Report on the Activities of the International Academy for Medical and Biological Engineering at the Year 2000 World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical EngineeringThe International Academy for Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE) was established with the induction of the initial group of founding fellows at the Nice World Congress in 1997. Over the past three years, IAMBE has slowly been evolving as an organisation and the Chicago World Congress was the first with significant activities organised by IAMBE. These activities at the Chicago World Congress took place over the period 22-26 July 2000, and included a workshop, two business meetings, and an induction ceremony. The workshop was held on the weekend leading into the Chicago World Congress and was an international workshop focused on biomedical engineering education. It was supported by a grant from the Whitaker Foundation and brought together individuals from all over the world. There were a number of excellent presentations discussing innovating ways of approaching the education of biomedical engineers for the 21st century. The discussion that resulted was extensive and varied; and the feedback from the participants was quite positive. During the week of the World Congress, there were two business meetings. At the first of these, held on Monday 24 July, a nominating committee was formed and this group subsequently made recommendations at the second business meeting held on Wednesday, 26 July. These recommendations included, in addition to Åke Öberg becoming Chair, the following individuals: Chair Elect - Gunter Rau; Secretary - Niilo Saranummi; Members-at-Large of the Governing Council - Fumihiko Kajiya, Hiroshi Kanai, Robert Nerem, Max Valentinuzzi, and Peter Wells. The nominating committee also recommended a membership committee. These are as follows: Chair - Robert Nerem; Members - Shu Chien, Fumihiko Kajiya, Peter Niederer, Benno Nigg, Robert Plonsey, Gunter Rau, Peter Rolfe, Niilo Saranummi, Klaus Schinhelm, Tatsuo Tagawa and Max Valentinuzzi. At the second business meeting Richard Cobbold moved and Max Valentinuzzi seconded the motion that this slate be approved. The motion passed unanimously. Also discussed was how finances should be handled. The general consensus was that the secretary should do this. The booklet proposed by Åke Öberg was also discussed. This was to bring together information of interest in terms of the history of biomedical engineering. The discussion indicated that perhaps this should focus more on breakthroughs in medical technology as opposed to purely anecdotal information. It was also discussed that, should this be published, perhaps there are companies that would be interested in being sponsors. Initially, however, different write-ups should be "tested" by their publication in the IFMBE Newsletter. An important item of discussion was future programmatic activities. A number of items were suggested and these are as follows:
The new officers will need to discuss how to move these different programmatic activities forward. As far as future meetings are concerned, although it is not possible for IAMBE to meet annually, the general consensus was that the IAMBE's governing council should try to meet every year. A possible location for 2001 is the Medicon meeting in Slovenia. Also, wherever a reasonable number of academy fellows are gathered together, there should be an informal meeting. Even though IAMBE got off to a slow start, the organisation now seems to be established and everyone looks forward to the leadership to be provided by the new officers, the new governing council, and the new membership committee. Robert Nerem
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