Minutes of the October 2009 DLS Executive Committee Meeting
(from Anne Kelley, Secretary/Treasurer of DLS)
Held in the Santa Cruz Room, Hotel St. Claire, San Jose, CA, on October 13, 2009
Members present: Nick Bigelow, chair; Steve Cundiff, vice-chair; Warren Warren, chair-elect; Anne Kelley, secretary-treasurer; Roseanne Sension, member-at-large; Toni Taylor, member-at-large.
Guests: Hal Metcalf (Symposium on Undergraduate Research chair); Mike Raymer (CLEO Steering).
Nick Bigelow called the meeting to order at 9:10 am.
Minutes: The minutes from the June 1 meeting in Baltimore were approved.
IONS meeting: Brooke Hester (University of Maryland) reported on the first IONS North America meeting, sponsored by the student chapter of the OSA in the Washington, DC area. About 75 students from 15 countries participated. The program included Congressional visits, lab tours, student talks, student posters, and two plenary presentations. APS-DLS contributed $300 to fund the “best talk” award, which went to Thomas O’Sullivan from Stanford. Future meetings will be in September 2010 at the University of Arizona, and at CREOL in Florida the following year. Brooke will send DLS an e-mail list of attendees and a photo of the best talk award presentation for the Newsletter.
Elections: Underway, close October 26. The next vice-chair and two Executive Committee members to be chosen. The election is running late because nominees were received late from the nominating committee.
Deadlines and shared calendar: Steve suggested using Google Calendar to share information on dates and deadlines. Important dates and actions from the DLS “user manual” could be uploaded onto a shared calendar. Anne will look into this.
Fellows: We should be sure worthy DLS members get nominated. Anne will e-mail the membership encouraging them to nominate colleagues.
NSBP/NSHP best paper award: This year DLS made two awards, selected by Wendell Hill at the February meeting. Recipients get a cash award of $200 plus expenses to attend the Laser Science meeting. If they don’t attend the meeting, they get only a certificate. Brandon Zimmerman from Rochester (attending LS meeting) and Juan Pino from JILA (not attending) are this year’s winners. Nick will assist Wendell in choosing next year’s recipients but we need a more systematic approach. It was suggested that Fellows in the local area be recruited to help Wendell with the selections and be reimbursed local travel and registration fees.
LaserFest: OSA, APS, and SPIE are the three founding partners of LaserFest (scientific societies that contribute at least $100,000 cash or in-kind). There are also a number of "partner" organizations (22 at present and still recruiting) that do a variety of activities. Warren is a member of the technical advisory committee. A section on the LaserFest web site entitled “Women in Laser Science” has been changed to “Faces in Laser Science” but still 6 out of 7 are women; Warren would like suggestions of additional names who should span a wide range of career stages, research fields, and nationalities, including students and postdocs. A video for broad distribution is in preparation, narrated by Ira Flatow of NPR. Becky Thompson-Flagg (head of public outreach, APS) and Barbara Hutchison (LaserFest project manager, OSA) gave a presentation on LaserFest describing a wide range of outreach activities, particularly to schools. Free demonstration kits have been sent to 13,000 classrooms. A number of $10,000 grants have been awarded for outreach activities.
Distinguished Traveling Lecturer series and related: "Branding" the DTL series as a LaserFest activity was discussed. There was general agreement on doing this as long as we don't change the nature of the program. There was also discussion of other requests that have come or may come for speakers or interviewees who are experts on lasers. It was agreed that we would provide Becky with a list of people who agree to have their names put on the LaserFest web site for this purpose.
International Year of Light: John Dudley, from the European equivalent of APS-DLS (EPS), is proposing an "International Year of Light" for 2014 or 2015. 2009 is International Year of Astronomy, 2010 is Chemistry, etc. These assignments are made by the UN General Assembly after endorsement by IUPAC and UNESCO. It requires an organizational structure including endorsement from all major players in international optics. John is seeking DLS endorsement and a DLS member to serve on advisory committee. The EC voted unanimously to endorse the IYL. This endorsement should go directly to Kate Kirby, who should select someone for a multi-year commitment on the advisory committee.
