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Volume 7, Number 2 Editor's Note
Welcome to the Winter 2009 issue of the INMM Communicator. I started to write this letter from the cabin of a Boeing 737 descending into Vienna on a flight arriving from Amsterdam with my journey originating in Manchester. It is a route I know well from my days as an IAEA safeguards inspector doing inspections at the URENCO Capenhurst gas centrifuge enrichment plant. I was part of the URENCO safeguards conference held in Chester where many INMM members were participants. An active travel schedule is a big part of the life of many safeguards experts. It can be a very exciting part of a nuclear materials management career. In fact, I continued this letter on a flight from Moscow to New York that was sprinkled with several of our lab colleagues in the nuclear materials management field. It is hard to avoid people in our field on travel even if you try. This publication tries to give an idea in each issue what INMM and careers in nuclear materials management are like. Please note that not everyone travels all over the globe. This is an appropriate point since I finished this letter at my desk in Los Alamos since sometimes all the information you need is not on the road with you. So being at home and working at your desk or lab is very important, too, since new technologies and ideas are hard to develop at an airport or in an airplane cabin. As in every issue of the Communicator, we have news about the Institute's internal operations in a column by INMM Vice-President Scott Vance, "Inside Insights." Another regular feature is the piece "Member News," by our new Membership Committee chair Albert Garrett. We bid a special welcome to all the new INMM members since the annual meeting in Tucson. Their names are listed in Al's piece. As has been the mission of the Communicator we also highlight a technical division. This month is the International Safeguards Division. One of the pleasures of my job has been working on Human Capital Development as part of the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI). The Communicator has highlighted students and young staff. This issue we have an article from Melissa Schear from Los Alamos National Laboratory, who just moved from being a post-master's student into a full-time staff at LANL. She writes about her recent trip to Japan for the IAEA-JAEA Workshop. I think all our national labs are looking forward to hosting some more young fresh enthusiastic faces this summer. So those younger readers in the audience should start contacting us in the labs now! We also have an update on activities at one of our new student chapters at the University of Michigan from the chapter president Eric Miller. I had the privilege of visiting Michigan to give a course lecture and a talk at the chapter meeting. They have a vibrant program in nuclear engineering with a group with safeguards and security emphasis lead by Dr. Sara Pozzi, one of our INNM members, who is one of their faculty advisors. Being a Penn Stater it is hard thing to say, but Michigan has an incredible group of students. However, I must note that Eric Miller did not mention that the double-header seminar speakers, Dr. Robert Mayo and myself, are both Penn State grads from the nuclear engineering program in the 1980s. Other articles in this issue include updates on:
As always, I look forward to hearing from you. If you have any items you would like to have in the Communicator please forward them to me. We are the Communications Committee! Spreading the news of what is and what goes on in our profession is our mission! Of course, the Communications Committee is still looking for volunteers: drop me a line at bboyer@lanl.gov. We are getting ready for the 51st INMM Annual Meeting in Baltimore in July 2010 abstracts will be due Feb. 1, 2010. We are looking forward to your contributions to this meeting.
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© 2010 Institute of Nuclear Materials Management