Particulars

Particulars, Newsletter of The American Association for Aerosol Research, Winter 2000 - 2001

President's Message:

AAAR Enters the New Millennium with Confidence

by David Pui

In 2001, AAAR will celebrate its 20th Anniversary Conference. I attended the first AAAR conference and remember well the vision and confidence expressed by the founding leaders, David Ensor, Sheldon Friedlander, Benjamin Liu, and David Shaw. AAAR enters the new millennium in excellent shape, thanks to the dedication of past presidents and officers, boards of directors, management office staff, and many dedicated working group chairs who organized memorable annual conferences. The latest conference, organized by the talented Sonia Kriedenweis, attracted 605 attendees and 400 tutorial registrations. It was the best-attended conference in recent years. Sonia also tested several innovations, e.g., the PowerPoint presentation, the spiral bound program, and the lunch poster session, all with very good success. These innovations will be adopted in future conferences. I am pleased that two experienced organizers, Yung-Sung Cheng and Chong Kim, will serve as conference chairs in 2001 and 2002, respectively. They will ensure the continued success of the annual conference.

Under the capable leadership of immediate-past-president Cliff Davidson, AAAR has become an efficient organization serving its members and promoting aerosol research. Among many of his accomplishments, Cliff undertook the major task of revising the Guiding Policies and Procedures (P&P) of AAAR. The P&P summarize the responsibilities of officers, committees, and working groups, as well as traditional practices that are pertinent to conferences and publications. The revised P&P was published in the 2000 membership directory. It will help provide continuity for AAAR operations and will serve as a useful guide to AAAR leadership for young aspiring members. Cliff will continue to promote AAAR's mission and visibility. He has already devoted significant effort to the planning of a major national conference on airborne particulate matter in the spring of 2003.

It is gratifying to me that many former presidents continue to serve AAAR with total dedication. Sheldon Friedlander has energized the Long Range Planning Committee with his vision and strategy of promoting the aerosol field to industry, government, and other scientific communities. David Ensor has agreed to chair two important committees in the coming year: the Ad hoc Committee to Evaluate the Management Office, and the Publication Committee. The Ad hoc Committee (which included two past presidents as members: Susanne Hering and Cliff Davidson) is charged with evaluating the performance of Management Office for contract renewal and with setting the future vision for the Office. The Publication Committee is charged with searching for a new editor-in-chief of Aerosol Science and Technology. Both tasks will undoubtedly take a significant amount of his valuable time. He accepted both tasks without hesitation.

Another new initiative advocated by two former presidents, Rick Flagan and Susanne Hering, is a new aerosol website for high quality technical content. The website will publish peer reviewed articles that would not fit within the present journal structures, e.g., computer codes and videos. The web publication will be a part of the International Aerosol Research Assembly (IARA) website with links to member societies. The AAAR Board approved seed funds to support the start-up of the web publication.

Although AAAR enters the 21st century with a solid footing, there are many exciting developments that can propel it to a new height. A key area for generating new memberships will likely be in the industrial sector. We need to maintain a sustaining effort to attract interests from industries, e.g., pharmaceutical, semiconductor, materials, and engines. Interests in the traditional fields of atmospheric and health-related aerosols have remained very strong, attracting large turnout in the respective working groups. One common theme in all these disciplines is the recent interest in nanoparticle/ultrafine-particle studies, a part of the ongoing National Nanotechnology Initiative. We can stimulate member interest by organizing special symposia and workshops. In this newsletter, a nanoparticle symposium is announced that is jointly funded by the U.S., European, and Asian science agencies. This will represent an expanded version of three past NSF-ESF Joint Symposia on Nanoparticles. We hope that "nanoparticle science and engineering" as an "enabling technology" will help to promote AAAR's visibility, resulting in the systematic increase in allocation of resources by industry and government, a vision advocated by Sheldon Friedlander.

International cooperation is another area that can accelerate the growth of, and create new opportunities for, the aerosol community. We have witnessed the phenomenal growth of CAART (Chinese Association for Aerosol Research in Taipei) and KARPA (Korean Association for Aerosol and Particle Research) during the past few years. CAART will be the host of the 2002 International Aerosol Conference in Taipei. AAAR's Board has approved a special initiative proposed by Mike Bergin and Glen Cass to increase exchanges with mainland Chinese scientists in air pollution studies. By networking and strengthening cooperation with international aerosol communities in all the continents, aerosol associations can benefit from the new opportunities created, and can participate in protecting the world's environment.

I look forward to working with the new Board and officers to advance the AAAR mission. If you have any comments or suggestions on any aspect of AAAR, please feel free to contact me at dyhpui@tc.umn.edu.

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