Vol. 56, No. 1. February 2010

Front page:
President's Message
From the Editor

Society News:
Meet the RS officers and
AdCom Class of 2012

RS Members Receive Fellows Recognition

Awards:
Reliability Engineers Recognized at the Annual RS Banquet.

Distinguished Lecturer Program:
Call for RS
Distinguished Lecturers

Feature Article:
NXT Battery Voltage Experiment

Chapter Activities:
Cleveland Chapter
Dallas Chapter
Singapore Chapter


Technical Activities:
Annual Technology Report

Announcements:
New Smart Grid Technology Initiative

Security and Privacy Magazine: Call for Papers

Links:
Reliability Society Home
RS Newsletter Homepage

President's Message

Dear Reliability Society Members,

In my first message of 2010, I would like to discuss the key outcomes and decisions that were recently made by the Reliability Society’s Administrative Committee (AdCom).  The meeting was held at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose on January 23, just prior to the Reliability Society’s co-sponsored 56th RAMS (Reliability and Maintainability Symposium), which was successfully held on January 25 - 28.

To begin, we had the fortune to welcome our Division-VI Director, Mark Montrose.  Mark gave us a nice overview of the financials of IEEE at the Board of Directors level, and it was good to hear that IEEE is financially healthy, has the most members in its history (nearing 400K) making it the world’s largest professional society, and expecting a nice increase in cash reserves, both at the IEEE level and at the Society level, due to improvements in the stock market.  Our Society will benefit from some of that.

Secondly, Dr. Sam Keene gave a nice summary of the 2010 Annual Technology Report containing 20 papers related to this year’s theme of infrastructure. The report will soon be on the Society website, so please be on the lookout for that.

Third, Dick Kowalski discussed the state of the 2010 budget that was approved by IEEE TAB FinCom last November.  In our 2010 budget predictions, we expect to make a year-end profit of around $16K.  If so, we should be able to get back into a position where IEEE Headquarters will allow us to again invest in new opportunities using our cash reserves.

Fourth, Dennis Hoffman presented the AdCom with an aggressive plan for doubling membership, generating additional revenue, developing training webinars / seminars, and offering new conference events.  His plan was well received by the AdCom, and Dennis and the Society officers will now begin working on a more specific and actionable version for the next AdCom meeting in April.

Fifth, we had an enjoyable Awards Banquet on Saturday night after the AdCom meeting that was orchestrated by Alfred Stevens.  As far as I can tell, the attendees were quite pleased with all aspects of the event.  For me, the most noteworthy part of the banquet came from Harry Schafft, our Lifetime Achievement Award winner, as he went down memory lane concerning his entire professional career in reliability.  Hoang Pham (University Professor) and Nathaniel Ozarin (Industry Engineer) were each awarded our Reliability Engineer of the Year Award.

A few other items from our San Jose meeting to note include: (1) a decision to not solicit applications for student scholarships and not fund a distinguished lecturer program in 2010, (2) look into the possibility of teaming with a few other IEEE Societies to form a new conference in Europe this Fall related to the smartgrid, (3) take a pass at changing portions of our by-laws that better reflect how the Society and IEEE have changed over the last 5 years, and (6) begin preparing ourselves for the IEEE TAB Society Review Committee’s (SRC) 5-year review of the Reliability Society in June.   

To end, you should know that we are about to undergo an IEEE TAB PRAC (Periodicals Review and Advisory Committee) 5-year review of the Transactions on Reliability in Atlanta this month.  Bob Loomis, Jason Rupe, and Way Kuo (our Editor-in-Chief) have all done a terrific job preparing for it.  Given the quality of our Transactions, I have full confidence this meeting will be a success.   

Best Wishes,

Jeffrey Voas, PhD
2010 Reliability Society President

I am honored to have been selected to serve as your new editor of the Reliability Society Newsletter taking over from Lon Chase who has served in this capacity for many years. A special thanks goes out to Lon for his outstanding service on behalf of the society.

Readers will notice a slight change in the formatting of the newsletter. These changes have been made in an attempt to improve navigation and making the content more printer friendly for those who wish to print individual articles from this newsletter.

This newsletter will publish content deemed appropriate for and of interest to members of the IEEE Reliability Society and members of the  reliability profession in general. Accepted content includes announcements and reports of activities sponsored by the Reliability Society including chapter meetings, workshops and conferences.

Technical papers including reviews, opinions, case studies or new ideas for the reliability professional are welcomed and accepted without external review. Authors are solely responsible for the correctness of results presented and proper citation of work by others.

Deadlines for submission of content:

Feb. 15  (Issue No. 1/ 2010)
May 15  (Issue No 2/2010)
August 15 (Issue No. 3/2010)
Nov. 15  (Issue No. 4/2010) 

Christian K. Hansen, PhD
Newsletter Editor

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(c) 2010 IEEE Reliability Society