Voting Members in Attendance:
NNC Excom
President Enrique H. Ruspini
President Elect Piero P. Bonissone
Past President Clifford Lau
VP Conferences Evangelia Micheli-Tzanakou
VP Publications Tzyh-Jong Tarn
VP Finance Bogdan M. Wilamowski
VP Technical Activities Fathi M. Salam

Society Representatives
Circuits & Systems- Allen R. Stubberud; Majid Ahmadi
Computer- Laurel V. Kaleda; Ronald Waxman
Control Systems- Jennie Si; Marious M. Polycarpou
EMBS- Charles J. Robinson; Mark van Gils
Industrial Electronics- Mo-Yuen Chow; M. Okyay Kaynak
Industrial Applications- Dierk Schroeder
Power Engineering- David B. Fogel; Mohamed El Sharkawi
Robotics and Automation- Toshio Fukuda; Max Meng
Signal Processing- Shigeru Katagiri; Jose Principe
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics- George G. Lendaris; Lawrence Hall

Non-Voting Members in Attendance:
Editor-in-Chief, Transactions on Neural Networks Jacek Zurada
Editor-in-Chief, Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Jim Keller
NNC Electronic Newsletter EditorTC Chair NN Gary Yen
TC Chair, Fuzzy Systems Valerie Cross
Chair, Awards Committee Mary Lou Padgett
Chair, Educational Activities Committee Karen Haines
Secretary Ann Johnston
 

The meeting was called to order by Enrique Ruspini at 9:05AM

Ruspini welcomed everyone and introduced past and current IEEE Directors and distinguished guests.

Roll call taken.

Ruspini introduced Toshio Fukuda, Division X Director, who shared highlights of his 12 year tenure with IEEE.  In addition, he presented an overview of the IEEE Board of Directors meeting held in Beijing.

The agenda, as published in the AdCom book, was adopted.

The minutes of the 2000 AdCom meeting (Cernobbio, Italy, July 2000) were approved.

Ruspini presented the consent agenda as originally included in the AdCom book, further revised to include the recent appointment of Professor Laszlo Koczy as Chair, Regional Interest Groups Committee. The consent agenda included three items: (1) Approval of Presidential Appointments of Society Officers, (2) Approval of Awards Committee report, (3) Approval of revised FUZZ-IEEE’2003 budget (resubmitted and reviewed by ExCom).

Laurel Kaleda recommended that the names of the award nominees not be published prior to the approval by AdCom pointing out that publishing the names could have an impact on the awards.  Cliff Lau indicated that, unfortunately, because of timing problems, it is hard to get early approvals, because the Adcom meeting is usually one day prior to the day of awards.   Toshio Fukuda agreed with Kaleda and recommended that, at the next meeting, the names be withheld.
Charles Robinson indicated that the problem may be solved by AdCom E-mail vote.  At that point, the awards would have been approved and could be published. He requested that item #2 be removed from the agenda and discussed during the Awards Chair report. .

Motion (Ahmadi, Lau second): Approve consent agenda as amended by removal of item #2 from the agenda (to be discussed during Awards Chair report).
Passed unanimously.

President Report – Enrique Ruspini

New Sponsoring Society:
Enrique Ruspini presented a request by the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society to become a new NNC Sponsoring Society
Motion (Salam, Robinson second): IMS be accepted as a new NNC sponsoring society.
Passed unanimously.

E-mail Vote Policy:
Ruspini discussed a recent request by the IEEE for Societies/Councils to develop explicit policies for E-mail voting. After introducing, as background, article C.7 of the NNC Constitution, he introduced a motion by ExCom to adopt the following statement as NNC E-mail voting policy:

Committees of the Neural Networks Council may vote on matters before the committee by email where, in the opinion of the Committee's Chair, matters requiring action can be adequately handled in that manner. All voting members of the committee are to be notified of any such proposed action. The email vote shall provide for three voting alternatives: approve, not approve, and defer to next meeting. If none of the alternatives receives a majority of eligible voting members of the committee, the one with the least vote will be dropped until one of the remaining alternatives receives a majority.  If a majority of voting members of the committee is not achieved, the matter will be referred to the next committee meeting. In no event, shall the period allowed for email vote be less than two weeks.

