Nonlinear Circuits and Systems Technical Committee (NCAS) – ISCAS’97 Minutes (June 1997)

ISCAS’97: Hong Kong, June 12, 1997

List of attendees:
Geoffrey Coram, Tetsuro Endo, Mike Green, Martin Hasler, Shinsaku Mori, Tetsuo Nishi, Joseph A. Nossek, Maciej J. Ogorzalek (Chair), Kohshi Okumura, Fathi Salam, Ljiljana Trajkovic (Chair-elect), Akio Ushida, Joos Vandewalle, Laurens Weiss, Alan N. Willson, Jr.

AGENDA:

1. Chair’s report on the past year’s activities of the Technical Committee:

Maciej Ogorzalek reported on past conferences and organized special sessions:

• ISCAS’96 (Atlanta, GA): nonlinear track had 82 papers submitted (largest number ever at ISCAS)
• ISCAS’97 (Hong Kong): special session organized by Peter M. Kennedy and Maciej O. Ogorzalek (Application of Chaos in Communications)
• NOLTA’96 (Kochi, Japan): Akio Ushida reported that there were 160 attendees from 17 counties, who presented 127 papers. Special issue of the IEICE Transactions was prepared with 20 accepted papers.
• NDES’96 (Seville, Spain): Along with the CNN’97 conference, also hosted the celebration of Leon Chua’s 60th birthday.

2. NEW ACTIONS: Report from the Technical Activity (TA) Committee Chairs meeting held in Los Angeles, April 6, 1997.

Ljiljana Trajkovic attended the meeting as a chair-elect. (Please refer to the TA meeting minutes prepared by Chris Toumazou that were distributed vi email to the committee members before the ISCAS’97 meeting.)
The summary of the discussion held at the meeting and major conclusions:

Four main topics were discussed at the TA meeting:

• 1. MORE STRUCTURED TECHNICAL COMMITTEES:
  a. Each committee to have: chair, chair-elect, and a secretary
  b. Common bylaws across all TC’s
  c. Election of members in a committee by recommendation of a current member
  d. Committee will consist of up to 25 members (the CAD TC objected to this number, being a rather large committee and having approximately 40 active members.)
  e. Separation of mailing lists (open to anyone interested in the work of the committee) from the status of a committee member
  f. Deletion from membership who did not attend meetings for the last three years. 
• 2. ACTIVITIES OF TECHNICAL COMMITTEES:
  a. to promote technical activities in the area of interests
  b. review technical papers papers
  c. organize workshop and short course
  d. organize special sessions at ISCAS 
• 3. Continuing Education Short Courses Each TC to identify three technical areas for short courses in continuing education in advanced topics. The courses should last up to two weeks. Projected starting date: 1998. 
• 4. CAS Technical Activities White Paper. Special publication listing future directions and areas of interest and expertise of the committee. It should include description of the research expertise and interest of the committee members. The collection will be edited by the TC chairs and send to the VP of Technical Activities. The white paper will be used as a road map for planning future short course, workshops, and special sessions.

3. Activities for 1997-1998 already in progress:

• NDES’97 (Moscow, Russia): June 26-27, 1997. (Chair: Alexander Dmitriev; 80-100 papers accepted).
• NDES’98 (Budapest, Hungary): July 16-18, 1998
  (Chair: Geza Kolumban.)
• NOLTA’97 (Hawaii): 29 November – 3 December, 1997.
• NOLTA’98: September 14-17, 1998, Crans-Montana, Switzerland
  (General Co-chairs: Tetsuo Nishi and Martin Hasler (also local arrangements.)
• ECCTD’97 (Budapest, Hungary): August 30 – September 3, 1997. (Chair: Arpad Csurgay, Technical program char: Tomas Roska.)
  Special sessions organized by:
  Maciej Ogorzalek (Nonlinear Analysts Tools for Practical Circuits and Systems)
  Peter Kennedy and Geza Kolumban (Spread Spectrum Communications and Chaos)
  Joseph Nossek (Low Loss Circuits and Computing Architectures)
  Goras Liviu (Nonlinear Array Dynamics)
• Control of Oscillations and Chaos ’97 (St. Petersburg, Russia), August 27-29, 1997.
  (Joint event with the IEEE Control Society.)
• ISCAS’98 (Monterey, CA): May 31 – June 3, 1998.

4. Forthcoming special issues of journals are well in progress:

• IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, Part I, Special Issue on CHAOS SYNCHRONIZATION, CONTROL AND APPLICATIONS (Guest Editors: M. P. Kennedy and M. J. Ogorzalek, to appear October 1997.)
• IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, Part II, Special issue on ADVANCES IN NONLINEAR ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS (Guest Editors: M. P. Kennedy and A. Rodriguez-Vazquez, deadline 31 July 1997.)
• Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing Special issue on DC OPERATING POINTS OF ELECTRICAL CIRCUITS (Guest Editor: Lj. Trajkovic.)

5. Other issues:

• The committee members decided to abandon the items that have been proposed in the past and leave them dormant:
  – Undergraduate competition in nonlinear circuit design
  – Grand challenge problems.
• The committee members discussed a suggestion by Chris Toumazou to recommend two to three papers presented at ISCAS’97 in the NCAS area for a special issue of the Trans. on CAS. It was agreed that the committee will not support this proposal.
• Another suggestion made by Ruey-Wen Liu was to change the name of the committee. Committee felt that the name appropriately reflect our current research activities and interest and the name will remain until a concrete proposal for a change is made.

6. Election of officers for 1997-1998 (term ending at ISCAS 1998):

At the conclusion of the meeting, thanks were given to Maciej Ogorzalek for serving as the TCNCAS Chair during 1996/97.

Elected officers for 1996-1998 (term ending at ISCAS 1998):
Chair: Ljiljana Trajkovic
Chair-elect: Peter Kennedy
Secretary: Tetsuo Nishi

Prepared by Ljiljana Trajkovic.