TAC

Recently I was speaking to a long time member of the IEEE EMC Society. This person has been active in his local chapter for many years and is well known in the EMC Society. During our discussion, I mentioned the TAC and he asked, “What is the TAC?” This caused me some concern since the TAC is not intended to be a well kept secret!
     TAC stands for the Technical Advisory Committee. It is made up of all the Technical Committee (TC) Chairs and has responsibility for all technical activities within the EMC Society. No small task!
     There are many members of the EMC Society who are active within one of the TCs, but may not be aware of the scope of responsibilities of the TAC. The TAC (and therefore the TCs) is responsible for performing a technical peer review for every paper submitted for the annual IEEE EMC Symposium! In fact, we have at least three reviewers for each paper and some TCs get more than three reviews per paper. For EMC 2009 in Austin, this meant that there were approximately 235 technical papers submitted for regular and special sessions. This resulted in a goal of over 700 reviews! A daunting task in this day and age where everyone is extremely busy with their day job! This task was accomplished with about 80% of the papers accepted for this year’s symposium in Austin.
     The TAC also is responsible for making recommendations to the EMC Society Board of Directors on a wide range of technical activities. One of the most common activities is to recommend if the EMC Society should technically co-sponsor a non-IEEE organized symposium or conference. These non-IEEE events are held throughout the year and in most every corner of the globe. TAC/TC members will often attend these conferences and bring back information about the technical quality of the conference so future decisions about co-sponsorship will be more meaningful.
     There are a number of TCs which cover a wide range of technical subjects, including EMC testing, design, simulation, and nanotechnology. There is something for everyone! I have listed the TCs below with the contact information of each TC chair. I encourage every member of the EMC Society to consider which topic is most important, attend the TC meetings and participate in their activity.
     There are many other topic areas within the EMC umbrella that may not be covered by the existing TCs. If you have interest in these other topics, I encourage you to contact me or one of the other TAC officers to discuss your ideas. Over the past ten years, TCs concerned with computational EMC Modeling (TC9), Signal Integrity (TC10) and Nanotechnology (TC11) have been added. The TAC is a dynamic and changing organization!
     I look forward to hearing from you. You can find more information on the TAC and the TCs at www.emcs.org/acstrial/technical-committees.html
     Below is a short description and contact information for each Technical Committee.

Technical Committee 1: EMC Management
Chair: Dave Southworth (d.southworth@ieee.org)
Vice Chair: Bob Scully (bob.scully@ieee.org)
Secretary: Doug Kramer (drkramer@ieee.org)
This committee is concerned with the development and dissemination of Best Practices and Methodologies for the successful leadership, supervision, and guidance of EMC related activities. These Best Practices and Methodologies shall be structured so as to provide assistance to all managers and engineers. Appropriate and convenient tools shall serve as a foundation to these Best Practices and Methodologies.

Technical Committee 2: EMC Measurements
Chair: Don Heirman (d.heirman@ieee.org)
Vice Chair: Thomas J. Fagan (tjfagan@ieee.org)
Secretary: Clifford Hauser (clifford.hauser@ieee.org)
This committee is concerned with the measurement and instrumentation requirements in EMC standards and procedures and how they are interpreted. It is also concerned with the adequacy of measurement procedures and measurement instrumentation specifications for radiated and conducted emission and immunity tests, and the rationale for performance limits for these tests.

Technical Committee 3: Electromagnetic Environment
Chair: Graham (Bill) Strauss (strauss_ieee@verizon.net)
Vice Chair: Dave Southworth (d.southworth@ieee.org)
Secretary: John Archer (archerj@ieee.org)
The charter of this committee is to encourage research on the:

Electromagnetic environment (EME),
Development of standards for EME measurement and characterization,
Natural and man-made sources of electromagnetic environment that comprise this environment,
Effects of noise (unwanted portions of EME) on systems performance, and
Effects of international civil and military standards intended to control man-made intentional and unintentional emissions of electromagnetic energy.

