President's Report

18th July 1997

The Hobart Conference was very successful, attracting 162 delegates, and featured six invited Plenary and Keynote speakers, 48 short oral presentations, 46 posters and a well-patronised trade exhibition. For the first time, a professional convention management company was employed, which greatly reduced the workload on the local organising committee. I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the Convenor, Noel Davies, and his committee for a job well done. In spite of Noel's expectations that the Conference would run at a loss, in the final analysis there was a small surplus. The Central Committee provided over $7,000 in travel support and prizes to graduate students attending the Conference and presenting papers.

The Central Committee also provided travel support for PhD student, Paula Iannitti, from the University of Wollongong, to attend the ASMS Conference in Palm Springs in June and give an oral presentation. The guidelines for graduate students to make application for support to attend International MS Conferences are listed in my President's Report of 24 September, 1995, which is on the Web.

The next Conference, ANZSMS 17, will go to the mountains. It is to be held in Thredbo in the Snowy Mountains from 31st January - 4th February, 1999. Margaret Sheil is the Convenor and members of the Organising Committee will be drawn from Wollongong and Canberra. She welcomes suggestions from members for the names of invited speakers or other ideas for the Conference format. It is planned to send out the first circular in early 1998 and a Web site will be established. Margaret will be standing down from her position as Secretary of the Society but remains on the Central Committee in her capacity as Convenor of the next Conference. I would like to thank Margaret for the time and effort that she has put in as Secretary over the past three years.

In my previous report, I informed members that Michael Guilhaus had been nominated by the Central Committee for the Brunnee Award. This carries a prize of US$25,000 for the purchase of research equipment, and is awarded once every three years to the person under the age of 45 who is judged by an International panel of mass spectrometrists to have made the most significant contribution to instrumentation in mass spectrometry. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to tell you that Michael has won this Award, which will be presented to him at the 14th International Mass Spectrometry Conference (IMSC) in Tampere, Finland in August. I am sure that all members will wish to join me in congratulating Michael on his well-deserved success.

I also mentioned in my last report that consideration was being given to making a bid to hold the 16th IMSC in Australia in 2003. It has not, however, been possible to gather together the level of support necessary to ensure the success of hosting such a Conference.

I again invite members to suggest the names of prominent overseas scientists for consideration by the Central Committee as the ANZSMS lecturer in 1998. Suggestions can be made to me or to any member of the Committee.

Those of you who visit the ANZSMS Web site occasionally will notice that John Traeger has established an e-mail discussion group, which all members are encouraged to join. I would also like to thank John for arranging for the AGM to be held in Melbourne this year. Because the financial year of the Society finishes on 31 March each year, we could not hold the AGM at the Hobart Conference in February. As Sydney and Melbourne are the only two centres which have the 20 or more financial members required to make up a quorum, we are obliged to hold the AGM at one of these two places.

Lastly, my thanks to all the members of the Central Committee for their contributions to the well-being of the Society over the past year.


John MacLeod