From the EditorThe latest, March 2002 Issue of the IFMBE News was very rich with contributions from all over the world. I would like to thank to all those who sent the reports on the activities in their BME communities for the News and I sincerely hope that this extensive exchange of information through our Internet publication will continue. In this Issue of the News you will be able to follow the developments on the European BME scene. In particular, I would like to point out the Warsaw meeting of the IFMBE ProTem group which made an additional step in forming the European Alliance for Medical and Biological Engineering and Sciences (EAMBES). For details, please have a look at the report in this issue. For all those interested in joining the 6th Framework Program of the EU, there is more information on the Expressions of Interests for Networks of Excellence. In this issue, we are happy to be able to publish a short biography of Prof. dr. Maciej Nalecz, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. For many of you who know Prof. Nalecz, these few lines may seem to short to express the whole contribution Maciej made untill now, but I am sure that he will continue contributing to biomedical engineering in the future as well. Prof. Nalecz is not only a famous scientist, but a prominent activist on the field of peace-keeping and disarmamant. For a very long time he served as the Chairman of the Pugwash Council, the governing body of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. The latest news on three IFMBE sponsored conferences to be held in 2002 are published as well: 12th Nordic-Baltic Conference, Reykjavik, coming in June; International Congress on Biological and Medical Engineering, Singapore and 2nd European Medical and Biological Engineering Conference in Vienna, both in December. I am very glad that we have a report on the Young Investigators Competition from EMBEC, Vienna, where over 220 young investigators applyed for the competition. I believe that we all are waiting with interest to see the final results of the competition and to meet the winners of the awards. I am taking the advantage of my present position as the News Editor and my former position of the Organising Committee Chair of MEDICON 2001, to introduce in more details the winners of the Student Competition Awards from Pula: Federica Vatta from Italy, Thomas Baun and his colleagues from Denemark and finally, Ozran Radjenovic from Craotia. These reports are almost a year old, but we will learn how our young colleagues have developed in that period. Looking forward to receiving your contributions and comments, Sincerely
Ratko Magjarevic
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