In the subsequent discussion, Charles Robinson pointed out that E-mail voting was consistent with article C7.5 of the NNC constitution, which states

Business of the Council may be transacted by correspondence, or other telecommunications means when in the opinion of the President matters requiring action can be adequately handled in that manner.  All voting members of the Council should be informed by such interim actions, and a majority of the Council must be reached for ratification of the actions, if balloting is necessary, unless otherwise provided by the Constitution or Bylaws.

Motion (ExCom)   Approve E-mail policy (per statement) was passed:
 
Vote:    Yes 22        No 1  (Fukuda)                 Abstention  1

Significant Issues:

NNC Finances:

The Council is in excellent financial position. Net worth as of 31 December is 3,004.61K.  The surplus in 2000 was $489.8K

Ruspini discussed the significant financial loss incurred by the Institute in 2001, its causes, and its impact on the finances of S/C, in general, and on those of the NNC, in particular. In order to offset losses at the Institute level, it will be required to reduce the overall S/C reserves by $15.3M. The NNC reserves, in particular, were reduced by approximately $371K. It is also projected that further reserve reductions of $600K will be incurred by the NNC due to expected Institute financial losses in 2001.

The Institute is developing a new financial process intended to better identify financial streams and expense allocations while providing safeguards for expected economic circumstances.

Book Broker Program:

Ruspini discussed recent difficulties monitoring NNC participation in the Book Broker Program in 2000. The problem was caused partly by a large payment —based on submitted printer invoices—for IJCNN’99 Proceedings by BBP to INNS of $106K and in part by the choice made (unknowingly) by IJCNN’2000 organizers to choose a printer not participating in BBP.

These problems have been addressed by agreement with BBP on a policy for maximum payment to conferences and by specific monitoring of conference agreements with specific printers. Ruspini announced also the appointment of T.-J. Tarn  as corresponding member for TAB Products Committee.  He will work with Pat Thompson and Mark Vasquez to assure proper liaison with the BBP office and to facilitate NNC management of BBP affairs.

Computational Intelligence Package:

Ruspini next discussed problems with implementation of the Transaction-bundling offer known as “Computational Intelligence Package.” Because of the NNC status as a Technical Council, its publications are listed, in the IEEE Renewal Brochure, as part of the offerings of the Council-sponsoring societies.  This lack of specific information regarding NNC offerings (i.e., Councils do not have membership) led to a brochure where hardly anybody could find the NNC bundled-transactions offer. Furthermore, the IEEE Publications staff had difficulties in finding IEEE members who had taken advantage of the offer.

VP, Publications T.-J. Tarn is working closely with the IEEE Publications staff to solve the problem.

Other significant information items:

TAB Council Review: The Council is being reviewed in 2001. NNC Publications were reviewed in June 2001. TAB’s Publications Review Committee highly commended the Council for the quality and management of its publications. A full review of the NNC will be conducted by the TAB Society Review Committee in November 2001.

Societies/Council Association:  The NNC is engaged in talks with the Robotics and Automation Society, the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, and the Industrial Electronics Society to identify possible joint initiatives and study possibilities for sharing of common supporting staff resources. There are no significant developments to report at this time.

Nanotechnology Council: The NNC is a supporter of the Nanotechnology  Committee and its technical activities.  Cliff Lau and Litsa Tzanakou have been appointed as NNC liaisons to the Nanotechnology Committee.

Historical NNC Records: IEEE is compiling a history of the NNC.  Ruspini requested those that have access to pertinent records to please mail them to him.

Institute-level Awards: Xin Yao, TC Chair, Evolutionary Computation received the IEEE Donald G. Fink for best survey paper in IEEE Publications in 1999-2000.
 Charles Robinson received the 2001 IEEE Distinguished Services Medal.

Transition to Neural Networks Society:

Ruspini described recent efforts to transition the Council to a Society, to be called “Neural Networks Society.”

