Minutes of the Section
Business Meeting held on
3. The tentative
agenda as shown in Appendix B was approved with no changes or additions.
4. Announcements:
Dr. Amon announced that Gail H. Marcus was elected Chair-Elect and Herbert H.
Richardson was elected Member-at-Large of the Engineering Section’s Steering
Group both effective
Dr. Amon also announced that James J. Duderstadt and
Winfred M. Phillips were elected as Council Delegates and Sangeeta N. Bhatia
and Frank L. Huband were elected to the Engineering Section Electorate
Nominating Committee.
Dr. Amon also announced that 27 members affiliated
with the Engineering Section were elected Fellows of AAAS in September
2005. The names of the new Fellows are
listed in Appendix D. Three of the newly elected Fellows were present at the
meeting: Cynthia Atman, Rafael Bras, and Subhash Singhal.
Dr. Amon introduced them, welcomed
them, and thanked them for attending the meeting.
5. Fellow
Nomination Process: Dr. Amon reviewed the AAAS Fellow nomination process.
There are three ways a candidate can be nominated: By a member of the Steering
Group (method 1), by a group of three Fellows (method 2), and by the AAAS Chief
Executive Officer (method 3).
She discussed the procedure for Fellow nominations by
members of the Steering Group (method 1).
She mentioned that each nomination must include a complete Fellow
nomination form and either a letter of recommendation by the nominator or a
detailed C.V. with a list of publications (although a C.V. is an essential
piece of the required documentation). She
encouraged members of the Steering Group to submit both. She mentioned that for the upcoming
nomination cycle, these materials should be mailed to Marwan Simaan (section
Secretary) so that he receives it no later than
Dr. Simaan mentioned that the number of Fellows
elected through nominations by the Steering Group is subject to a section quota
which is 15 for this year (there is no quota for those elected through
nominations by three Fellows or by the Chief Executive Officer). For this reason, he asked that each member of
the Steering Group nominate no more than 2 or 3 candidates. He also asked members of the Steering group
to inform him ASAP of how many candidates they plan to nominate. This will allow him to coordinate with the
group to insure that all slots in the group’s quota are filled. Dr. Cruz mentioned that in all three methods,
a successful candidate must receive a majority vote from the Steering Group. Furthermore, if a candidate receives more
than two negative votes, the candidate will not be recommended for election to
Fellow.
6. 2006
Annual Meeting: The list of the 2006 Symposia sponsored or co-sponsored by
the Engineering Section is included as Appendix E.
7. Planning
for the 2007 Annual Meeting: Dr.
Amon announced that the 2007 AAAS Annual Meeting will be held in
Hot Topic 1: Energy Safety/Security
Increasing concerns about safety and
security of energy supplies, global climate changes, and strong prospects of
growing competition from developing countries for the world's energy resources
have increased interest and awareness on energy production, efficiency,
security, etc.
Several Symposia around this
topic may be proposed including the following:
a) Whither Nuclear Power? (Organizer: Gail
Marcus-Section Chair-elect))
b) Safe and Environmentally Friendly Sources
of Energy
c)
d) Renewable/Efficient Energy (e.g., fuel
cells, solar) (possible organizer: Frank Incropera)
Hot Topic 2: Optimization of Critical Infrastructure
Safety/Security
Critical Infrastructure Safety and
Security is an important issue for homeland security, global stability, and for
sustainable well-being. Our section can contribute several symposia which can
address issues related to:
a) Safety of
Water/Electricity/Transportation/etc distribution networks (possible
organizers: Jose' Moura, Jim Garrett)
b) Natural Disaster Prediction (possible
organizers: Dan Roos, Bill Rouse)
c) Natural Disaster Preparation
d) Building Security and Safety (possible organizer: Frieder Seible)
Hot Topic 3: Engineering,
Technology, and Science Education at all Levels
A sustainable well-being requires a highly
educated workforce in engineering, technology and science. How to create the required pipeline of
students and how to prepare them to address the challenges for a sustainable
well-being could be topics for one or two symposia:
a) Education in Renewable/efficient sources of energy (possible organizer : Frank
Incorpera)
b) Preparing engineers to deal with
sustainability (possible organizers: Cynthia Atman, Fiora Goodchild).
Hot Topic 4: BioEngineering
for Improving Human Health and Well-Being
Bioengineering is an important engineering
discipline contributing to a sustainable well being. Several symposia might be proposed in this
area:
a) Cellular neural networks (Leon Chua).
b) Biologically inspired nano-devices
c) The Engineering of artificial organs
(possible organizer: Jim Antaki)
As Plenary and Topical lectures, the names of Nate
Lewis (Cal Tech) and Klaus Lackner (Columbia/Los Alamos) were suggested as
possible plenary speakers on the topic of Energy; and Denice Denton (UC Santa
Cruz) and Steve Director (Drexel) were suggested as possible topical speakers
on Engineering Education.
8. Other
Business: Dr. John P. Holdren, AAAS
President-Elect and Chair of the 2007 Meeting stopped by to introduce himself
as the program chair for the 2007 Meeting. He encouraged our section to propose
interesting and relevant symposia. He also
answered questions related to the 2007 Meeting.
