The first quarter of 2025 for our TC also means that we have newly elected members begin their service. We welcome Junwei Du, Antonio Gonzalez, Andrea Gonzalez-Montoro, Akram Hamato, and Nicolas Karakatsanis. For Nicolas who served as Secretary to NMSC for the last 4 years, this is a nice return to add his experience being involved in many NMISC-related activities to our TC. All newly elected members are eager to contribute to the society, and NMISC leadership is actively seeking their participation in several aspects of our TC activities via being a member of a subcommittee, etc.

These subcommittees of NMISC have distinct roles and provide crucial inputs for the NMISC’s oversight role for our conferences. Our standing and ad hoc subcommittees (SCs) are as follows: Bylaws SC chaired by Andrew Goertzen, immediate past chair of NMISC, Initiative SC chaired by Mitra Safavi-Naeini, vice chair of NMISC, Balanced Representation SC chaired by Georgios Konstantinou, and Awards and Fellows SC chaired by Andrew Goertzen. Our goal is all current elected NMISC members participate in at least one of these subcommittees or other society activities. In conjunction with Radiation Instrumentation Steering Committee (RISC) with whom NMISC jointly oversees our annual NSS/MIC/RTSD conferences, we actively participate in several joint committees: Conference structure subcommittee chaired by me, and Joint Oversight subcommittee (JOS) chaired by Michael Lerch. These joint subcommittees both have significant roles to shape the future of our conferences in terms of structural review and necessary changes to make as well as finding the best possible conference venues that attract our existing core scientists and engineers who regularly attend, as well as new attendees. We aim to achieve sustainable solutions and plans going forward.

As I reported last time, we welcome our new NMISC secretary, Esther Ciarrocchi of University of Pisa, who started the first of the two-year term. Esther already makes big impact on organizing our committee activities. We very much thank Nicolas Karakatsanis, past secretary, who made this smooth transition possible.

For JOS, our TC re-elected Dimitris Visvikis to serve for his second term. Our two representatives to JOS, Dimitra Darambara and Dimitris fully understand the significance of JOS activities, and jointly with RISC reps and JOS leadership, we are making steady progress on future conference site selections.

NMISC was also tasked to nominate candidates for steering committee of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (TMI). With the new Editor-in-Chief at TMI, this steering committee with NMISC representation is expected to appropriately advocate our needs and interests in relation to the journal. 

NMSIC continues to play an important leadership role for our third medical imaging-focused NPSS school that will be held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from August 13 until August 18. NPSS Education Committee provides strong support for this school. EduCom Chair Martin Grossmann together with Andrea Gonzalez-Montoro of NMISC lead organizing the school program. The organizing committee for this NPSS school has met a few times around the year-end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, and will continue to meet a few more times to finalize the full program and the invited instructor list. Another NPSS functional committee, Distinguished Lecturers Committee that runs Distinguished Lecturers (DL) program, is also a big help for organizing this school by allowing the Distinguished Lecturers in the field of medical imaging to be supported by the DL program. By any measure, this is a great way to make impact on our society to disseminate our experience and knowledge across the world.

Finally, we look forward to the 2025 NSS/MIC/RTSD conference abstract submission opening which is typically around May. This conference will be held in Yokohama, Japan from November 1 until 8, the site that was originally selected for 2021, but was held virtually. We hope that our community remains enthusiastic about this conference site, and a strong turnout is expected.

More information on NMISC activities is available at https://ieee-npss.org/technical-committees/nuclear-medical-and-imaging-sciences/

Youngho Seo, NMISC Chair, can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]