For the past year, Excom officers have been attending TAB meetings and TAB retreats. We have, otherwise, established extensive TAB contacts since February 2000. In the context of these events, we have made inquiries about the possibility of the NNC transitioning to Society status and found significant support for such a transition.

At the TAB meeting in June 2001, Ruspini presented arguments in support of the creation of the NNS. Following his presentation, TAB approved, by a vote of 29 to 12, the transition of the NNC to NNS “in concept”. The “in concept” qualification refers essentially to completion of formal transition requirements (i.e., filing of a budget plan) plus consent from the current NNC AdCom to complete the process of creation of the NNS.

Ruspini presented an abridged version of his presentation to TAB, which pointed out the excellent financial state of the Council, its strong conference and publication programs, the potential for the new Society and its growth, and the benefits of becoming a Society.

Ruspini then introduced the following motion by ExCom:

Motion (ExCom):
The President of the NNC is directed to continue his efforts to complete the process of creation of the IEEE Neural Networks Society and to submit all documentation and plans required by the IEEE TAB.

Following Roberts Rule of Order regarding motions pertaining directly to the presiding Chair, Ruspini removed himself as Chair of the meeting and turned the Chair over to Cliff Lau at 10:20 AM.

Laurel  Kaleda presented an opposing side,  arguing the NNC should remain a council.   (Kaleda’s presentation is attached as Appendix 1 to these minutes.)
 
In subsequent discussion, Ruspini responded to the presentation by Kaleda and to various inquiries from members of the Committee.

Charles Robinson raised a point of order indicating that, according to Roberts Rule of Order, an individual should not speak again until everyone wishing to speak has been able to do so.

Robinson further moved (seconded) to replace ExCom’s motion with the substitute motion:

Move that the Neural Networks Council becomes the Neural Network Society

During subsequent discussion, George Lendaris moved (seconded) to amend the substitute motion so that Robinson’s motion be used as a preface to the main ExCom motion.

Motion (Lendaris, seconded ): Substitute motion by Robinson be amended to append original ExCom motion, i.e.,

The Neural Networks Council becomes the Neural Network Society, and the President of the NNC is directed to continue his efforts to complete the process of creation of the IEEE Neural Networks Society and to submit all documentation and plans required by the IEEE TAB.

Vote:  Yes 14  No  9       Abstain 0
Motion to amend passed.

Motion (Robinson, seconded, further amended) : Original motion by ExCom is substituted by substitute motion by Robinson as amended to append original ExCom motion, i.e.,

The Neural Networks Council becomes the Neural Network Society, and the President of the NNC is directed to continue his efforts to complete the process of creation of the IEEE Neural Networks Society and to submit all documentation and plans required by the IEEE TAB.

Vote:  Yes  23  No  0      Abstain 0
Motion to substitute passed.
 
Motion (ExCom, as substituted by Robinson, amended by Lendaris):

The Neural Networks Council becomes the Neural Network Society, and the President of the NNC is directed to continue his efforts to complete the process of creation of the IEEE Neural Networks Society and to submit all documentation and plans required by the IEEE TAB.

Voting -  Yes – 18 No - 0  Abstain - 5
Motion passed

Cliff Lau turned the Chair back to Ruspini at 11:20 AM

Subsequent presentations dealt with information items on preliminary versions of proposed documents and statements to be sent, after further review, to TAB. These documents, summarized by Ruspini, Lau, and Wilamowski, include:

§ Petition signatures
§ Field of Interest Statement, to be identical with current NNC FOI statement except that the word “Council” will be replaced by the word “Society.”
§ Proposed NNS Constitution and Bylaws
§ NNS Membership Offerings
§ Proposed Regional structure

Documents used during these presentations are attached as Appendix 2 to these minutes.

In subsequent discussion, AdCom members offered their views on various issues regarding proposed organization and bylaws of the new Society.

