On behalf of the SID Honors and Awards Committee (H&AC), I am appealing for your active participation in the nomination of deserving individuals for the various SID honors and awards. The SID Board of Directors, based on recommendations made by the H&AC, grants all the awards. These awards include five major prizes awarded to individuals, not necessarily members of SID, based upon their outstanding achievements. The Karl Ferdinand Braun prize is awarded for "Outstanding Technical Achievement in, or contribution to, Display Technology." The prize is named in honor of the German physicist and Nobel Laureate Karl Ferdinand Braun who, in 1897, invented the cathode-ray tube (CRT). Scientific and technical achievements that cover either a wide range of display technologies or the fundamental principles of a specific technology are the prime reasons for awarding this prize to a nominee. The Jan Rajchman prize is awarded for "Outstanding Scientific and Technical Achievement or Research in the Field of Flat-Panel Displays." This prize is specifically dedicated to those individuals who have made major contributions to one of the flat-panel-display technologies or, through their research activities, have advanced the state of understanding of one of those technologies. The Otto Schade prize is awarded for "Outstanding Scientific or Technical Achievement in the Advancement of Functional Performance and/or Image Quality of Information Displays." This prize is named in honor of the pioneering RCA engineer Otto Schade, who invented the concept of the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) and who used it to characterize the entire display system, including the human observer. The advancement for this prize may be achieved in any display technology or display system or may be of a more general or theoretical nature. The scope of eligible advancement is broadly envisioned to encompass the areas of display systems, display electronics, applied vision and display human factors, image processing, and display metrology. The nature of eligible advancements may be in the form of theoretical or mathematical models, algorithms, software, hardware, or innovative methods of display-performance measurement, and image-quality characterization. Each of these above-mentioned prizes carries a $2000 stipend sponsored by AU Optronics Corp., Sharp Corporation, and Samsung Mobile Display, respectively.

The Slottow–Owaki prize is awarded for "Outstanding Contributions to the Education and Training of Students and Professionals in the Field of Information Display." This prize is named in honor of Professor H. Gene Slottow, University of Illinois, an inventor of the plasma display and Professor Kenichi Owaki from the Hiroshima Institute of Technology and an early leader of the pioneering Fujitsu Plasma Display program. The oustanding education and training contributions recognized by this prize is not limited to those of a professor in a formal university, but may also include training given by researchers, engineers, and managers in industry who have done an outstanding job developing information-display professionals. The Slottow–Owaki prize carries a $2000 stipend made possible by a generous gift from Fujitsu, Ltd., and Professor Tsutae Shinoda.

The fifth major SID award, the Lewis and Beatrice Winner Award, is awarded for "Exceptional and Sustained Service to the Society." This award is granted exclusively to those who have worked hard over many years to further the goals of the Society.

The membership grade of SID Fellow Award is one of unusual professional distinction. Each year the SID Board of Directors elects a limited number (up to 0.1% of the membership in that year) of SID members in good standing to the grade of Fellow. To be eligible, candidates must have been members at the time of nomination for at least 5 years, with the last 3 years consecutive. A candidate for election to Fellow is a member with "Outstanding Qualifications and Experience as a Scientist or Engineer in the Field of Information Display who has made Widely Recognized and Significant Contributions to the Advancement of the Display Field" over a sustained period of time. SID members practicing in the field recognize the nominee's work as providing significant technical contributors to knowledge in their area(s) of expertise. For this reason, five endorsements from SID members are required to accompany each Fellow nomination. Each Fellow nomination is evaluated by the H&AC, based on a weighted set of five criteria. These criteria and their assigned weights are creativity and patents, 30%; technical accomplishments and publications, 30%; technical leadership, 20%; service to SID, 15%; and other accomplishments, 5%. When submitting a Fellow award nomination, please keep these criteria with their weights in mind.

The Special Recognition Award is given annually to a number of individuals (membership in the SID is not required) of the scientific and business community for distinguished and valued contribution in the information-display field. These awards are given for contributions in one or more of the following categories: (a) Outstanding Technical Accomplishments, (b) Outstanding Contributions to the Literature, (c) Outstanding Service to the Society, (d) Outstanding Entrepreneurial Accomplishments, and (e) Outstanding Achievements in Education. When evaluating the Special Recognition Award nominations, the H&AC uses a five-level rating scale in each of the above-listed five categories, and these categories have equal weight. Nominators should indicate the category in which a Special Recognition Award nomination is to be considered by the H&AC. More than one category may be indicated. The nomination should, of course, stress accomplishments in the category or categories selected by the nominator.

While an individual nominated for an award or election to Fellow may not submit his/her own nomination, nominators may, if necessary, ask a nominee for information thatwill be useful in preparing the nomination. The nomination process is relatively simple, but requires that the nominator and perhaps some colleagues devote a little time to preparation of the supporting material that the H&AC needs in order to evaluate each nomination for its merit. It is not necessary to submit a complete publication record with a nomination. Just list the titles of the most significant half a dozen or less papers and patents authored by the nominee, and list the total number of papers and patents he/she has authored.

