Dear members of the Combustion Institute,
Since the Warsaw Symposium, we have started to work on processes that may improve the service of our organization to its membership. This is being done with the ambition to make actions and decisions of the Combustion Institute transparent to its members and to allow for more facile participation in the future. One very important step in this process is to assure that all members who are now registered in their regional or national sections are also recognized as members in the Combustion Institute database. This is the only way all members can take full advantage of the Combustion Institute as the international umbrella organization of regional and national sections. A registration process has thus been started. Registered members in national or regional sections are being approached through the Sections for this purpose and the Pittsburgh office works with the Sections to get all members registered, meaning that each individual – you – must actively participate and consent to have your data entered into the database which is managed through our website.
The process will take some time, regarding the office capacity available in Pittsburgh on top of regular business. It has now started with some selected “test” sections; specifically the Belgium, Scandinavian/Nordic and German Sections, to eliminate potential bugs in the process. In a rolling method, provided the process is running smoothly, all Sections will be approached with the ambition that we will have all members in the system before the next International Symposium to be held in San Francisco in 2014. Once the global membership registration is finished, all members can take full advantage of new functionalities, including the possibility to share contact information of Combustion Institute colleagues around the world, faster and increased flow of information, and the ability to quickly submit abstracts for some meetings hosted by the Combustion Institute. Without such registration of all members, some functions that many of you know from other organizations, such as electronic voting, are currently not feasible. We need your cooperation and are looking forward to being able to provide further services to all members of the Combustion Institute. And – by the way – this is also a good time for you who work in combustion or adjacent fields, in academia, companies and other institutions, as students, postdocs, scientists, managers or in other functions, who are not a member yet, to apply for membership and to make our organization stronger!
Marcus Aldén
VP Section affairs
Hideaki Kobayashi
Secretary Section affairs