Undergrad Research Symposium: Hal reported that the symposium went well. Students have the opportunity to present work, meet peers, and do networking. Hotel arrangements (Wyndham) worked very well. Scientific caliber of presentations mixed but mostly very good. Good traffic at poster session including a couple of plenary lecturers. Donations were obtained from about 5 organizations totaling $5-$6 K plus an NSF grant for $5K. The total cost is about $25K and many of the students’ institutions pay airfare; DLS cost expected to be well under the approved $8K ceiling. The EC voted unanimously to provide up to $8K for next year's Undergraduate Research Symposium.
New Laser Scientists conference: This is held every 2 years for starting faculty in laser science. Last year's organizer was Mike Chapman; Steve agreed to organize for next year. Held with LiO/LS, piggybacked onto end of this meeting. ~20 attendees last yr. The EC voted unanimously to provide $5K for next year's meeting. It was noted that attendees should be required (or at least strongly encouraged) to join DLS if not yet members.
Financial report: Anne reported that expenditures this year are about constant but income is way down, mainly due to almost vanishing income from CLEO/QELS and reduced investment income. DLS will likely lose money this year. Membership is about constant.
Newsletter: Amy Spivey, the new editor, will publish twice a year. There was discussion of listing awards won by DLS members through organizations other than DLS. It was decided that this should not be done because of the difficulty in being comprehensive, except for APS Fellows who are DLS members but are elected through other divisions.
Laser Science 2010 in Rochester: Todd Krauss (Rochester, chemistry) and Jim Schaffer (U Oklahoma, chemical physics) are co-chairs. There was discussion of the large changes in programming and symposium topics from one year to the next. It would be desirable for there to be more continuity. Chairs should be appointed as far in advance as possible and Warren will attempt to do so for 2011. It would be good if the following year’s chairs were symposium organizers the previous year. We need to build lists of symposium topics that will largely carry over to next year.
[In an e-mail vote held on Oct. 16, the Executive Committee voted to allocate $12,000 to the 2010 Laser Science co-chairs to offset expenses for invited speakers. This item was inadvertently left off the agenda of the Oct. 13 meeting.]
CLEO/QELS rebranding: The CLEO/QELS meeting has been making a smaller profit in recent years and is in danger of going into the red; this year (2009) it was barely profitable. DLS is a co-sponsor (with OSA and IEEE) of the QELS part, and in the past it has constituted a major source of income for the Division. Last spring a consulting firm (Revenue Capture) was hired to explore changes that might be made to make the conference more profitable. The recommendations included various actions to make the meeting more attractive to exhibitors and better competition to conferences like Photonics West, as the exhibit is the profitable part of the combined meeting. These included "rebranding" the conference to eliminate the confusing array of names (QELS, Phast, etc.); QELS was to be retained as a subheading. The OSA staff were enthusiastic about implementing the recommended changes and a group of representatives of the co-sponsors including Nick, Anne, and Joe Serene from APS agreed to some of the recommendations, but after getting somewhat reluctant buy-in from JCQE and the CLEO Steering chair (Alan Willner), the proposal met strong opposition from some of the CLEO program chairs. As a result, only minimal changes are being implemented for 2010, but these issues will resurface.
The EC endorsed holding a "town hall meeting" at the next CLEO/QELS to solicit input from the broad community of attendees. Longer-term appointments of DLS representatives to these co-sponsor meetings were also suggested to allow us to establish expertise on the issues. It was agreed that Nick and Anne will each serve 2-year terms as DLS representatives on the future of CLEO/QELS, at which time the issue should be revisited.
Laser Science meeting statistics: Chad Stark (OSA meetings) reported on the current meeting. Laser Science has 99 invited and 51 contributed talks; contributed talks are way down, and invited way up, from 2008 in Rochester. All registrants are asked to indicate their primary meeting (FiO, LS, or others); LS has 132 registered, 9% of meeting total. There was considerable discussion that this does not accurately reflect interest in the LS programming and that numbers of contributed papers and/or attendance at sessions are better measures. The FiO program chairs for 2010 (Rochester) are Colin McKinstrie and Donna Strickland. FiO/LS will be back in San Jose for 2011 in the same two hotels. Future meeting locations are Rochester in 2012 and Orlando in 2013.
The meeting was adjourned about 3:50 pm.