Determination of the winners for SID honors and awards is a highly selective process. Last year less than 30% of the nominations were selected to receive awards. Some of the major prizes are not awarded every year due to the lack of sufficiently qualified nominees or, in some cases, because no nominations were submitted. On the other hand, once a nomina-tion is submitted, it will stay active for three con-secutive years and will be considered three times by the H&AC. The nominator of such a nomination may improve the chances of the nomination by submitting additional material for the second or third year that it is considered, but such changes are not required.

Descriptions of each award and the lists of previous award winners can be found at www.sid.org/awards/indawards.html. Nomination forms are available at www.sid.org/awards/nomination.html where you will find Nomination Templates in both MS Word (preferred) and Text formats. Please use the links to find the Sample Nominations, which are useful for composing your nomination since these are the actual successful nominations for some previous SID awards. Nominations should preferably be submitted by e-mail. However, you can also submit nominations by ordinary mail if necessary.

Please note that with each Fellow nomination, only five written endorsements by five SID members are required. These brief endorsements – a minimum of 2–3 sentences to a maximum of one-half page in length – must state why clearly and succinctly, in the opinion of the endorser, the nominee deserves to be elected to a Fellow of the Society. Identical endorsements by two or more endorsers will be automatically rejected (no form letters, please). Please send these endorsements to me either by e-mail (preferred) or by hardcopy to the address stated in the accompanying text box. Only the Fellow nominations are required to have these endorsements. However, I encourage you to submit at least a few endorsements for all nominations since they will frequently add further support to your nomination.

All 2012 award nominations are to be submitted by October 7, 2011. E-mail your nominations directly to fan.luo@auo.com orsidawards@sid.org. If that is not possible, then please send your hardcopy nomination by regular mail.

As I state each year: "In our professional lives, there are few greater rewards than recognition by our peers. For an individual in the field of displays, an award or prize from the SID, which represents his or her peers worldwide, is a most significant, happy, and satisfying experience. In addition, the overall reputation of the society depends on the individuals who are in its 'Hall of Fame.'

When you nominate someone for an award or prize, you are bringing happiness to an individual and his or her family and friends, and you are also benefiting the society as a whole."

Thank you for your nomination in advance.

— Fan Luo
Chair, SID Honors & Awards Committee

Yang Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been named the holder of the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr., Endowed Chair in Engineering.

The Society for Information Display was founded at UCLA in 1962, and the chair is the first in the world dedicated to the area of electronic information displays. It was established with a gift from Lawrence Tannas, Jr., a UCLA Engineering alumnus and executive in the electronic-information-display industry, and his wife Carol. Tannas is a longtime SID member, and the president of Tannas Electronic Displays, Inc., a company specializing in the research, development, and licensing of intellectual property for preparing liquid-crystal displays used in avionics.

Yang's research focuses on conjugated polymers and organics, polymer LEDs (light-emitting diodes), and related polymer electronic, photonic, and bio-devices. His work with polymer solar cells has led to the creation of higher quality and more affordable and energy-efficient materials for use in consumer-electronic devices such as flat-panel televisions, plasma displays, and cell phones, as well as electronic information displays.

"It is a tremendous honor to become the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr., Endowed Chair," Yang said. "I am particularly impressed by Mr. Tannas' vision and contributions to the area of electronic-information-display technology. I look forward to using this endowment to enrich education here at UCLA Engineering, as well as enhance research that will help create more energy-efficient display technology."

Yang is the faculty director of the Nano Renewable Energy Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA and serves as Director of the Center for Organic Opto-electronics Technologies at Zhejiang University in China. He is also the faculty adviser for the UCLA student branch of the Society for Information Display (SID).

"It is gratifying to know that our gift will help UCLA Engineering for many generations to come by supporting the teaching and research activities of a distinguished faculty member like Professor Yang," Tannas said.

This article is based in part on an announcement from Wileen Wong Kromhout at UCLA. For more information, seehttp://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/yang-yang-named-to-carol-and-lawrence-210177.aspx

At Display Week 2011 in Los Angeles, four charter members of the Society for Information Display came together to celebrate the society they helped create at UCLA nearly 50 years earlier.

In the fall of 2010, members of SID's Los Angeles chapter initiated a search for charter members. In a list they found that was dated 1966, 64 people had been designated as charter members, with two additional people named as founders. The search team discovered one of the founders, Rudolph Kuehn, who was not able to travel to Los Angeles for Display Week 2011. And they found eight charter members: Tom Curran, Philip Damon, Dail Doucette, Donald Gumpertz, Robert Knepper, Lou Seeberger, Erv Ulbrich, and Richard Winner. Four of these individuals and their wives attended a special reception during Display Week in LA, where each spoke briefly about the organization, its founding, and ongoing success.

Next year, for the 50th anniversary of the inception of SID, the SID Los Angeles Chapter will install a building plaque at UCLA honoring the society. •

– Jenny Donelan

At the SID President's Cocktail Reception at Display Week 2011 are SID historian Robert Donofrio and charter members Robert Knepper, Dail Doucette, Lou Seeberger, and Erv Ulbrich.