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The Society for Information Display (SID) announced this month that 30-year electronics-industry veteran Tom Miller has been appointed as its new executive director.
Miller has been involved with SID since becoming the vice president of marketing for Fujitsu in 1992. He is currently a founding partner of Endeavor Innovation Partners, a technology intellectual property consulting company and is also a Principal with E3 Innovation, Inc. Tom will be working with SID on a part-time basis until February 2008.
"I am aiming for a better and more in-depth understanding of the needs of the members and how to make the society attractive to a larger cross section of the electronics industry," Miller said. "My first acts are going to be focused on interviewing the membership on a global basis and getting a better appreciation for what they see as the real strengths of the society and where they would like to see it improve."
Miller was introduced to the SID Board of Directors at the September EuroDisplay 2007 Conference in Moscow, Russia. He said he was anxious to start talking to the chairs of SID's 36 worldwide chapters who attended the conference, as well as to talk to other members.
Miller said that he will focus on increasing membership and making SID more responsive to the needs of its members; improve the content and applicability of all SID publications; and to increase participation in the society's trade shows and symposia.
"Over the past 15 years, I have seen the Society grow dramatically," he stated. "Now, the challenge is, what new frontiers can we conquer? We are already in 36 chapters on a global basis around the world – I want to know what communities we do not serve and how can we serve our existing communities better."
Miller urged members of SID and others in the electronics community to share their thoughts, concerns, and ideas on the role of the society with him by e-mailing him directly at tmiller@sid.org
Miller has worked in electronics for more than 30 years, with a concentration on flat-panel displays since 1992. Since 1998, Tom has advised or participated in the formation of more than 15 high-technology start-ups, most recently as President and General Manager of DuPont Displays' Passive-Matrix Polymer-OLED Displays headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA; interim COO for Anadigm, a field-programmable analog array company headquartered in Tempe, AZ; and as founding CEO for Pliable Technologies, a planned spin-out of the ASU Flexible Display Center and Macrotechnology Works. Additionally, Tom currently serves on the Board of Directors for Project InVision International and serves as an advisor to numerous other public and private companies in the display, semiconductor, and software industries.
At Fujitsu Microelectronics from 1992 to 1996, Tom initiated efforts to restructure U.S. semiconductor operations, reducing operating costs by more than $20 million while increasing sales from less than $190 million to over $600 million within 3 years.
Tom's earliest successes were at Texas Instruments where he led business development efforts to develop electronic sound generators and controllers for integration into leading consumer-electronic products for the toy and game industry.
Tom later led efforts to commercialize the first RISC microprocessors, initially at NCR and then at Fairchild, followed by his first entrepreneurial efforts with Integrated CMOS Systems (sold to Toshiba) and VIA Technologies (now a major international IC company in Taiwan).
Tom began his career as a hardware and firmware designer for microprocessor systems and holds a B.S. in computer science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Congratulations to Dr. Kenneth A. Dean of Motorola and Professor Qiong-Hua Wang of Sichuan University, who have been named the Society's newest senior members.
Dr. Dean has been the technical project leader for Motorola's nanotube-based display program. He has demonstrated color full-motion-video display prototypes with nano-tube technology. He has also been awarded numerous patents and has authored more than 10 papers in the last 5 years.
Prof. Wang has been active in display-related research for more than 10 years. Her Ph.D. thesis was on CRT-based projection TVs, and she completed 3 years of post-doctoral research on LCDs and up-conversion projection displays. She has spent the last 4 years as a faculty member at Sichuan University developing 3-D displays.
Nominations are now being accepted for the 2008 Display of the Year Awards, the most prestigious awards in the display industry. The awards will be announced and presented at Display Week 2008: The SID International Symposium, Seminar, and Exhibition which will be held in Los Angeles, CA, May 18-23, 2008.
The Display of the Year Awards Committee has opened up the nominations process to allow companies to self-nominate their own products, applications, and components, in addition to accepting outside nominations. However, the source of the nomination will in no way influence the committee's final selections of award winners. In short, anyone can nominate any product, application, or component, regardless of company affiliation.
