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Minutes of the PSSI General Body Meeting held on 21st December, 2011 at
Birla Institute of Technology, Patna
The General Body Meeting of the Plasma Science Society of India was held at the Birla Institute of Technology, Patna on the 21st of December 2011, during the 26th National Symposium on Plasma Science & Technology (Plasma-2011) organized by BIT, Patna. The agenda of the meeting was the following ;
· Message from the President, PSSI
· Activity report by secretary and discussion on new activities
· Symposium Venue for next two years
· Account presentation by Treasurer
· Any other matter with the permission of the chairman
In the absence of the President, Vice-President and the Secretary, the GBM was chaired by the Shri. P. K. Atrey. Members of the Executive council, Ms. Chhaya Chavda (Treasurer), Dr. N. S. Saini, Mr. Ziauddin Khan and Dr. S K Sinha were present. Around 75 PSSI members (Life & student members) participated in the General Body Meeting. Mr. Atrey addressed the GBM and thanked the council members and presented the activity report for the 2010-11. And the following points were discussed.
The message from the President, Prof. Avinash Khare, was read out by Mr. P K Atrey.
Even though there were initial glitches to the beginning of the Plasma-2011, the GBM appreciated the efforts of the local organizing committee of Plasma-2011, especially Dr. Sanjay Sinha and his team.
The GBM paid their respects to Dr. Parvez Guzdar, PSSI member from University of Maryland, USA who passed away in July 2011 by observing minute’s silence.
The minutes of the GBM organized on 9th Dec 2010 at Guwahati was unanimously approved and accepted by the GBM.
The current number of Life Members of PSSI is 1005.
For student membership, the payment terms which was earlier Rs.300 x 5 installments was changed to Rs.500 x 3 installments. This was approved by the GBM.
It was announced that PSSI would issue laminated Membership photo ID cards to the Life Members of PSSI. Detailed email in this regard would be sent to all the PSSI members soon.
The Convener of Plasma-2012, Pondicherry Dr. Suraj Sinha announced the dates of the conference, viz, 3-6 December, 2012. He also informed the GBM that the first announcement of the conference will be released in March 2012.
For organization of the Plasma-2013, there were two offers, from Kalinga Institute of Technology (KITT university), Bhubhaneswar, Odisha and from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala. The GBM unanimously voted for KITT University to host Plasma-2013. Prof. Bimla Buti suggested that PSSI should ask MG University of they were interested in hosting Plasma-2014 and in case they are, then it should be awarded to them now itself.
The balance sheet of the PSSI accounts for the year 2010-11 were presented and were approved by the GBM. The current corpus in form of fixed deposits stands at Rs. 17 Lakhs.
Dr. Suraj Sinha, Prof. Srivastava, Dr. S Mukherjee, Prof. Bimla Buti, Mr. Ziauddin Khan, Mr. S. Devanandhan and Dr. Ramprakash expressed their views on how PSSI should promote publications related to plasma science & technology in India though Indian journals. Some practical difficulties regarding the same were also pointed out by Prof. Amita Das and Dr. Ravi A V Kumar. It was decided that PSSI would take this issue very seriously and take sufficient steps to ensure that articles in plasma science are published in Indian journals also.
Dr. Suraj Sinha also mentioned that the Pondicherry University offers financial support of Rs. 2 Lakhs for two years to start any scientific publication. Dr. Mukherjee responded that though it is good for PSSI to have its own journal, it is extremely difficult to sustain a journal publication over the long run without a dedicated panel of editors and referees in place.
Mr. Ziauddin mentioned that the Indian Journal Of Material Science was willing to bring out a special issue for selected reviewed papers presented at the Plasma-2011. He said he is pursuing the matter and would get back to PSSI Executive council soon regarding this matter.
Dr. Ravi Kumar mentioned about the Indian Plasma Physics Preprint Server is a, free e-print server started by Dr. Deepak Gupta (PSSI Member) to promote open access to scientific articles and literature. Authors are welcome to submit their work that belongs to the subject area of Plasma Science and Technology or related areas of interest to the Plasma and Fusion Science community. Participants of Plasma-2011 were urged to upload their talks and posters on to this repository.
Prof. Buti made a mention regarding the ethical issues regarding unauthorized copy and distribution of the presentations of invited speakers. She requested the local organizing committee of the Plasma conference to make sure that the invited speakers wishes regarding his/her presentation are respected.
Prof. Bimla Buti gave away the two Buti Young Scientist awards for the year 2011 to Mr. B Kakati of CPP Guwahati and to Ms. Shail Pandey of IIT Kanpur. She announced that from the year 2012, the prize money for the Buti award will be increased to Rs. 10,000/- . This gesture was greatly appreciated by the GBM.
Dr. Mukherjee of IPR proposed that a 2-day seminar exclusively for research scholars working in the field of plasma science & technology should be organized under the platform of PSSI and this should be conducted twice a year. He suggested that one of these meetings can be held at IPR while the second one can be held at other venues. This proposal was accepted by the GBM.
Prof. Buti suggested that more effort should be made to get invited speakers for Space & Atmospheric plasma which is a very important field of plasma physics.
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