Reports from the 2007 SPIE Annual General Meeting
Members met for the 2007 Annual General Meeting of the Society on 28 August in San Diego, CA, at the SPIE Optics + Photonics symposium. Presented here are summaries of the President's, Treasurer's, and Executive Director's reports.
SPIE 2007 President Brian Culshaw presented an overview of his year so far. He traveled extensively in the United States, Europe, and Asia as the ambassador for the Society, and provided a report on these travels.
Culshaw visited South Korea twice and met with the Optical Society of Korea (OSK) leadership on both occasions. In 2006, the Asia-Pacific Optical Communications (APOC) meeting was organized jointly with the OSK and held in Gwanju, Korea. At APOC Culshaw also met Bingkun Zhou, the president of the Chinese Optical Society.
In Trieste, Italy, during the Winter College at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Culshaw presented new SPIE Fellow Valentin Vlad with his plaque. Culshaw then mentioned the Student Lunch with the Experts at the Smart Structures Symposium in San Diego, CA, in March, where SPIE student members interacted with SPIE leadership. At the Defense + Security Symposium in Orlando, FL, in April, Richard Danzig, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, was presented with a 2007 Honoree of the Year Award.
Also in April, Culshaw attended the International Congress of Optics and Optoelectronics symposium in Prague, and met numerous SPIE members and representatives from Eastern Europe. In Munich this June, during the European Conferences on Biomedical Optics, Culshaw presented the 2007 SPIE Educator Award to Valery Tuchin.
In the United States, Culshaw attended the Council of Scientific Society Presidents meeting, during which he met the chair of the National Science Board, Steven Beering. Finally, in July, Culshaw attended the Interopto symposium in Japan with SPIE Board member Mitsuo Takeda.
SPIE Treasurer Brian Lula reported on the financial status of the Society. He commented on the fact that many people are engaged with SPIE events and buying SPIE products, and that the stock market is currently strong, which has made for a financially successful year. Lula pointed out the growth of total assets by $9 million, the growth in net assets to $35 million, and presented a comparison of revenue and expenses.
SPIE Executive Director Eugene Arthurs began his report by remembering those who had recently passed away: Roger Lessard and Arthur Guenther, two former Society board members, Gallieno Denardo and James Palmer, two winners of SPIE Educator Awards and dedicated optics education professionals, and finally Roy Overstreet, an SPIE staff member deeply missed.
Arthurs talked about the Asia-Pacific Remote Sensing Symposium, a first-ever SPIE meeting in India, and the Active Learning in Optics and Photonics workshops of which there were two this year, one in Brazil and one in Tanzania. He also mentioned ICTP trying to secure funding to bring in more students, and some of its collaborating organizations other than SPIE, including UNESCO and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Arthurs pointed out the Intel Science Fair Awards sponsored by SPIE, and emphasized the large number of students who had attended leadership training offered by SPIE Student Services. This is an effort to create more programs for students and encourage them to remain in the field. Arthurs also mentioned the Education and Training in Optics and Photonics (ETOP) Workshop which was jointly sponsored by IEEE, the Optical Society of America, and the International Commission for Optics, and held in Ottawa this year. In addition to sponsorship, SPIE supports this activity by providing all ETOP papers on the internet for free.
The Hands On Optics Program has reached a good number of students from underserved areas, and SPIE will continue making the kits available after the completion of the grant funding in 2007, reported Arthurs.
SPIE joined the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications and has made access to the SPIE Digital Library free or at a nominal charge to certain developing countries. Including SPIE scholarships, Arthurs reported SPIE pro bono activities have been more than $1 million in the past year.
He also mentioned the Solar Caucus event in Washington DC, hosted together by SPIE and U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman's staff (D-NM) and the Senate Science and Technology Caucus, drawing about 90 attendees. Finally, he reminded the audience how the field of optics and photonics continues to expand rapidly, and how it is a field that has no boundaries—only expanding horizons.
Members can request a copy of the full minutes of the meeting by contacting Bobbie Lively, director of executive and administrative services at bobbie@spie.org.
The next meeting of the corporation will be held at Optics + Photonics 2008, scheduled for 10-14 August 2008 in San Diego, CA.
