Letter from the President
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R.S.V.P. I started my year as President of the Materials Research Society by writing a letter similar to this one, in which I invited comment on what you value most (or least) about our Society, and on what you think are the most important initiatives for the future. Expecting overwhelming response, special e-mail aliases and websites were set up, and the result was... nothing—not a single electronic chirp from the entire membership! If there is one thing that I have learned and relearned during my term, it is the critical importance of continuous input from our members. So, please do let us know what you think. Use the telephone, e-mail or fax (my contact coordinates are phone: 804-982-5658, fax: 804-982-5660, e-mail: [email protected]), come and talk to any MRS officer at the Fall and Spring Meetings, leave messages on the MRS website, participate in the surveys we construct—whichever is the most convenient mechanism to let us know what you think is most valuable (or feel is most lacking) among the services we provide. So what (apart from lonely nights scanning empty websites and e-mail boxes) have we been up to in the last year? Perhaps the biggest news is that we have a brand new headquarters building. The driving forces behind constructing this new headquarters were necessity and financial prudence (our old headquarters was rented, and had become inadequate), but we also believe that this new building offers enormous potential. How do we best use it to interface with our membership, the materials research community in general, and the rest of the world? How do we put the best face of materials research forward? Perhaps a materials museum, or a hands-on display for school children? Please give us your ideas. Volunteers especially welcome! The Society has also made enormous
strides into the electronic age in the past year. Fully 60% of those of you who submitted abstracts to this year's Fall Meeting did so through the Web. We have also recently hired a technical editor, Gopal Rao, for our website. Gopal will lead the effort to establish "mrs.org" as the third thrust (along with our meetings and our printed publications) of our vision to make MRS the leading technical provider of up-to-the-minute materials research content. We have also made the decision to restructure our Fall Meetings in Boston. We all love these meetings, but the walks from sessions at the Sheraton to the Westin to the Marriott and back...they were getting old, weren't they? So beginning with the 1999 Fall Meeting, we will be starting a phased transition of most, and perhaps eventually all, of our technical sessions to the Hynes Convention Center, which is right next to the
Sheraton. The goal is to enhance the quality and "user-friendliness" of our meetings, but you will be the judge of the success of this experiment—so, again, please let us know! In the fields of government and public affairs, there have been several initiatives this year. MRS has been a central participant in two major multisociety press events supporting increased federal
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