In particular regard to the total term of service commitment by Presidents (i.e., the total time of service as President-elect, President, and Immediate Past President), an informal poll was conducted to gauge AdCom feelings in this regard. The results of this poll were as follows:

3 year commitment (1 yr. PE, 1 yr. P, 1 yr. PP)               Vote -  4
4 year commitment (1 yr. PE, 2 yr. P, 1 yr. PP)              Vote - 18
6 year commitment (2 yr. PE, 2 yr. P, 2 yr. PP)   Vote - 0

Nominations / Elections – Clifford Lau

Clifford Lau presented an overview of the 3 positions open (President-Elect, Vice President for Conferences, and Vice President for Technical Activities).

The candidates nominated by the Nominations Committee for the position of President-elect (1 year term) were:

 Evangelia Micheli-Tzanakou
 Fathi Salam
 
Nominations were requested from the floor but none was made.

Candidates Micheli-Tzanakou and Salam presented short statements supporting their candidacy.

The candidate nominated by the Nominations Committee for the position of Vice President, Conferences, (2 years term) was

  Marios Polycarpou

Charles Robinson was nominated from the floor (Bonissone, seconded).

Candidates Polycarpou and Robinson presented short statements supporting their candidacy.

The candidates nominated by the Nominations Committee for the position of Vice President, Technical Activities (2 years term), were

  Mohamed El-Sharkawi
  Jim Bezdek

Nominations were requested from the floor but none was made.
 

Candidate El-Sharkawi presented a short statements supporting his candidacy.

AdCom adjourned for lunch at 12:15 PM.

Adcom was called back to order at 1:15 PM.

The meeting went to Executive Session at 1:15 for discussions on the candidates, and Clifford Lau closed discussions on the candidates at 1:25 PM.

Ballots were distributed and counted.
Evangelia Micheli-Tzanakou was elected NNC President-elect (2003 President).

Motion (Robinson, seconded):  All election ballots be destroyed after the election.
Passed unanimously

Further nominations were requested from the floor for candidates to the position of VP, Conferences. Ahmadi (seconded) nominated Fathi Salam. Fathi Salam declined the nomination and withdrew his name

The meeting went in to Executive session at 1:25 for discussions on VP Conferences.  Clifford Lau closed discussions on the candidates at 1:40

Ballots were distributed and counted.
Marios Polycarpou was elected  NNC, VP Conferences (2002-2003)

Clifford Lau opened the floor for nominations for VP TA

Mohamed El-Sharkawi nominated Charles Robinson, motion was seconded by Majid Ahmadi.  Charles Robinson declined the nomination and withdrew his name.

The meeting went to exec session at 1:45 for discussions on VP Technical Activities and Clifford Lau closed discussions on the candidates at 2:00PM.

Ballots were distributed and counted.
Mohamed El-Sharkawi was elected  NNC, VP Technical Activities,  (2002-2003)

President-Elect – Piero Bonissone

Bonissone presented a brief report (included as  Appendix 3 to these minutes) of the TAB Publications Review Committee Review of NNC publications held in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on June 21, 2001.

VP Finances Report – Dan Wilamowski

Wilamoswki presented the proposed 2002 NNC budget remarking on the excellent financial position of the Council and its ability to control expenses (The detailed presentation is included in the AdCom book).

Motion (Finance Committee): Approve the proposed 2002 budget.

Vote:  Yes    No: 0   Abstain: 0

VP Publications – Tzyh-Jong Tarn

T.-J. Tarn summarized the ongoing bundling problem impacting awareness of the Computational Intelligence Package.  He is interacting with IEEE Publications. As of July 14, 2001, IEEE has been able to find we have 363 subscribers to the bundling package.

The Editors-in-Chief of the three NNC Transactions (Jacek Zurada, James Keller, and David Fogel) reported on the status and plans for their publications.

The Editor of the NNC Newsletter (Gary Yen) reported on the evolution of the recently-started electronic Newsletter, its contents, and future plans.

Thomasz  Cholewo presented an overview of the NNC WWW site, emphasizing the forthcoming availability of a system for review of manuscripts submitted to NNC-sponsored conferences.

Motion (Lau, seconded):  AdCom recognizes the efforts of all Editors and compliments them on a job well done.
Passed by acclamation

VP Conferences – Evangelia Tzanakou

Litsa Tzanakou presented a status of the NNC Conferences and presented several motions from the NNC Conferences Committee.
 

