Task Force to Study Prizes and Awards

APS President George Trilling has appointed a task force to review APS Prizes and Awards, and charged it with the responsibility of looking at, among other things, the proliferation of such awards and the criteria for establishing new ones.

The task force will be chaired by Myriam Sarachik, Vice-President of the APS, and has six other members drawn from a spectrum of APS divisions. It is the latest in a sequence of such bodies, the most recent of which was chaired by Mildred Dresselhaus in 1997-1998.

Another element of the charge deals with the relationship between the Society, which oversees and approves the awards, and the individual units that are involved in the selection process. The task force is asked to find "the appropriate balance between the role of the unit involved in that prize or award and the Society's responsibility to ensure adequate uniformity in the selection process."

The complete charge to the task force and the list of members can be found on the web at http://www.aps.org/programs/honors/taskforce/index.cfm. Members of APS who wish to communicate with the task force are invited to send their comments by e-mail to any of the task force members. The task force will begin meeting this summer and is expected to have its report ready sometime next spring.

The web site also contains a link to the Dresselhaus report of 1998.