The President's Message 
I am just returning from PESC '96 as I write this, and what a
wonderful conference it was! It is difficult to imagine a more
beautiful site for PESC than the shores of Lake Maggiore in Baveno,
Italy. The conference was a wonderful success by every measure,
including strong attendance (>450) and a high-quality technical
program. Despite the many sight-seeing distractions around Baveno,
the technical sessions were well attended and lively right through
the final presentation on Thursday afternoon. The gala banquet on
Wednesday evening was a spectacular demonstration of Italian cuisine
at its best, climaxed by the presentation of this year's William E.
Newell Award to Professor Akira Nabae. The ceremony also included
well-deserved recognition of the conference organizing committee,
including Conference Chair Piero Maranesi, Program Chair Sandro
Tenconi, and Finance Chair Alessandro Gandelli, who together executed
a nearly flawless conference plan.
AdCom Meeting Highlights
PESC '96 also served as the venue for this year's second meeting of the PELS Administrative Committee (AdCom). It was a very productive meeting, providing a welcome opportunity to review recent progress towards achieving this year's Society objectives, as well as for launching some new initiatives. I am pleased to report that good progress is being made towards such important Society objectives as accelerating the Transactions review cycle time and reinvigorating the Society's Distinguished Lecturer program.
In the category of new initiatives, approval was granted for a new student contest to be held for the first time at next year's PESC (see article elsewhere in this Newsletter for more details). We hope that all PELS members will benefit from these improved services and take advantage of opportunities to get more directly involved in Society activities.
Standards Activities
Getting back to the conference, one of the interesting events during the week was the series of three rap sessions held on Tuesday evening. All three were excellent, but I spent most of my time in the session on Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) regulations titled "What price EMC Are current and proposed EMC regulations worth their cost?"; hosted by Dave Luchaco with Richard Redl joining Dave as a panelist. This session generated some lively discussion about the fundamental differences between the EMC regulatory approaches in Europe, North America, and Asia, and the significant impact these differences are having on power electronics manufacturers all over the world.
An observation made by a European participant during the course of this discussion was that our Society is not playing a direct role in these EMC standards-setting activities, and I regret to admit that is true. In fact, PELS is still in a very formative stage when it comes to standards-related activities, with the exception of our Electronics Transformers Technical Committee which brought a long history of standards activities with it when it joined PELS several years ago.
Such a limited track record in the standards arena is somewhat understandable given the short history of PELS, but strengthening our Society's presence in this important area is a worthy long-term objective. Early in my tenure as Society President I appointed Dr. Jason Lai to serve as our Society's Standards Committee Chair, and he has taken an activist approach towards getting PELS more involved in new standards activities. To date he has succeeded in launching two new IEEE standards projects, one in the area of standardized power electronics module interfaces (P1461, chaired by Dennis Darcy of SatCon), and a second on test procedures for IGBT circuit simulator model validation (P1462, chaired by Allen Hefner, Jr. of NIST).
However, I am convinced that standards development activity is ultimately a grass-roots effort that must be driven by PELS members working in the power electronics industry who are motivated to participate on behalf of their employers' long-term commercial interests. Despite the improvements that are being made by IEEE to streamline the standards-making process, there is no denying that standards generation is time-consuming and often tedious business. Nevertheless, there is also no denying that successful standards generation can be crucial to the success of individual commercial enterprises or entire product markets, providing a great source of personal satisfaction to members of the associated standards project team. In many cases, it is simply too risky to not be involved, thereby surrendering the standards-making responsibility to unknown third parties looking out for their own interests elsewhere in the world.
The bottom line is that PELS can serve as an invaluable global forum for facilitating the formation of new standards in our field, but the burden ultimately falls on individual members to get involved in order to make things happen. In his role as Standards Chair, Jason Lai is anxious to provide information, guidance, and encouragement to anyone who wants to get involved in PELS standards activities as either a project leader or team member. Please feel free to contact Jason directly (e-mail: laijs@ornl.gov) if you would like more information on these activities, or contact me if you have any ideas on how we can strengthen our Society's presence in the standards-making world.
As one final encouraging indicator, there were several PELS members who identified standards as an area of interest when they returned our recent PELS Technical Interest Profile survey, and we intend to follow up with them to learn more about their specific interests. We hope that they and many others will take the opportunity to get directly involved in some aspect of the standards-making process. Everyone in the power electronics profession stands to benefit from their efforts. How about you?
T. M. Jahns
President, Power Electronics Society
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