Motion (Conference Committee):
To approve the proposal submitted to hold a joint IJCNN and FUZZ-IEEE in 2004 in Budapest, Hungary. The proposal is appoved subject to the following conditions:

(i) the joint meeting is not to be called mini-WCCI

(ii)  the dates of the meeting should be July 25-29, 2004,

(iii) there should be a single registration  but two separate proceedings.

(iv) Corrections and clarifications should be made to items M1e, M3c, M3o, M3p (in the budget sheet).

(v) The organizers of the joint IJCNN-FUZZIEEE should also revise item 5a (in the Technical Meeting Request Form) to show 100% of NNC financial commitment and item 10 (in the Technical Meeting Request Form) to state that NNC is the sole entity selling Proceedings sold by Societies.

(vi) Other cooperative entities and levels of commitment (donations) should be listed in item 5b.

A revised TMRF should be submitted within 60 days For ExCom review and approval, then transmitted to AdCom for review and consent.

Vote:  Yes - 21  No - 0  Abstain - 1
 

Motion to reconsider (Robinson having voted yes on the motion, seconded)

Vote to reconsider:
Yes – 11 No – 12  Abstain – 0
Motion to reconsider failed

Motion (Kaleda, Robinson seconded):

Excom restricts forwarding of advance payments to proposed IJCNN-FUZZ-IEEE’2004 conference until a spending plan is submitted with a more detailed budget.

Vote:  Yes – 20 No – 0   Abstain - 1

Motion  (Conferences Committee) to approve the budget for CEC 2003

Move to approve for CEC 2003, with General Chair, venue, date, and budget, with its option that the Congress be jointly hosted with IE Australia as indicated in the proposal (under 4.1)

Motion (Fogel, seconded)

Amend motion to request proposers to revise budget, noting particularly items M3A, M30, Book Broker Expenses, Social Function Expenses, Administrative Expenses, and to resubmit budget to VP, Conferences for AdCom reconsideration.

Voting on the Motion to Amend:
Yes – 19       No- 0  Abstain - 0

Amended Motion:

Move to approve for CEC 2003, with General Chair, venue, date. Budget, with its option that the Congress be jointly hosted with IE Australia as indicated in the proposal (under 4.1), to be revised, noting particularly items M3A, M30, Book Broker Expenses, Social Function Expenses, Administrative Expenses, and to resubmit budget to VP, Conferences for AdCom reconsideration.

Vote on the amended motion:
Yes - 21   No – 0  Abstain - 0

Motion (Conferences Committee):

Approve proposal for organization of VIMS 2002 (2002 International Symposium on Virtual and Intelligent Measurement Systems) proposal subject
to the following changes:

(i)  Dates should be changed so that VIMS 2002 does not conflict with WCCI 2002

(ii) NNC should de listed as “technical co-sponsors” rather than as providing “technical cooperation”

Revised budget to be resubmitted for ExCom approval with AdCom consent.

Discussion ensued on the proposed motion,

Motion (El-Sharkawi, seconded):
Call the question

Vote:
Yes -  19  No – 1  Abstain – 0

Vote on the main (VIMS 2002) motion:

Approve proposal for organization of VIMS 2002 (2002 International Symposium on Virtual and Intelligent Measurement Systems) proposal subject
to the following changes:

(i)  Dates should be changed so that VIMS 2002 does not conflict with WCCI 2002

(ii) NNC should de listed as “technical co-sponsors” rather than as providing “technical cooperation”

Revised budget to be resubmitted for ExCom approval with AdCom consent.

Vote:
Yes - 20   No – 3  Abstain - 0

Motion (Conferences Committee):

Approve the chair, venue and budget for CIFER 2003 subject to revisions be made to correct and/or clarify the following items:

(i) M12 (IEEE Bookbroker),

(ii) S3* (surplus should be at least 10% of estimated expenses,

(iii) S3 (surplus should be at least 10% of estimated expenses),

(iv) M3g,

(v) T2H (speaker fee and travel expenses)

Revised budget should be resubmitted within 60 days.

