RAS E-News November 2006

Volume 4, Number 5

Welcome to RASeNews, the IEEE RAS email newsletter. RASeNews is limited to short announcements of RAS Conferences, RAS society 'action items', breaking news, and time-sensitive issues. Send comments, queries and news items to r.g.snyder@ieee.org.

1. Error in RAS AdCom Election Ballot-new ballots to be sent

One of the candidates for RAS Adcom was inadvertently omitted from the ballot which was mailed in October to RAS voting members (higher grade members and graduate students). Because of this error it will be necessary to send out new ballots. Votes made on the faulty ballots will be discarded, so even if you have already voted, please look for the revised ballot and submit your vote again. The revised ballotwill be printed on colored card stock to make it stand out and to avoid confusing the original and revised ballot. The new ballots will be mailed on November 27 and must be returned by Janurary 8, 2007. Results will be announced by January 15, 2007. We apologize for the inconvenience and urge all eligible members to vote. The slate of candidates to serve a three year term beginnin in January 2007 includes: # Asama, Hajime # Chatila, Raja # Dillmann, Ruediger # Fu, Li-Chen # Fukuda, Toshio # Henderson, Thomas # Kumar, Vijay # Laumond, Jean-Paul # Orin, David # Siegwart, Roland # Snyder, Wes # Wang, Michael For the bios and statements of the candidates, see http://www.ieee-ras.org/news

2. New RAS VP Elects

At the October 14, 2005 meeting of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Administrative Committee the following individuals were elected to serve as Vice Presidents-Elect of the Society during 2007. They will begin their terms as Vice President beginning January 1 2008.

  • John Hollerbach, University of Utah, USA: Conference Activities
  • Peter Luh, University of Connecticut, USA: Publications Activities
  • Alicia Casals, Technical University of Catalonia, Spain: Membership Activities
  • Alex Zelinsky, CSIRO, Australia: Industrial Activities
  • Ken Goldberg, University of California-Berkeley, USA (reelected): Technical Activities
  • Ian Walker, Clemson University, USA: Financial Activities

3. RAS Society Awards Nominations Due March 1

The RAS Awards Committee is soliciting nominations for seven IEEE Society Awards Nominations must be submitted to RAS Awards Chair Katsuchi Ikeuchi . by March 1, 2007.

Two new RAS awards were approved by IEEE Technical Activities Board in 2006:

  • IEEE Inaba Technical Award for Innovation Leading to Production.
  • IEEE Invention and Entrepreneurship Award

Nominations are also solicited for the following RAS Society Awards:

  • Pioneer Award
  • Early Government or Industry Career Award
  • Early Academic Career Award
  • Distinguished Service Award
  • Chapter of the Year Award

IEEE Fellow Nominations

IEEE Fellow Nominations must be submitted to the IEEE by March 1, 2007. Information and Nomination kits are online at the IEEE Fellows Page.

If you are considering nominating a friend or colleague for election to Fellow, please contact Awards Committee Corresponding Co-Chair Katsushi Ikeuchi, who can assist you with assembling the materials for the nomination and obtaining the required references.

For more information see 2007AwardsCall.

4. George Nicholas Saridis: November 17, 1931- October 29, 2006

George N. Saridis, Founding President of the IEEE-Robotics and Automation Council/Society, died October 29 in his home in Athens, Greece. From 1981 until his retirement, Prof. Saridis was Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was also Director of the Robotics and Automations Lab at RPI. Prior to coming to RPI, he taught for many years at Purdue University. He received the Dipomal in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 1955 and the MSEE and Ph.D from Purdue University in 1963 and 1965 respectively. Prof. Saridis was a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a Member of the Academy of Athens as well as being a member of the ASME, SPIE, and SME. He authored or co-authored six books and approximately 400 technical papers. Prof. Saridis continued to participate in RAS society activities as long as he was physically able to do so, regularly attending the society's administrative committee meetings and actively joining the debate on issues under discussion.. Many of his students, (who called him "Chief" at Purdue and "Boss" at RPI) and his 'grand-students' have followed his example to become leaders in both RAS and the wider technical community of robotics and automation. Prof. Saridis is survived by his wife Youla.

5. 2007 RAS IEEE Fellows

Congratulations to the following members of the Robotics and Automation Society have been elected to Fellow of the IEEE. The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. A brief citation is issued to new Fellows describing their accomplishments and the total number selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth percent of the total voting Institute membership.

People elevated to Fellow through RAS (i.e., the nominees requested that RAS evaluate their nominations):

  • Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos
  • Alessandro De Luca
  • Zeungnam Bien Seth Hutchinson
  • Michael Wang
  • Jean-Paul Laumond
  • Charles Thorpe
  • Shigeki Sugano

RAS members elevated to Fellow through other societies

  • Jun Wang, CIS
  • Toshiharu Sugie, Control Society
  • Mo-Yuen Chow, IE
  • Ning Xi, ITS
  • Xiaohong Guan, PE
  • Mu-Der Jeng, SMC
  • C. Philip Chen, SMC

Nominations for 2008 Fellows are due March 1, 2007 and must be submitted online via the IEEE Fellows website.

6. Requicha to Head IEEE T-Nanotechnology

Ari Requicha will become Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology effective January 1, 2007. "My most important and immediate action will be to establish a new type of manuscript, called a Research Letter, which will be limited to 3 pages and published very rapidly, typically within 4-6 weeks of submission," Requicha said. " As nanotechnlogy is evolving swiftly, timely publication is essential to ensure that authors will submit their best work to the journal." Requicha is the Gordon Marshall Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California, where he also directs the Laboratory for Molecular Robotics (LMR).

Requicha is a longtime member of the Robotics and Automation Society and is a Co-Chair of the RAS Technical Committee on Micro and Nano Robotics. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and was cited by Thomson Institution of Scientific Information (ISI) as "one of the worldwide 282 Computer Scientists listed in the ISI Web of Knowledge as highly cited researchers for the decades 1980-1999."

T-Nanotechnology, established in 2002, ranked number 7 in citations among electrical engineering journals, according to the 2004 Journal of Citation Reports, published by the Thomson ISI.. The IEEE Nanotechnology Council sponsors the Transactions. The Council comprises 18 IEEE Societies, including the Robotics and Automation Society, which was one of the Council's founding societies.

 

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