The President's Message

It has been a productive year for me as the president of the Accelerator Section. Your board of directors has been active since the 2002 Tampa Health Physics Society (HPS) meeting with a number of activities.

1. A notable action was the formalization of the H. Wade Patterson Memorial Award (for the best annual meeting student accelerator paper/poster) following membership approval at the Tampa meeting. Joe McDonald, a past section president, agreed to chair the Patterson Award Selection Committee composed of Bob Casey, president-elect, and Tom Gesell, our HPS national board liaison. The Patterson Award announcement was printed in the HPS newsletter, Health Physics News. The Patterson Award announcement was also sent electronically to the HPS student chapter advisors for information and distribution.
2. The Accelerator Section board nominated Ralph Thomas, one of our section's founders, to the HPS Presidents Emeritus Committee to give a G. William Morgan Lecture at the 2003 San Diego meeting. The board was very pleased when Dick Vetter, committee chair, informed us that Ralph had been named a 2003 G. William Morgan lecturer. I am pleased to announce that Ralph will be the keynote speaker at our Wednesday morning Accelerator Section session.
3. Although my personal new member initiative during December 2002 only gained several new section members, I certainly enjoyed having the opportunity to talk with many of you individually around the holiday season. My thanks to those of you who encouraged a colleague to join the Accelerator Section.
4. Bob Casey has been very involved with planning our Accelerator Section session at the San Diego meeting. I was extremely pleased when Bob reported that we have a full Wednesday morning session of presentations. Our annual section business meeting will be held immediately following our section session. Please plan to stay around for this meeting that starts at 12:00 noon as your board values your input. There is an additional short accelerator session with three papers at 4:00 pm on Wednesday afternoon.
5. A recent personal initiative as Accelerator Section president has been very preliminary discussions with the board of directors of the Northern California Chapter of the HPS (NCCHPS) regarding a joint collaboration for a possible future HPS midyear meeting on radiation-generating machines. The last HPS midyear meeting on this topic was the 1997 San Jose, California, meeting. The NCCHPS served as the local arrangements committee and the Accelerator Section served as the program committee in a very successful collaboration for the 1997 San Jose midyear meeting. The earliest potential midyear would be in January or February of 2007. Again, I need to stress that all of my discussions with the NCCHPS and Mike Charlton, HPS Symposia Committee chair, have been very preliminary.

I would like to take this opportunity to commend Linnea for her excellent work on the newsletter and her willingness to serve the Accelerator Section for another year. I have greatly appreciated the advice and input from the board this year. I would like to wish Bob the best during his term as president. I look forward to seeing you in San Diego.