During subsequent discussion, George Lendaris pointed out that the proposal in the AdCom book actually included two proposals. Micheli-Tzanakou clarified that the proposal being considered was that with a bottom line of $150K.

Jennie Si moved to amend the proposal.

Motion (Si, seconded):
Approve proposed Conference Chairs and venue for CIFER’2003. Budget to be resubmitted within 30 to 60 days noting requested revisions and sent to AdCom for E-mail vote

Vote to amend:
                         Yes - 18           No– 0  Abstain – 3
 

Vote on the amended motion:
 
Yes – 23  No – 0    Abstain-0
 

Litsa Tzanakou expressed thanks to Thomas Cholewo for his support  of the Conferences Committee and asked for AdCom recognition. Thomas was recognized with applause.

VP Technical Activities – Fathi Salam

VP, Technical Activities Fathi Salam presented an overview of technical activities noting initiatives to organize workshops and recent problems with the TC in Computational Finance. The latter problems were successfully resolved recently with the appointment of Professor Lei Xu as Chair, TC, Computational Finance.

Newsletter Expansion

Salam discussed the joint activities of the Technical Activities and Publications committees to expand the technical activity newsletter.

In closing, Salam challenged everyone to get involved with a technical committee and to bring forward new ideas for Council expansion and development.
 

Technical-Committee Chairs Report

Lei Xu presented an overview of the CIFER 2003 committee.  He has enhanced the committee by bringing in academic experts.

Futher Committee Reports:

By general consent, AdCom agreed to modify the agenda so as to eliminate verbal presentation of the reports of other Technical and Standing Committee Chairs, with the exception of the report by the Chair of the Awards Committee. These reports are included as part of the AdCom book.

Awards Committee Report

Mary Lou Padgett discussed the award recommendations contained in the report originally included as part of the consent agenda.

Motion (Padgett, seconded):
Accept the Awards Committee report modified to include the word “CONFIDENTIAL” on the report’s header.

Vote:              Yes: 23               Opposed:

Mary Lou moved to accept the amended report modified to include with the word confidential on the top, seconded by Mohamed El-Sharkawi.

Old Business
None

New Business
David Fogel made a motion (seconded) to thank Enrique Ruspini and to Excom for their work in securing IEEE approval of a Neural Networks Society.

Enrique and ExCom were recognized with applause.

Ruspini expressed his thanks for the hard work and support of the outgoing NNC Excom officers, Clifford Lau and Fathi Salam. Cliff and Fathi were recognized by applause.

Majid Ahamadi moved to adjourn the meeting, the motion was seconded, and the meeting adjourned at 5:25PM.
 

Next Adcom Meeting
May 12, 2001, Honolulu,  Hawaii

Minutes of NNTC Meeting, July 17, 2001, Washington, DC
Minutes of NNTC Meeting at IJCNN 2001
July 17, 2001, 10:10am-12:00pm
Renaissance Washington DC Hotel, Room 17

Present: Audrzej Pacut (pacut@ia.pw.edu.pl), Enrique Ruspini (ruspini@ai.sri.com), Wlodzislaw Duch (duch@ieee.org), Marius van der Meer (marius.v.d.meer@computer.org), Mary Lou Padgett (m.padgett@ieee.org), Jennie Si (si@asu.edu), S. N. Balakrishnan (bala@umr.edu), E. June Glass (jglass@jwac.osis.gov), Shiro Usui (usui@bpel.ics.tut.ac.jp), Robert Kozma (rkozma@memphis.edu), Rolf Eckmiller(eckmiller@nero.uni-bonn.de), Tomasz Cholewo (t.cholewo@ieee.org), Marimuthu Palaniswami (swami@ee.mu.oz.au), Csaba Rekeczky (rcsaba@szteki.hn), Peter Sincak (sincak@tuke.sk), Deliang Wang (dwang@cis.ohio-state.edu), Jacek Zurada (j.zurada@ieee.org), Ian Cloete (ian.cloete@i-u.de), Derong Liu (dliu@ieee.org) and Gary Yen (gyen@okstate.edu)
 

Yen called the meeting to order at 10:10am.

