Roger S. Reiss is based in Worcester, Massachusetts. This is the second in a series of technical group profiles OE Reports will be running in the coming months. We want to introduce you to these groups, and provide a brief overview of their areas of interest and the kinds of activities they are involved in. We'd like people to start thinking about smart structures as a whole, and not just the pieces. Spillman, who is Director of Research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Optical Sciences and Engineering Research Ctr., said the Smart Structures and Materials Working Group's mission is geared toward promoting this kind of holistic view of smart structures.
Students submit extended abstracts, which the group pares down to three finalists.
The three finalists have their admission fees to the symposium waved. They present their papers at the working group meeting at the symposium, and the working group members vote. The Smart Structures and Materials group was established in the mid 1990s and, said Spillman, getting the group off the ground has involved a great deal of effort. Over the past several years, it has grown to where we got fifty or sixty this past year. But it has taken a lot of work and a lot of promotion to even get that many, because people are doing their own research and don't always want to change direction.