Technical Committee 4: Electromagnetic Interference Control
Chair: Kermit Phipps (kphipps@epri.com)
Vice Chair: John Archer (archerjohn@att.net)
Secretary: Philip Keebler (pkeebler@epri.com)
This committee is concerned with the fundamentals of transmission / propagation media and interference control technology, together with associated design, analysis, and techniques useful for the identification, characterization, control, and mitigation of electromagnetic interference at the system, subsystem, and unit levels. The purview of this technical committee includes low impedance bonding of equipment and subsystems, enclosure and cable shielding, and filtering and grounding of signal and power distribution systems, equipment, and subsystems.

Technical Committee 5: High Power Electromagnetics
Chair: Dr. William A. Radasky (wradasky@aol.com)
Vice Chair: Mr. Michael K. McInerney (mkmcinerney@ieee.org)
Secretary: Dr. Randy J. Jost (randy.j.jost@usu.edu)
This committee is concerned with the effects of and protection methods for electronic equipment and systems for all types of high power electromagnetic environments. These environments include electromagnetic pulse (EMP), intentional EMI environments (e.g. high power microwaves and ultra wideband), lightning electromagnetic currents and fields, and electrostatic discharge. Interactions with aircraft and other mobile systems are included.

Technical Committee 6: Spectrum Management
Chair: Thomas J. Fagan (tjfagan@ieee.org)
Vice Chair: Larry Cohen (lcohen@ieee.org)
Secretary: Karen Dyberg (kdyberg@ieee.org)
This committee is concerned with frequency coordination, management procedures for efficient spectrum use, band occupancy and congestion, federal regulations, and their adequacy.

Technical Committee 7: Nonsinusoidal Fields
Chair: Dr. William J. Croisant (w.croisant@ieee.org)
Vice Chair: Michael K. McInerney (mkmcinerney@ieee.org)
Secretary: Dr. Frank Sabath (frank.sabath@ieee.org)
This committee is concerned with the application of electromagnetic signals with large relative bandwidth, commonly referred to as nonsinusoidal waves, the delineation of the differences between time-domain and frequency-domain principles, analytical and numerical treatments of the Maxwell postulates directly in time-domain, conceptualization, design, fabrication, and testing of materials and devices for ultra-wide bandwidth systems.

Technical Committee 8: Electromagnetic Product Safety
Chair: Richard Georgerian (richardg@ieee.org)
Vice Chair: Dan Modi (Dan.Modi@alconLabs.com)
Secretary: John Barnes (jrbarnes@iglou.com)
This committee provides a professional forum for Product Safety professionals, both to develop their own skills, and to provide Product Safety outreach to engineers, students, and others.

Technical Committee 9: Computational Electromagnetics
Chair: Dr. Chuck Bunting (reverb@okstate.edu)
Vice Chair: Dr. Alan Roden (Alan.Roden@aero.org)
Secretary: Samuel Connor (sconnor@us.ibm.com)
This committee is concerned with broad aspects of Applied Computational Electromagnetic techniques that can be used to model electromagnetic interaction phenomena in circuits, devices, and systems. The primary focus is with the identification of the modeling methods that can be applied to EMC interference phenomena, their validation, and delineating the practical limits of their applicability. Included are low and high frequency spectral-domain techniques and time-domain methods.

Technical Committee 10: Signal Integrity
Chair: Jim Nadolny (jim.nadolny@samtec.com)
Vice Chair: Prof. Antonio Orlandi (orlandi@ing.univaq.it)
Secretary: Prof. Giulio Antonini (antonini@ing.univaq.it)
This committee is concerned with the design, analysis, simulation, modeling, and measurement techniques useful in maintaining the quality of electrical signals. These activities encompass all aspects of signal integrity from the integrated circuit level to the system level.

Technical Committee 11: Nano-Technology
Co-Chair: Christopher L. Holloway (holloway@boulder.nist.gov)
Co-Chair: Maria Sabrina Sarto (sarto@elettrica.ing.uniroma1.it)
Secretary: Marina Koledintseva (marinak@mst.edu)
This committee is concerned with the design, analysis, simulation, modeling, and measurement techniques associated with the area of nano-scale technology (materials, components, devices, and systems). Activity is also focused on the EMC aspects related to the interconnection problems between nanostructured systems and sub-nano or micro-size devices, and on advanced artificial materials, such as metamaterials. EMC