Letter from the President
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10/31/2006
12:09 PM
Page 845
Letter from the President
The Next Generation of Materials Researchers and the Discipline of Materials Science and Engineering: MRS Membership Identity and Role In this letter, I consider a topic that has been debated by members of the Materials Research Society frequently over the years: MRS “membership identity” and the broader role of MRS with regard to the education of the next generation of materials researchers. Because MRS is not largely connected to a single academic discipline, like other societies such as the American Physical Society (APS), the American Chemical Society (ACS), or the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the issue of “membership identity” comes up: Are we uncorrelated collections of researchers, not tied together by a common vision or culture? In other words, are we still a “meetings only” society, as some have asked? Upon addressing the question of “membership identity,” I will discuss the philosophy that drives meeting programming. This will provide a context for (1) the important role the Society plays in educating future materials researchers, and (2) its connections to the evolution of materials science and engineering as a discipline. Based on the results of our most recent membership survey, taken in 2005, approximately 45% of our members regard MRS as their primary society, which is a larger proportion than in previous years. The fact remains, then, that 15% of our members identify ACS as their primary society and a slightly larger, yet comparable, number identify APS as their primary society. With regard to age distribution, 75% of our members are younger than 45 years old (this places me in the oldest quartile). Nearly 40% of our members are from nonU.S. countries, primarily Asia and Europe, and most of us (60%) are from academia, with other major components of the membership coming from industry (including manufacturing) and national laboratories. Our membership has grown steadily over the years to an all-time high of nearly 14,000. One conclusion we might draw from these data is that we are a young, vibrant, and interdisciplinary society. MRS technical programming is driven by a central technical theme: Through fundamental understanding, how do we develop methods/strategies for the synthesis/processing and analysis of materials, with the goal of enabling one to “tailor” materials properties for specific applications? Programming strategies compel meeting chairs, who are carefully chosen, to “push the envelope” to bring diverse groups of researchers who work on similar materials-related problems to realize this vision. Our unique strength is MRS BULLETIN • VOLUME 31 • NOVEMBER 2006
“MRS has helped define a field and a profession….”
the composition of our membership; we are agile and able to capture, and define, cutting-edge areas of materials. Therefore, I would argue that we are a society of materials researchers, bound by a common vision, regardless of whether we selfidentify as materials scientists, physicists, chemists, or eng
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