Activities Reports--> SMC 2003 General-Chair Brief Report

SMC 2003 General-Chair Brief Report

SMC 2003 has successfully been held in Washington D. C., the capital city of the USA from October 5 to 8, 2003. SMC 2003 had 1119 website registrants and 782 registrants for the conference, over a half of which made it. We have 1136 papers submitted to the conference including a record number of 308 invited session and track papers. We have published 816 papers in total. The conference program has 150 technical sessions. The conference has also gained great financial success and led to over $80,000 in surplus for our society. The success of SMC 2003 has been owing to numerous contributions from volunteers to whom I would like to take this opportunity to thank:

1. An extraordinary technical program was due to the Program Committee chaired by Professors Eugene Santos and Peter Willett, Special Session Chair Prof. Ellen Bass, plenary speakers, Professor Lotfi A. Zadeh of University of California, Berkeley, Professor James Tien of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Mr. Tony Roger at the National Security Agency, and many track and session organizers, and all the contributors.
   
2. The student active participation and contributions were arranged by the Student Activity Committee headed by Professor Ferat Sahin.
   
3. Thanks to the local arrangement team headed by Professor Yan Xiao and Dr. Zhen Wang for their excellent work.
   
4. Thanks to Professor Edgar Sibley, Social Chair, for the nice trip to National Aquarium in Baltimore.
   
5. Thanks go to Professor Peter Beling, Finance Chair, who dealt with registration and finance.
   
6. The outstanding publication work was due to Professor Thiagalingam Kirubarajan, Publications Chair and his students.
   
7. Thanks go to Professor Robin Qiu, Publicity Chair, Professor Laurence Merkle, Tutorials Chair, Professor Irene Gu, European Liaison, and Professor Tsu-Tian Lee, Asian Liaison.
   
8. Special thanks go to our conference’s web master Mr. Alex Kuzin who has worked hardest to ensure the success of this conference, and Ms. Dee Mcauley who negotiated a great deal with the hotel and made this conference so successful financially. Both are still helping us in many post-conference businesses.
   
9. Special thanks also go to many volunteers and staffs for the long hours and hard work they have generously given to SMC 2003. Much help and guidance were obtained from the Administrative Committee of IEEE SMC Society, especially Dr. Michael H. Smith, President, and Professor Julie A. Adams, Vice-President for Conferences and Meetings, for their great effort in keeping SMC 2003 in a good shape. We would also thank the conference co-chair, Dr. Jack Marin for his early contributions to SMC 2003.

Finally, on behalf of the organizing committee, we would like to thank all the authors, speakers, and participants of this conference for taking part in and contributing to SMC 2003.

MengChu Zhou
New Jersey Institute of Technology
zhou@njit.edu
http://web.njit.edu/~zhou