Yen apologized for the last minute room change (made by the Hotel without notice). Yen first introduced himself and had everyone present introduce him/herself. The attendance sheet was circulated for sign-in and the handouts (including minutes from 2000 meeting) were distributed. Yen called for the last minute agenda item to be included. Yen then introduced the President of NNC. Ruspini briefly overviewed the progress of NNC in transition to the Neural Network Society and requested for comments regarding the potential new TC in Bio-informatics (or Bio-neuroscience, named yet to be finalized) under development. Duch asked to clarify the scope of TC. Usui voiced his strong support. Eckmiller and Kozma commented on many on-going developments in other communities related to medical technology. Yen then briefed the agenda to be discussed (see attachment 1).

Yen reported the NNC Awards for 2001 (see attachment 1) and thanked Wang for his initiation toward Rumelhart and McCelland’s nomination on 2001 NN Pioneer award. Peter, David Rumelhart’s son, received the award on David’s behalf on Sunday night. Peter, a geologist at Exxon Mobile, exercised NN technology daily on his career and found this conference very interesting. McCelland will receive his award in IJCNN 2002. Yen emphasized the statue and reputation established over the years by NN Pioneer Awards. Eckmiller suggested to better publicize the Award (e.g., send an ad to Connectionist and other mailing list) and expressed his concern to have awards given on Opening Reception when many attendees are not even arrived yet. Zurada suggested hosting the awards in Banquet. Balakrishnan recommended providing specific citation on the accomplishments made by each awardee. Yen showed the history of Pioneer awardees. Padgett reported the progress on developing a Pioneer Award History homepage. Yen reported the strong supports to Sejnowski for 2002 Pioneer Award from many members with official nomination documents. Yen also showed the pool of potential candidates highly regarded (see attachment 2). Significant amount of time was then focused on the discussions about the nomination procedures. A minimum of fifteen years of active contributions in this community is the only requirement at the moment. Yen explained the importance to establish a more sophisticated, well-thoughout guideline to prevent unnecessary debates in future years. Eckmiller voiced the concern not to bias on non-US candidates. Usui suggested that NNTC provide no candidate to Award Committee unless a majority consensus is reached. Si seconded the motion. Wang suggested using the citation index to rank the significance of the contribution. Chow provided a counterexample that in the extreme case the most cited paper is the one with the most mistakes. Balakrishnan suggested opening the nominations from general members. Yen suggested extending further discussions on related issues via e-mails involving the entire NNTC body. Eckmiller suggested initiating the Outstanding Young Researcher Award. Wang expressed the concern that too many awards may delude the statue of Pioneer Award. It was also noted by Wang that INNS has ceased to give Outstanding Young Researcher Award. Ruspini reported the same decision was reached in ExCom several years ago regarding the Young Researcher Award. A straw vote was taken to simply judge the general opinion. Six were voted for while 6 were voted against with many sustained. Yen then reported there is only one nomination for 2002 NN Outstanding Paper Award. The paper published in TNN during 1999 and 2000 are qualified. The paper nominated was included in the handout. The nominator and the authors are reported from the same institution. Yen expressed the concern of conflict of interest. Yen asked the members present who are AEs at the same time provide more nominations afterwards. Si agreed to look into her record and provide suggestions. The recommendation is to be made by the end of July. Padgett, being the guest editor of PCNN special issue, will nominate the best paper ranked from the issue. Usui suggested again that NNTC provide no candidate to Award Committee unless a majority consensus is reached. Yen will suggest TNN-EIC to include a checklist in AE Recommendation form if the paper should be considered for Outstanding Paper award candidate. A small pool of candidate papers will then be distributed to NNTC members whose expertise are in the similar areas to provide the ranking. The TNN-EIC and VP-Publication will be kept fully informed. Yen solicited the nomination for future Meritorious Service award. Padgett reported that Walter Karplus will receive the 2002 Service Award. Yen explained an e-mail was sent to Giles with qualified candidates for the Fellow Committee. Respini suggested encouraging more qualified members to apply for Fellow. It was clearly understood the NNTC should not endorse any names, but encourage more qualified individuals to apply.

