Japan Chapter Selected as First Recipient of New SSCS Outstanding Chapter Award

The Japan Chapter will receive the first SSCS Outstanding Chapter Award. This new SSCS award recognizes one Chapter each year that has consistently demonstrated outstanding leadership and initiative in its activities. The Award will be presented at ISSCC in February 2001. Jan Van der Spiegel, the SSCS Chapters Coordinator, said of this well-deserved honor, "Japan has hosted a lot of unique activities. They have co-organized three conferences, initiated a new student award, and had very strong membership growth. Their seminar on Wireless and Mobile Access was particularly successful." The seminar featured Professor Paul Grey of UC Berkeley, who spoke on "Recent progress in ICs for wireless communications," and Dr. Masahiro Morikura of NTT, whose talk was "System aspect and service concept of multimedia mobile access communications." The Japan Chapter also organized a valuable review meeting of ISSCC 2000. The goal of this meeting was to help bring the essence of the conference to Society members who could not attend. The review meeting consisted of 12 selected papers from ISSCC and two lectures. The ISSCC Far East Committee Chairman, Dr. Youichi Unno, presented a conference overview along with some of the remarkable achievements and technology trends presented at the conference this year. In addition to the ISSCC Review Meeting, the Japan Chapter cosponsored the Asia-Pacific Conference on ASIC (AP-ASIC), Seoul, Korea, in August 1999. This was the first conference to promote ASIC design research and development activities in the Asia-Pacific region. The Chapter also cosponsored the VDEC LSI Designers Forum in September 1999 and the 3rd System LSI Biwalo Workshop in November 1999, which attracted more than 300 participants. When asked what the key is to managing an effective Chapter, Hajime Ishikawa, Chair of the Japan Chapter, said, "Most important for us is to create and sustain interest and enthusiasm for VLSI circuits R&D activities. We look to serve the chapter members as well as to-be members, particularly young engineers and students. Our newborn Japan chapter provides unique meetings to deliver hot information of leading edge technologies presented in conferences that are held overseas. Attendees this spring rated very favorably the ISSCC 2000 Review Meeting. The new SSCS Japan Chapter Award spotlights and encourages student research activities." The Japan Chapter has a full slate of activities planned for the upcoming year. In August 2000 it is cohosting the ASIC 2000 meeting and the Summer School on VLSI Design. In the fall of 2000, it is cosponsoring the 2000 VDEC LSI Designers Forum and the 4th System LSI Biwako Workshop. In 2001, the Chapter hopes to host an SSCS Distinguished Lecturer and to have another successful ISSCC 2001 Review Meeting. Currently, the Japan Chapter serves eight sections and is preparing to organize another new chapter in Kansai. To view the activities of the Japan Chapter, go to its Web site: homepage1.nifty.com/ieeetokyo/soc/ssc37/ssc_e.htm. Congratulations to the Japan Chapter on an outstanding year! Although this is only the first year of the SSCS Outstanding Chapter Award, the Chapters Committee had a large number of highly qualified and impressive candidates to choose from. The criteria to select an outstanding Chapter are based on the quality and quantity of activities sponsored by the Chapter, benefits for Chapter members, successful outreach programs to the professional community, and growth of Chapter membership. Any member can nominate a Chapter; Chapter Chairs can nominate their own Chapters. Nominations close at the end of June each year. The Award consists of a check for $1,000 to be used for Chapter activities and a Certificate of Recognition for the Chapter.