The deadline for nominations is December 31, 2007. To be eligible for a 2008 award, the product, application, or component must have been introduced and been commercially available at some time between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2007.
Display of the Year Award winners are selected by an international committee consisting of leading members of the technical display community. The DYAC considers many factors, including technical innovation, commercial significance, and likely social impact when determining the award winners.
Awards Categories
Display of the Year Award: This award is granted for a display with novel and outstanding features such as new physical or chemical effects, or a new addressing method. Examples of appropriate nominations are LC, plasma, or OLED displays; bistable displays; or HDTV displays with novel means of rendering fast-moving pictures.
Display Application of the Year Award: This award is granted for a novel and outstand-ing application of a display, where the displayitself is not necessarily a new device. Examples of appropriate nominations for this category are a camera with a display used as a view-finder, a display used as an electronic book, a mobile phone with a display, displays used for still or moving pictures, or a novel projection system with known display components.
Display Component of the Year Award: This award is granted for a novel component that significantly enhanced the performance of a display. A component is sold as a separate part destined to be incorporated into a display. A component may also include display-enhancing materials and/or parts fabricated with new processes. Examples of appropriate nominations in this category are a polarizer, an electrophoretic laminate, or an LED as a backlight.
Nominations
To nominate a product, component, or application for a 2008 Display of the Year Award, visit http://www.sid.org/awards/dya.html and download the appropriate nomination form, complete it entirely (including supporting documentation), and submit it by December 31, 2007.
SID Mid-Atlantic Chapter Elects 2007-2008 Officers
Congratulations to the SID Mid-Atlantic Chapter's newest officers:
Butchi Reddy Vaddi – Chair Frank Yan – Vice Chair Michelle deCastro – Treasurer Ioaniss (John) Kymissis – Secretary
The chapter's outgoing Chair is Ihor Wacyk, and the current Chapter Director is Amal Ghosh.
SID UCLA Branch Formed
Students at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) have formed a UCLA chapter of SID. The group received its official citation on September 27 when it was recognized at a meeting of SID's Los Angeles chapter.
The new branch's Founding and First Academic Advisor is Professor Yang Yang. The Founding Student is Jinsong Huang. First Officers are Juo-Hao Li (Chair), William W. Hou (Vice Chair), Li-Min Chen (Secretary), and Zheng Xu (Treasurer).
LA Chapter will Hold One-Day Conference on LEDs
On January 11, 2008, SID's LA Chapter will once again hold its one-day conference on LEDs. This exciting conference has proven in years past to be one of SID's most successful chapter events.
This year's conference will focus on LEDs in LCD Lighting Technology. Central topics will include Fundamentals in LED, BLU, and Driver Technologies; Technical LED/LCD Reviews and Applications Engineering; and Product, Market, and Business Assessments. The conference will also include an exhibition.
This one-day conference will take place January 11, 2008 from 8:00 am – 4:00 pm at the Costa Mesa Country Club in Costa Mesa, California.
The cost of registration before December 16 is $150 for SID members and $200 for non-members. Be sure to register in advance, as this popular conference tends to sell out. To register, please contact Erv Ulbrich at eulbrich@earthlink.net.
SID Mid-Europe Chapter to Hold Spring Meeting
The SID Mid-Europe Chapter organizes yearly spring and fall meetings with technical and scientific presentations, attracting many European display professionals. The chapter's next gathering will be held March 13-14, 2008 at the Abbe Center in Jena, Germany.
The 2008 spring meeting will focus on different aspects of microdisplays and their applications. Basic technology will be covered as well as optical components and systems or applications in multimedia and niche markets. For the first time in the meeting's history there is the possibility of arranging a poster session. This offers more participants the possibility to present their work. Limited space for industrial exhibitors is also available.
The meeting will close on the second day with a visit to the laboratories of the Fraunhofer IOF.
For more information on this event, please visit http://www.iof.fraunhofer.de/sid/index. html. •