IJCNN was the next subject of discussions. Many expressed concerns about the quality of papers, review process and rejection rate. Ruspini explained the progress made by Joint INNS/IEEE Conference Committee to streamline the conference organization, paper review (full paper will be required in future IJCNNs) and acceptance/rejection rate. Many expressed the importance to maintain a high-quality conference for a healthy long-term growth. Yen encouraged more to be involved in Program Committee and other technical-related voluntary services. Yen then encouraged more to organize invited sessions/track for IJCNN 2002. Yen explained the encouragement from WCCI Organizer to propose focus, emerging, and state-of-the-art invited tracks. A well-organized themed track followed by daily WCCI plenary talk may involve a plenary speaker (40 minutes long), thirteen oral presentations (each 20 minutes long) and a closing 1-hour panel discussion. Additionally, about ten posters can be included in the poster sessions. Roska has committed via an email to organize an invited track on Cellular Neural Networks. Ruspini and Usui were interested in organizing bio-informatic related session. Other subjects were cited as well. Wang cautioned that invited sessions should be minimized and well organized, so they will not take away audiences from general sessions. Suggestion was made to place the invited sessions/tracks as pre or post-conference workshops. Pacut suggested that every session (regular and invited) should be set up along a common distinct thought. All should have well defined topic. If at all possible, every regular topical session should thus have a person responsible for session's logistic and organization. Many voiced their support to this opinion. Yen will convey the comments made to Fogel, if too many proposals are received. Yen reported the progress made to identify the financial support from Industry for IJCNN 2002 Best Student Paper Award. If so succeed, the award will be given in coordination with other awards given at Conference.

Yen expressed the intention to establish a database of expertise and to solicit more members to participate in NNTC. Those who have nominations were encouraged to forward the names and contacts to Yen. The database will then be used to develop special issues/sessions at TNN and IJCNN. Yen overviewed the development of the NNC Newsletter and solicited survey articles (non-traditional) to be published in the following issues. Ruspini briefed the plan to publish the printed version of Newsletter in 2003 and urged more to get involved.

At the end, Yen expressed the apology to those who have conflicts and were unable to attend the meeting. NNTC meeting was not given options to host at other more convenient time. To have NNTC meeting at night (say immediately after the last session) of the first day of conference is an alternative and will be explored in WCCI 2002.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:00 pm.

Actions to be taken:
· Solicit nominations for 2002 Outstanding Paper Award. The chair will contact those who at the same time are AEs to provide alternative options, if appropriate. The recommendation needs to be made by the end of July.
· The chair will work with Award Committee chair on NN Pioneer Award History homepage and widely publicize it.
· Coordinate with WCCI 2002 Organizer to better publicize and organize the Award Reception/Banquet.
· Follow up with IJCNN 2002 Best Student Paper Award sponsorship.
· Promote special tracks/sessions on chosen subjects at IJCNN 2002.
· The chair will suggest TNN-EIC to include a checklist in AE Recommendation form if the paper should be considered for Outstanding Paper award candidate
· Solicit nominations and facilitate discussions toward the 2003 NN Pioneer and Outstanding Paper Awards.

New Book: Fuzzy Logic Techniques for Autonomous Vehicle Navigation, Springer-Verlag, 2001
by Driankov, D. and Saffiotti, A. (Eds)
http://www.aass.oru.se/Living/FLAR/Book2001/
 

The goal of autonomous mobile robotics is to build and control physical systems which can move purposefully and without human intervention in real-world environments which have not been specifically engineered for the robot. The development of techniques for autonomous mobile robot operation constitutes one of the major trends in the current research and practice in modern robotics. This volume presents a variety of fuzzy logic techniques which address the challenges posed by autonomous robot navigation. The focus is on four major problems: how to design robust behavior-producing control modules; how to coordinate the activity of several independent behaviors; how to use data from sensors for the purpose of modeling the environment; and how to integrate high-level reasoning and low-level behavior execution. In this volume state-of-the-art fuzzy logic solutions are presented and their pros and cons are discussed in detail based on extensive experimentation on real mobile robots.