Several questions centered around the need to have the meeting theme be
decided long before the planning meeting which takes at the preceding Annual
Meeting. Several attendees stressed that
if we were informed of the theme of the 2007 Meeting at least a month or so
prior to our business meeting we would have had more time to generate more well
thought out ideas. Dr. Cruz also
requested that feedback be given to the sections on proposals that did not get
accepted. He mentioned that essentially
the sections are out of the loop during the selection process. The issue of
having a representative from our section on the Program Committee of the AAAS
Annual Meetings was also discussed. Marwan Simaan mentioned that (as was
recommended at last year’s meeting) he has already suggested Jim Merz’s name as
a possible addition to the program committee but that no action has yet been
taken. He mentioned that he will
suggest his name to Jill Perla again.
9. The
meeting was adjourned at
Submitted by:
Marwan A. Simaan
Section Secretary
Appendix A
Attendance List
1.
Cristina Amon,
Chair
2.
Matt Tirrell,
Chair-Elect
3.
Marwan Simaan,
Secretary
4.
Jose B. Cruz,
Jr., Retiring-Chair
5.
James Merz,
Member-at-Large
6.
Willis Bixby,
Representative, American Nuclear Society
7.
Peter Bainum,
Representative, American Astronautical Society
8.
James G. Harris,
Council
9.
David Lubman,
Representative, Acoustical Society of
10.
Proctor Reid,
Section P Secretary/NAE
11.
Subhash Singhal
12.
Rafael Bras
13.
Cynthia Atman
14.
Anice Anderson
15.
Tom Mason
16.
S. K. Sundararam
17.
John Holdren,
AAAS President-Elect
Appendix B
2006 Engineering Section Business Meeting
Renaissance Grand Hotel,
Majestic G Room
TENTATIVE AGENDA
1. Introductions
2. Approval of minutes of previous meeting
3. Announcements
(a) Officers for 2006-2007
(b) New Engineering Section AAAS Fellows
4. Discussion of Fellow nomination process
5. Discussion of proposed symposia and seminars for 2007 and 2008 Annual Meetings
6. New Business
2006-07 AAAS Section on Engineering
Steering Group
(Officers and Members-at-Large, effective
Officers |
Members-at-Large |
Matthew
Tirrell Chair (2007) Tel: (805) 893-3141 Fax: (805) 893-8124 E-mail: tirrell@engineering.ucsb.edu |
James
L. Merz (2007) Department
of Electrical Engineering Notre
Tel: (574) 631-3111 Fax: (574) 631-0651 E-mail: jmerz@nd.edu |
Cristina
H. Amon Retiring Chair (2007) Carnegie
Mellon University
Fax:
(412) 268-5229 E-mail: camon@cmu.edu |
Christopher
T. Hill (2008) Office
of the Provost Fairfax, VA 22030 Tel: (703) 993-2270 Fax: (703) 993-8871 |
Gail H.
Marcus Chair-Elect
(2007) OECD Nuclear
Energy Agency F-75016, Fax:
+33-1-45-24-11-19 E-mail: ghmarcus@aol.com |
Frances H. Arnold (2009) Div.
of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering MC
210-41 California
Institute of Technology Tel: (626) 395-4162 Fax: (626) 568-8743 E-mail:frances@cheme.caltech.edu |
Marwan
A. Simaan Secretary (2010) Department
of Electrical Engineering 348
Benedum Hall Tel: (412) 624-8099 Fax: (412) 624-8003 E-mail: simaan@engr.pitt.edu |
Herbert H.
Richardson (2010) Texas
Transportation Institute The Tel:
(979)-845-8552 Fax:
(979)-845-9356 E-mail: herbert-richardson@tamu.edu |
Appendix D
New AAAS Fellows elected in September 2005
Engineering Section
Appendix E
2006 Annual
Meeting Symposia and Seminars of Interest to Engineers
1. Symposia and Seminars Sponsored by the Engineering
Section
8:00am
– 9:30am Future Nano-Enabled
Energy Technologies
Part 2 - Nanotechnology as a Case Study
2. Symposia and Seminars Co-Sponsored by the
Engineering Section
8:30am – 11:30am Frontiers in Biological Imaging: From Cells to Humans
8:30am
– 11:30am Oral Nanotechnology:
Innovative Strategies for Disease Detection, Diagnosis, and Therapy
(Nanotechnology Seminar)
8:30am
– 11:30am Global Discovery on the
Internet
8:00am
– 9:30am Million-Dollar
Mathematics: Challenge Problems in the 21st Century
9:45am – 11:15am Imaging of
Extracellular Matrix Dynamics in Living Cells: New Insights into Structure and
Function
2:00pm - 3:30pm Electric Forces
in Biology and Medicine
2:00pm - 3:30pm Remote Access
to Advanced Instrumentation: Cyberinfrastructure for Teaching, Research, and
Industry
2:00pm - 3:30pm Future
Potential of Biological Weapons: Science, Technology, and Policy
2:00pm – 5:00pm How Adults Learn
About New Science and Technology
2:00pm - 5:00pm Assessing the
STEM Enterprise Through Title IX
3:45pm - 5:15pm Lasers in
Medicine
8:30am - 11:30am Expanding
Universe of Digital Data Collections
10:30am - 12:00noon Public
Opinion and Public Engagement for Emerging Technologies:
Part 1 -- The International Public Opinion Climate
Research Collaborations